Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
The best trivia games and quizzes on the internet. With over 800 games and quizzes on this site with varying skill levels, there is something for everyone here. Some are standard quizzes such as “European Countries” or “Asian capital cities.” However some get you to reorganize your global knowledge in ways you’ve never considered. For example, What is the most populous city in the world for each given time zone (not that easy right)?
Via www.sporcle.com
Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
While the web mapping world still relies too much on the Mercator projection for my preference, it is a testament to the enduring impact that his ideas have had in literally shaping our World. When discussing map projections, this article has some valuable materials.
Via blogs.esri.com
Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
I’m incredibly excited about all the support I’ve received from my readers. Currently we are averaging approximately 10,000 page views a month and I’ve been looking for new ways to keep my readers current with posted materials. I’ve recently created a Facebook page, which can act as a way to receive notices, discuss posts and how to use them and to make suggestions for future posts. Feel free to connect with in any way that fits with your social media networks. Also, this WordPress site (since I can control the layout more) will be that long-term site that hosts all the others. The content will be on wordpress, Tumblr and Scoop.it. Facebook, G+, Twitter and Pinterest will alert you when there is updated content. Thank you for following!
Facebook Page, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and Scoop.it!
Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
This New York Times article is compelling fodder for a discussion on economic development. While having natural resources on the surface sounds like the best valuable asset for a nation economy, why does Friedman argue that an abundance of natural resource can hurt the national economy? While an educated workforce is obviously an asset, just how important is it compared to other factors?
Via www.nytimes.com
Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
Maps That Show NBA Players Where to Shoot… What is considered a good play or a bad play in most sports is situational and depends on context. One of the many contexts in basketball that determines that constitutes ‘a good shoot’ is where you are on the court in relation to the hoop. In essence, this is a spatial factor, and spatial analysis is critical to informing sports strategy and a geography professor did just that in this study. In this month of March, mentioning sports in a geographic context might help students see how spatial analysis matters is a wide range of subjects.
Via www.slate.com
Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
With #stopkony trending on twitter, there is growing interest in the concept of child soldiers. This is a great video to discuss the issue beyond Central Africa and other international efforts to end the use of child soldiers.
Via www.youtube.com
Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
This site has several infographics showing the impact of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Via inspiredm.com
Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
One of the focal points of the protests raging in Zuccotti Park and around the world is the sizable gap between the rich and everyone else. This link below shows graphics that demostrate that there are many different levels of wealth among even the richest of the rich.
Via www.huffingtonpost.com
Via Scoop.it – Geography Education
KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.
This needs to be included for many reasons. 1) The geopolitical problem of child soldiers and endemic warfare in Sub-Saharan Africa needs to be analyzed from a spatial and geographic perspective. 2) The social media aspects of this campaign highlight many of the traits of globalization. 3) This would be a perfect opportunity to have a political activist moment in your class (seriously, who is not opposed to mass murder?). 4) We can teach our classes that geographers are not just going to learn about all the crap that is wrong with our Earth…we are going to fix it and use our resources to improve the human condition. The site mentioned in the video is: http://www.invisiblechildren.com
For a cultural analysis of the this video, see this NPR article. Yes the video is filled with oversimplifications and a poor cultural lens, but it has started a conversation and that is a conversation with students that I feel is worth having.
Via vimeo.com
Personal Opinions of the Video: The video is full of “white man’s burden” motifs and (admittedly) the cultural representations of Africans as helpless victims that American’s as the sole agents of change is more than just annoying but reinforces bad stereotypes. So I’m deeply ambivalent about the video since it truly is a mixed bag. I was visiting a middle school recently and students are telling the teachers that they want to learn about Uganda and understand the situation better. What I love about the video is that it has started a discussion where there previously was not. True there were discussions elsewhere, but not between middle school students—and the students were asking for MORE African content to be infused into the curriculum and the teacher wisely obliged.
The teacher was smart enough to know that the video is propaganda for an NGO (no bracelets or ‘Action kits’ here!), that was advocating particular military policies (which we both repudiated). The Political action as outlined in the video is lame. But that is the rub. The “everyone join us and the movement” component is hokey and condescending, but the “do something” and “be aware” portion is the true take-home message for me. This video, in isolation isn’t enough…but I see it as a starting point, since all the college student is my class heard about it, what better portal for discussing the historical concept of ‘white man’s burden’ (which would’ve been covered either way) with the relevant topic of the moment?
This literally gives educators the chance to educate as students are interested in learning. While there certainly are oversimplifications of the ethnic and geopolitical situation in the video with paternalistic overtones, I think it has enough merit to take the good with the bad. The single “bad man” narrative is also ridiculously problematic, since the economic and political landscape creates the environment that has allowed Joseph Kony to operate in that manner. All in all, I’m grateful that there is more awareness of the issue and am hoping to use it as a teaching moment to essentially correct the misconception that could be perpetuated with that type of discourse. While it is tough to isolate the good from the bad, the message from the messenger, these are the raw materials with which we must work, and I’m glad for these flawed materials to be on the table.
