GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

This video that I originally found on Upworthy shows that even classic songs of Americana that might seem jingoistic may have had a subversive beginning.  I never knew there was a final verse to this Great Depression era song that references iconic cultural landscapes; know that I’ve heard it I see why it isn’t taught to school kids, but I wish it was.   

Tags:  poverty, place, USA, landscape, culture, music.

This video and article briefly show the reasons behind the current tension between Spain, NATO allies and fellow EU members.  The deeper, underlying issues though are all fundamentally rooted in the complex local political geography.  As an exclave of the UK on a peninsula connected to the Spanish mainland that controls access to the Mediterranean Sea, there is naturally going to be friction over this unusual political configuration. Spain, in what the chief Minister of Gibraltar calls “sabre-rattling,” is flexing its muscles and considering using their border and airspace as a political leverage.  Spain is upset that Gibraltar has created an artificial reef in waters that their fishermen use.  Spanish fisherman have recently condemned the escalating political rhetoic.

Questions to Ponder: Why are both parties politically and culturally invested in this piece of territory?  What challenges are there for a small exclave when neighbors aren’t friendly? How does Spanish and British suprantional connections impact this issue?

Tags: borders, political, territoriality, sovereignty, Spain, Europe, autonomy.

I definitely don’t have the skills to pull off this amazing cake, but I can certainly appreciate the hard work and the amazing teaching tool this cake is (tutorial and recipes for concentrically layered cake here).  Crafts are hardly fluff pieces; my daughter last year had to create a craft representing the inner core, outer core mantle and crust.  She loved working with fruits of various sizes (blueberry was the inner core, followed by strawberry, kiwi and orange with the peel) but the lesson stayed because of the visual and tactile connection that she had with the project.   

Tags: physical, fun, art, K12.

At the NCGE this week, I was pleased to hear a presentation from Alexander Murphy, a giant in the academic world.  He shared this interactive map from Derek Watkins, which is the best map I’ve ever seen to teach global population distribution patterns.  It is removed all extraneous information and allows the user to focus on the areas of heavy settlement and limited population.  The map can show regions that are settled at densities from 15 to 500 people per square mile; the changes at various densities are visually staggering and powerfully telling.  I’ve shared some other maps that would work very nicely together with this in a lesson on global population settlement patterns.  

Tags: density, population,  visualization, mapping.

GIS and GEOSPATIAL in EDUCATION

• James Madison University offers high schoolers college credit in the Geospatial Semester.
• Environmental coastal student-mapped projects in New England.
• Teaching with GIS at Bigfork Schools.
• National Geographic Education’s online mapping tools.
• How to use Gapminder in the classroom.
• GIS and STEM afterschool initiatives in Massachusetts.
• The Eyes in the Sky program which trains teachers to use NASA data.
• Hands on environmental research and mapping with undergrads in Oregon.
• Climate Science data visualization tools from South Florida.
• Using geospatial tools in a 21st century 4H.
• Afterschool geospatial program called the EAST initiative.
• Empowering local communities to map what matters to them: Geoporter in Costa Rica.

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES

• Last Pass (a secure way to remember all your passwords).
• Microsoft OneNote to organize yourself.

The keynote address of the NCGE conference in Denver was given by Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame and the author of Maphead (and yes I was super excited to meet a fellow map geek and  BYU grad).  “Everything is better with maps,”  Jennnings said, and geographers often try to say that we do more than just look at maps, but mapping technologies should be embraced as a way to help make geography be the placed-centered part of other academic disciplines.  He also mentioned the great advantage and challenge we have with mapping technologies in building greater spatial thinking skills for our students today.  One the one hand, maps are so interactive today that the application are endless.  On the other hand, if we allow our GPS devices to do all of the spatial and navigational thinking for us, our minds will lose those skills.  As we use (and refrain from using technology) appropriately, spatial thinking and mapping can only make everything better.