GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

I’m not saying any of these 3 scenarios are going to happen nor am I endorsing them either.  That said, this article/podcast provides a geopolitical analysis (with maps) of Russia’s potential military options if they are planning on invading Ukraine. 

This article on the economic geography of housing is supplemented by this interactive map with county-level data. There are a lot of conversations that could stem from an analysis of this data.  Where are the housing prices highest?  How come?  This is a resource that could allow students to explore the economic geography of their own region and apply that local knowledge to understand processes throughout the United States.   

Tags:  housing, socioeconomic, urban, planning, unit 7 cities.

If you want to understand the U.S. government’s official stance and perspective on the escalating geopolitical tensions between Ukraine and Russia, this speech is a good place to start.  The U.S. government doesn’t want to forget that Crimea is already occupied by Russia and the short video below expands the U.S. perspective on the reasons behind the crisis.

Tag: Ukraine, political, conflict.

Happy Arbor Day!  Trees and vegetation play a vital role in the urban ecology of a city and many planners actively work towards creating more green infrastructure.  This National Geographic feature highlights nine cities that promote green spaces.  As I’ve mentioned before, trees are also a part of social inequities that can be seen in our urban landscapes.  The more trees there are in a neighborhood, the greater the socioeconomic standings of that community in a metropolitan area, and conversely, poverty-stricken areas usually have minimal canopy cover (thought exercise–what does this correlation mean?). 

Tags: urban ecology, biogeography, environment, ecology, urban, socioeconomic, neighborhood.

This isn’t just a fun sports map–there are some good geographic concepts that can be used here.  When discussing cultural regions, many use the core-domain-sphere model.  This map uses the brightest color intensities to represent the core regions and the lightest hues to show waning strength, but to still signify that the area is a part of a team’s sphere of influence.  Essentially, this map is begging you to explore the borderlands, the liminal “in-between” spaces that aren’t as easy to explain.  What other phenomena can be used to demonstrate the core-domain-sphere model of cultural regions?  What other geographic concepts can you teach using this map?  

Tags: fun, sport, place, borders, statistics, mapping, regions.

My first thought was to check the truthfulness of this map and to see how many “Rhode Islands” there are in state Texas.  I used this clever website that shows the number of areal units equal to the size of Rhode Island that are in any given country. And despite what that southwest bravado may lead you to believe, Texas isn’t its own country. So I needed to find a different website which lets you overlay any two places one on top of the other. This is a fantastic resource for help leverage your students’ local knowledge to teach them about places that are more remote and where their mental maps might have very little data.   And never mess with the Ocean State…even if this is Texas’ version of Earth Day.

The types of questions that you ask when you are meeting someone new for the first time has some regional variations but there is much more to the geography of small talk than that as see in this 4 minute video.  People want to understand your cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic context by asking spatial questions about where you are from.  Identity and place are tightly woven and these neighborhood questions are almost invitations to share much more personal information, as if to ask, “how do you fit in this world?”  When you are being introduced to someone, what are the questions that you ask, and what type of information are you hoping to get?  Each person has their own little geography that has profoundly shaped who they are—so what’s your story? 

Tags: language, regions, folk cultures, community, place, neighborhood.

The Colombian Exchange is a term that describes the most dramatic biologic transfer in history.  European explorers brought animals and agricultural items from the Old World to the New and subsequently brought back items from the New World back to the Old.  This exchange profoundly reshaped many societies as agricultural diffusion of the potato lead to the changes across northern Europe. 

Tags: agriculture, food production, diffusion, Europe. 

This ‘sermon‘ from the Church of Geography is outstanding (the ‘Church’ is a geo-evangelizing group on Facebook and Twitter that is the home to the delightful memes pictured above).  Many organizations are trying to re-brand geography to gain greater public support at the same time that other interdisciplinary initiatives with geographic content are gaining traction: global studies, environmental sustainability, centers for spatial analysis, etc.  We don’t need a name change as much as we need people to capture the vision of geography’s centrality and holistic capacity. 

Tags: geo-inspiration, geography education.