GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

Jamaica’s historical agricultural products are cash crops that were connected to the plantation economy and in turn slavery.  Today, Jamaica is restructuring their agricultural production to address local food security issues rather than global market commodities.  This push will increase food security and to do so the government started a campaign with the slogan “grow what we eat, eat what we grow.” Grocery stores in Jamaica now identify local produce with large stickers and prominent displays as school children, backyard gardens and local businesses are all a part of the new agricultural initiative.  

Tags: agriculture, locavore, Jamaica, Middle America.

Earlier this week I posted on whether a group of islands off the coast of Argentina should be called the Falkland Islands or Las Malvinas.  There is some geopolitical significance to which name you ascribe to particular places.  Does it matter if I call the sea to the east of the Korean Peninsula the “East Sea” and if someone else refers to this same body of water west of Japan the “Sea of Japan?”  For many years the Sea of Japan has been the defacto name internationally and South Korean officials have lobbied (quite successfully) to bolster the legitimacy of the name within the media, publishers and cartographers and other governments.  Last summer, a worker in the South Korean government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested that I share some resources that state South Korea’s position(see also this 10 minute video), showing their commitment to this rebranding effort.    

Questions to Ponder: What other places have multiple names?  What are the political overtones to the name distinctions? What are other tricky places on the map where distinct groups would label/draw things differently?  Is the map an ‘unbiased’ source of information? 

Tags: language, toponyms, South Korea, historical, colonialism, cartography.

Understanding global statistics is nearly impossible if you can’t grasp just how large of a quantity 7 billion is.  This set of infographics are a great resource for teaching some of basic global demographics. 

Apparently the latest internet craze is a 40 maps mix-tape.  See the Washington Post’s 40 Maps that explain the World for an interesting, eclectic compilation of maps as well as 40 maps they didn’t teach you in school from Bored Panda and 40 maps that help you make sense of the world from Twisted Sifter.

Tags: statistics, population, infographic, K12.

The recently revised Geography for Life standards have been aligned to show how geographic skills can be taught within the Common Core framework.  The National Geographic Society, in cooperation with the National Council for Geographic Education and the Network of Alliances for Geographic Education created Connections to be that link (for grade specific Common Core/Geography resources click here). 

So how is this to be done? This storymap shows ten great examples of maps that can be used as reading documents, one for each of the 10 ELA Reading Standards. 

Tags: mapping, English, GIS, ESRI, geography education, geospatial, edtech.

Population programs can have have diverse unintended consequences.  Many couples in China who have lost a child not only face the heartache of loss, but have also lost their economic future since that one child was supposed to support them in their old age.  Some elderly parents have a child, but one that does not financially support them as the cultural norms of the past would have required of the children.  These ‘orphan grandparents‘ are casualties in the changing cultural, demographic, and economic patterns in China.

Religious traditions are interconnected and often share common roots and ancestries.  This stunning infographic is an attempt to visually reconcile these disparate strands of faith into one cohesive whole (the image above is far too small to do it justice, but I tried to show the image at various scales).

Tags: perspective, culture, religion, culture, infographic, diffusion.