If you are a fan of the 40 hour work week, 8 hour work day, health benefits, child labor laws and this lovely thing called “the weekend,” you have the labor movement to thank. The Department of Labor has put together a page entitled ‘The History of Labor Day.’ This helps us understand that the benefits that we enjoy today are the legacy of generations of workers who courageously fought for for workers rights.
The European Union will never manage to compete with China and other rising powers unless it unites politically, scales up and becomes a genuine giant.
This author argues that the main driving forces that led towards European unification in the decades after WWII are now gone or are diminished in importance. As many of the economies of Europe, especially southern Europe are struggling, it is time for the European Union to rediscover and restructure it’s raison d’être–it’s reason for being–if it wants to continue to compete on a global level.
This link is a companion site to the book, “Mapping the Nation: History & Cartography in 19th Century America” by Susan Schulten. The author and publisher have made all of the images available digitally, and they are organized by chapter as well as chronologically. This a great resource to find some of the important maps that shaped America and help mold the manner in which we conceptualize America. Geography and history teachers alike will be able to draw on these materials. The chapters include:
The Graphic Foundations of American History
Capturing the Past Through Maps
Disease, Expansion and the Rise of Environmental Mapping
Looking for a professional development opportunity? This Fall 2012 eNet Colorado is hosting a series of 5 webinars on spatial thinking. “The goal of Teaching Using Spatial Analysis 101 is to provide confidence, skills, and the spatial perspective necessary to foster spatial analysis in geography, earth and biological sciences, history, mathematics, computer science, and in other disciplines.
It will accomplish this through a series of hands-on activities where participants investigate a series of fascinating issues relevant to the 21st Century, including population, natural hazards, energy, water, current events, sustainable agriculture, and more. These activities will be supplemented by short readings and reflections that will build a community of educators focused on the value of investigating the world through a spatial perspective.” This promises to be a tremendous opportunity.
Facilitator (Teacher): Bianca Katz – Co-Facilitator Facilitator (Teacher): Joseph Kerski
Bikers are everywhere in Copenhagen. And now the city is building new, high-speed routes into the city that will make it easier to commute, even from the distant suburbs.
The transportation urban planning paradigm in Copenhagen is not exclusively structured around automobiles and the logistics needed for drivers. Copenhagen has heavily invested in cycling and they are reaping the rewards based on there efforst. As the Earth-Operators Manual Facebook Page stated, cyclists in Copenhagen daily travel 750,000 miles; enough to go to the moon and back.
Not everyone was access to a full class set of GPS units. As more students have smart phone capabilities, this is just one idea on how to leverage that technology.
“Jane Jacobs is variously known as the guru of cities, an urban legend—“part analyst, part activist, part prophet.” In the more than forty years since the publication of her groundbreaking book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), her influence has been extraordinary—not only on architects, community workers, and planners but also on Nobel Prize–winning economists and ecologists. As one critic recently put it, “Jacobs’s influence confirms that books matter. It isn’t easy to cite another writer who has had a comparable impact in our time.” A couple of years ago, she won the top American award for urban planning, the Vincent Scully Prize. This in itself was unusual, not only because she regularly vilifies planners, but also because with the exception of the Order of Canada and a few other prizes, she typically turns down awards—some thirty honorary degrees, including one from Harvard. Jacobs herself wasn’t interested in finishing university—she went to Columbia for just two years.”
Ever since my first visit to to Disneyland, I was intrigued by the the ride ‘It’s a Small World After All.” As a youngster, it was an opportunity to get in cool boat ride that I always regretted half way into the ride once the song was firmly chiseled into my mind. This blog post explores the curious and fascinating geographical imaginations, the visions of folk cultures and global harmony behind this Disneyland ride. This fabulous map charts that vision.