GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

A celebration of who we are, where we are and how we operate. It belongs to the 30+ communities who make Omaha—Greater Omaha.

Source: wedontcoast.com

This website is a great example a city selling it’s regional distinctiveness to create a sense of civic pride, promote tourism, and attract more businesses.  Often Omaha’s distance for the coasts is portrayed as a major weakness, but in a clever play on words, the weakness is acknowledged and reformed into a strength.   

Questions to Ponder: How would you promote your own city/region/state?  What would be highlighted on a similar page for your city?  What slogan would you use?

Tags: place, tourism, urban, culture, economic. 

A geography textbook that prompted a complaint from the Ukrainian embassy for showing Crimea as part of Russia is changed.

Source: www.bbc.com

How we describe and categorize geopolitical shifts matter, and can ocassionally ruffle some feathers.  More important than the ruffled feathers is the fact that how we present the issues helps to shape students’ perspectives.  In a somewhat related article, the Russian annexation of Crimea has magnified internal divisions in Kazakhstan.  

Tags: Ukraine, Russia, geopolitics, political, Kazakhstan.

“The Whitney Plantation near Wallace, Louisiana, is the first and only U.S. museum and memorial to slavery. While other museums may include slavery in their exhibits, the Whitney Plantation is the first of its kind to focus primarily on the institution. John Cummings, a 78-year-old white southerner, has spent 16 years and more than $8 million of his own fortune to build the project, which opened in December of last year.

Cummings, a successful trial attorney, developed the museum with the help of his full-time director of research, Ibrahima Seck. The duo hope to educate people on the realities of slavery in its time and its impact in the United States today. ‘The history of this country is rooted in slavery,’ says Seck. ‘If you don’t understand the source of the problem, how can you solve it?'”

Tags: race, conflict, racism, historical, the South, landscape.

Source: www.youtube.com

Additionally, here is a list of 13 honest books about slavery that young people should actually read.  

Tom Harrison, a Californian cartographer, explains what goes into a good map and why making one can take nearly two years.

Tags: mapping, cartography, geospatial.

Source: www.theatlantic.com

“Stratfor explains Jordan’s geographic challenge: governing its diverse population and managing its limited natural resources.” For more of these videos, visit http://arcg.is/1IeK3dT

Source: www.youtube.com

Stratfor produced a new video in their “Geographic Challenge” series.  I’ve updated my map which spatially indexes 70+ of their videos that are especially relevant to geography teachers.  These videos are great starting points for students that are researching a particular country.

Tags: video, geography education,geopolitics, political.

“Mormons are the most heavily Republican-leaning religious group in the U.S., while a pair of major historically black Protestant denominations – the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and the National Baptist Convention – are two of the most reliably Democratic groups, according to data from Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study.”

Source: www.pewresearch.org

Happy Super Tuesday.  While there are people of all political stripes within any given religious affiliation, the geography of religion really matters in electoral geography as well.    

Tags: religion, USA, electoral, political. 

Did you hear about the Five Pillars of the British Landscaping Empire during your religion classes? To sort them by order of importance within the Holy Book of Grass: First is grass. Second is past…

Source: geo-pickmeup.com

The graphic above (Voronoi diagram) represents the relative size of each country’s economy in terms of nominal GDP: the larger the area, the larger the size of the economy. The areas are further divided into three sectors: services, industrial, and agricultural. The US economy is mostly composed of companies engaged in providing services (79.7% compared to the global average of 63.6%), while agriculture and industry make up smaller-than-average of portions of the economy (1.12% and 19.1% compared to averages of 5.9% and 30.5%).

Tags: globalization, industry, economic, visualization.

Source: howmuch.net

“New research confirms that the next mass extinction is in progress, and we’re the cause. There’s been little doubt that humans have been severely altering the planet and reducing biodiversity, but it has been unclear how many species go extinct under normal circumstances, without human influence.

This new research clarifies the rate of ‘background extinction’ (the rate of extinction during the point before humans became a primary contributor to extinction). The research confirms that human activity is driving species extinct at a rate far higher than the background rate. A look at previous events suggests cause for concern. Geologists recognize five previous mass extinction events— the end of the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous periods, meaning that we’re now in the 6th.”

Tags: physical, biogeography, environment, ecology, environment modify, sustainability, geology.

Source: daily.jstor.org