GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

I recently received this question and immediately thought that this is a great geographic question, but one that geographic tools can be used to find the answer.  I downloaded all the Rhode Island toponymns (place names) listed by the United States Board on Geographic Names and filtered out all the listed Islands (108 is the answer!!).  A spreadsheet of the data didn’t help to visualize this data so I created this interactive map.  Only 1 of the locations didn’t have coordinates, some are scarcely more than rocks, and this is only according to the the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, but this is the most complete map of islands in the state of Rhode Island that I could produce.  Additionally, here is an article about some sailors who sought to explore every island of the Narragansett Bay.  

The Earth itself is the great source of inspiration for art.  Enjoy the gallery.

Tags: images, art, landscape. 

Some of the greatest discoveries in biology began as spatial discoveries.  Alfred Russel Wallace made some amazing advances in biogeography and discovered appropriately named Wallace Line. 

Tags: biogeography, environment, ecology, historical.

I had the shapefiles with the various neighborhoods of Providence and the good folks at “Click that ‘Hood” were gracious enough to upload it and make a local quiz based on the the 25 neighborhoods of Providence (as defined by the city government officials).  In addition to city neighborhood quizzes, they also have quizzes for regions such as Africa, South America and Europe.  This is a crowd-sourced database, so if you have the right data, you can help them to create more online quizzes.

NPR has recently highlighted Crop Capture; Crop Capture is a game that uses Google Earth imagery to crowd-source agricultural data.  From a pedagogical standpoint, this is a great way to visually introduce students the variety of agricultural landscapes that can be found around the world.  This is an example of what many refer to as citizen science games which provides an alternative rationale for playing the game.

Tags: agriculture, food production, mapping, geospatial, edtech.

For those looking to justify the inclusion of geography in the curriculum, wanting to add a geography major at a school or need to justify the existence of geography education to a non-geo-evangelist, this is something to share.  The Bureau of Labor Studies has declared “”Employment of geographers is expected to grow 35 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations. Employment growth will be fastest in the professional, scientific, and technical services industry.”

If you are looking to find a practical example of how geospatial technologies can empower neighborhoods and students, take a look at the GEOPORTER project.  If you can assist, I can say that I know the people working on this project and am impressed by their work.