GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

“K-pop sensation Psy was everywhere once but little has been heard since. What happened to him?  Having earned an estimated $55m (£36m) from his work in the West, Psy is now racking up similar amounts from the lucrative Chinese market, where his collaboration with world-class pianist Lang Lang is currently producing a run of consecutive number ones. Psy’s decision to focus on the Asian music market may be an indication of where the entertainment industry turns over the highest profits for musicians.”

Source: www.bbc.com

In 2012, we were analyzing the cultural geography of a viral sensation, that seemed to fizzle out so we dismissed it as a one-hit wonder.  So often we assume that being culturally and economically viable in the West is of greatest importance, but truly savvy brands aren’t sleeping on East Asian markets.  This “one-hit wonder” in the West strategically moved on to even larger markets. 

Tags: popular culture, diffusion, globalization, culture, music. 

The Royal Institute of Navigation says reliance on sat-navs is undermining map-reading skills. So why should we still read maps?

Source: www.bbc.com

TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY: Examines the slum areas of Cincinnati, Ohio, and provides extensive views of substandard housing in various parts of the city. Describes the problems of the uneducated and unemployed who cannot escape from poverty, but finds a “ray of hope” in a young school child. Offers no solution for eliminating urban poverty, but states that everyone “must try.”

Source: www.youtube.com

While some of the technological presentation and the intellectual framework are certainly outdated, it is a glimpse into how America thought about poverty during the LBJ administration and the famous “War on Poverty.”

Tags: urban, economic, Cincinnati, historical, poverty, socioeconomic.

Let’s make “10 not 12!” a new mantra for saving our cities and towns.

[12 foot lanes] are wrong because of a fundamental error that underlies the practice of traffic engineering—and many other disciplines—an outright refusal to acknowledge that human behavior is impacted by its environment.

Tags: transportation, planning, spatial, scale.

Source: www.citylab.com

Greetings from Cincinnati, OH, home of the 2015 AP Human Geography reading.  Over 600 professionals are here to score over 160,000 exams.  I’ve been delighted to share here the Professional Development activities in past years (2012: Roger Downs on Geographic Expertise; 2014: James Johnson on Disruptive Demographics).  This year, we will have two professional development nights.  The first one featured Dr. Barry Brunt and was titled,The European Union: Demographics and Geographics (Powerpoint slides and PDF here).  The second was with Dr. Sarah Bednarz, President-Elect of the AAG; she discussed Best Practices in Geographic Education (Powerpoint slides and PDF file here).  Below you can find the digital copies of the daily newsletters for this event will be archived.

• June 2nd (Tuesday) Newsletter
• June 3rd (Wednesday) Newsletter
• June 4th (Thursday) Newsletter
• June 7th (Sunday) Newsletter

Facing ethnic discrimination, China’s Uighurs and Tibetans have fallen behind as the rest of the country surges ahead

Source: www.youtube.com

This video from the Economist touches on many of the same cultural/political issues as I did in my recent article for the National Geographic Education Blog (except, obviously, this video provides a greater economic emphasis).  Ethnic tensions are always simmering tensions in the China’s westernmost province and Tibet remains culturally resistant to the program set forth by the People’s Republic of China.  

Tags: Central Asia, culture, economic, China, East Asia.

“The city of Paris will start removing padlocks from the Pont des Arts on Monday, effectively ending the tourist tradition of attaching ‘love locks’ to the bridge. For years, visitors have been attaching locks with sentimental messages to the bridge in symbolic acts of affection. Some further seal the deal by throwing keys into the Seine River below.  It was considered charming at first, but the thrill wore off as sections of fencing on the Pont des Arts crumbled under the locks’ weight. The bridge carries more than 700,000 locks with an estimated combined weight roughly the same as 20 elephants.”

Source: www.cnn.com

Graffiti, tombstones, love locks, monuments…each of these are manifestations of people’s desire to have some tangible impact on the landscape.  Something that manifests a connection to place in a profoundly personal way. 

Questions to Ponder: Why do people want leave a mark on places that are meaningful to them?  When do you think that they that these markers are appropriate or inappropriate?  Do we have more of a ‘right’ to mark some places than others? Why do many oppose these personal marks on the landscape? 

Tags: place, culture, landscape, Paris, tourism.

History (and sometimes, unfortunately, current events) shows us just how easily national borders can change, but we still like to think that they are permanent fixtures. These photos of different national borders around the world show you how both friendly and hostile nations like to fence off their turf.

Source: www.boredpanda.com

Borders can make for some striking manifestations of power on the landscape.  On the other hand as seen in this picture of Slovakia, Austria and Hungary, friendship and cooperation can also be inscribed into the landscape.  There are some great teaching images in this gallery. 

Tags: border, political, territoriality, sovereignty,  images, land use, landscape.