GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

As Catalonia goes to the polls, Sid Lowe looks at one of the region’s great cultural sporting icons and its role in Catalan identity…

Sports and cultural identity of a region are often intertwined. As Catalonia is poised to break from Spain, this video shows how the local teams (especially FC Barcelona) are at the center of political identity and part of the very fabric of the political movement that is pushing for independence.

Tags: sport, Spain, Europe, devolution, autonomy.

See on www.guardian.co.uk

Using addresses you input and your choice of icons, we add your child’s favorite places to a custom neighborhood map that includes real cartographic features, such as street names and north arrow.

What happens when a city planner becomes a parent?  Kids Placemaps!  Combining cartographic expertise and a desire to start geography education at a very early age, the founders of Kids Placemaps have personalized a child’s geography in a tangible, simple fashion.  

See on www.kidsplacemaps.com

There’s a South Pacific island positioned midway between Australia and New Caledonia featured on various marine charts, world maps, and has appeared in publications since at least the year 2000. It’s listed as Sandy Island on Google Maps and Google Earth, and yet Australian scientists have just discovered it doesn’t exist.

As part of a 25-day voyage, the group went to the area, only to find 1,400m (4,620ft) of the Coral Sea. The team collected 197 different rock samples, more than 6800km of marine geophysical data, and mapped over 14,000 square kilometres of the ocean floor.

See on thenextweb.com

The hunger crisis in the Sahel region of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad has been deepening since the start of this year.

The Sahel is a classic transition zone–a border that is not a sharp division, but a gradual shift from one region to the next.  This area has environmentally marginal lands, but is as population pressures continue, marginal lands need to sustain more people. 

See on www.guardian.co.uk

My lecture 2 weeks ago is now hopelessly outdated; thankfully my Rhode Island College students collaborated with me to put together resources that are helpful for understanding the geopolitical issues in the Middle East today.

With a simple class hastag (e.g.-#geog400ric) you can create a backchannel for student to collaborate outside the classroom walls. 

See on storify.com

Explore the cities and emerging urban clusters that will drive dramatic growth and demographic changes over the next generation. A McKinsey Quarterly Economic Studies article.

In the next 13 years, 600 cities will account for nearly 65 percent of global GDP growth. That is reason enough to explore this global dataset with over 2,600 metropolitan areas. 

See on www.mckinseyquarterly.com

USA Route 66 Cross Country Road Trip Map, Data, Summary, Photos, Equipment Used: http://www.defreesproductions.com/road-trip-route-66-cross-country-usa-2012 …

I saw this video on an Atlantic Cities article and was struck by the rural and “off-the-beaten path” feel that timelapse of the Mother Road manages to capture.  Route 66 looms large in Americana, in part because it represents a bygone era, a time when the automobile was new and exciting. This empowered many to make a cross-country road trip, but during this time the car was not so ubiquitous that it was the overwhelming force that is so visually prominent in urban landscapes as it is today.  The historical and cultural critique of the U.S. automobile culture in the Pixar movie Cars may be fictional and for a child audience, but it is quite accurate in noting that cities disconnected from the interstate system sharply declined and were never the same.  These places represent for many people then, a classic pop culture landscape of yesteryear.

Tags: transportation, landscape, place, culture, timelapse.

See on www.youtube.com

Israeli airstrikes began November 14, following months of Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.

“Monday, the top leader of Hamas dared Israel to launch a ground invasion of Gaza and dismissed diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire in the six-day-old conflict, as the Israeli military conducted a new wave of deadly airstrikes which included a second hit on a 15-story building that houses media outlets.”  This photo essay shows 34 powerful images that are emerging from this deadly conflict.  If students need some background to understand who are the major players in this conflict, this glossary should be helpful. 

See on www.boston.com

This map shows each verified incident of violence in Gaza and Israel since last week’s assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed al-Jabari.  Geospatial technologies combined with social media are changing how we learn (and wage) war. 

See on www.guardian.co.uk