GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

Sports league have historically used geographic references to describe their league, conference or divisions (This was just one of the many reasons I was so appalled that San Diego State was going to join the Big East.  Thankfully that plan was stymied).  To have successful rivalries, teams often play up local proximity of fan bases (Yankees/Red Sox, Duke/North Carolina, Michigan/Ohio State) to add intensity to the on-field action.  Given that teams and fans travel, the logistics make regionally based division economically prudent.  This map (and the full set of major professional leagues in North America) shows that the NBA has the most geographically consistent divisions.   

Tags: sport, mapping, regions.

Jared Diamond is famous for his work in writing Guns, Germs and Steel as well as Collapse.  His latest work, The World Until Yesterday, he encourages modern readers to examine the traditional societies for insights on how to improve the human condition.  In this book review by Wade Davis, he critiques this approach and suggests that we should see indigenous societies as reminders that our modern lifestyle is not the only way.

Tags: book reviews, folk cultures, indigenous.

This article by the chair of the Canadian Council for Geographic Education shows how the decline in student’s geographic knowledge is linked to it’s erosion within the curriculum.  In an era of globalization, geographic knowledge and spatial thinking becomes all the more essential. 

Tags: geography education, geo-inspiration.

This quiz and others like it are great ways to get students utilize all the information available in a photograph and really plumb the depths of their knowledge about places.

Tags: games, spatial, landscape.

This patch of light is baffled me since clusters of light on this image almost always are connected to high levels of urbanization and North Dakota has no major population center of that magnitude.  This is the Bakken formation, a new oil and gas field that is producing over 600,000 barrels a day.  The lights are oil rigs that are lit up at night, but even more because many gas flares are burning leading locals to call the area “Kuwait on the Prairie.”  Oil men from far and wide are flocking to the rural, lightly populated area raising rents sky-high.  This has caused a huge localized gender imbalance, changing the demographic and cultural character of the region because of the drastic the economic and environmental shifts in the area (see the national gender balance here).  This is a great reminder that the physical and human geographies of a region are fully intermeshed one with another.

Tags: resources, gender, environment, economic, migration.

The mechanization of the all stages of food production has lead to some strange practices.  The geometry of a food matters for a mechanized processing and also for the aesthetics at the grocery store which leads to slightly misshaped vegetables and fruits are routinely discarded.  There is waste throughout the system, from ‘field to fork.’  

Tags: food, agriculture, consumption, sustainability, unit 5 agriculture.