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Ten Geographic Ideas that Changed the World

Adapted from the book by Professor Susan Hanson…

This is an excellent review/summary of an edited volume that shows the value of geographic thought and its importance in the modern world.  This review conveniently gives a one paragraph synopsis of each chapter.  It does not need to be read chronologically, so you can pick and choose what you find relevant to your course.  The top 10 are (in order of inclusion in the book): the Idea of the Map, the Weather Map, GIS, Human Adjustment, Water Budget Climatology, Human Transformation of the Earth, Spatial Organization and Interdependence, Central Place Theory, Megalopolis and Sense of Place.  The book is available on Amazon.

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

See on webhost.bridgew.edu

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Thousands mourn Sikh temple victims in US

See on Scoop.it – Cultural Geography

Memorial service held in town in state of Wisconsin for six Sikhs gunned down on Sunday.

 

The clean-up, memorial service and grieving was marked by people of all religions and ethnicities come together.  This is an excellent video and I especially enjoyed President Obama’s statements of the political rights and freedoms that should be consider universal human rights. 

See on www.aljazeera.com

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Singapore’s ‘National Night’ Encourages Citizens to Make Babies

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

Singapore’s unbelievably low birthrates have inspired National Night, a campaign to encourage Singaporean couples to let their patriotism explode on August 9.

 

Not all countries are concerned about overpopulation; Singapore’s National Night was an innovative campaign to boost fertility rates (warning: the video is a touch provocative). 

See on blogs.smithsonianmag.com

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Does the U.S. need more agricultural diversity?

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

The disaster underscores the need to diversify our crops.

AAG: The drought that has hammered much of the country has clearly illustrated the dangers that come with limited agricultural diversity, writes Macalester College geography professor William G. Moseley in this opinion piece. Federal subsidies have encouraged the growth of corn, but this crop is quite vulnerable to drought, Moseley writes. “A more diverse cropping landscape would mean viable farms, healthier diets and a steadier food system,” he writes.

See on www.nytimes.com

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Google Earth to Map your Trips

Download KML FILE to BEST view this interactive map within Google Earth.

My wife and I took a fabulous trip to the United Kingdom and Greece that was primarily for a writing project that she is working on at the moment.  We still toured liked Americans are wont to do. Many people will typically share their photos with friends on Facebook or tweet their favorite images as they go. Thinking about geography education and my readers, I had different plans.

  1. I created a photo album on PhotoBucket and uploaded my pictures.
  2. I added locations, geo-tagged the pictures and saved it as a Google Earth KML file.
  3. I then imported the KML file in Google Maps in the map that is displayed above.

In essence, this is a glorified way to share a photo album with the opportunity to have an interactive map open simultaneously. This is not meant to be the definitive visual tour of London or anywhere else; my trip is just the backdrop for showing the type of projects that students can make with free software.  Although I am embedding the Google Maps version, it really was designed to be used in Google Earth, which is a free download.

You can see the complete photo album of the trip (okay, not the complete one since we took over 600 pictures, but does anyone really want more than 160?).
But I am curious to see if the Google Earth KML file gives ‘added value’ to the sharing of trip pictures.  The image below is nice, but the maps, comments and temporal sequence  give the picture added context (which hopefully, you’ll find in the Google Earth KML file).  Let me know what you think about the idea of using this as a teaching tool.

And while we are discussing London and the City of London (yes those are two separate things), enjoy this video about the complex political geography of the two cities.

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The Importance of Place

Using the vocabulary of this course, please describe in detail the geographic context of a town like this (real or imaginary).  What is the town like?  How did it get that way?  What type of meaning does ‘place’ have for those that live there?

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Nesting Cans Activity

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

This blog post outlines an excellent craft activity designed for K-6 students to teach the concept of scale.

See on firstgradetothecore.blogspot.fr

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New York — before the City

TED Talks 400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta’s fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife — accurate down to the block — when Times Square was a wetland and you…

KC: The Manhattan Project created a picture of the area before the development of a city, the way Henry Hudson did during his 1609 exploration. After 10 years (1999-2009), the research project has expanded to study the entire city of New York. The Welikia Project analyzes geography and landscape ecology to discover the original environment and compare it to present day. Scientists have learned that world’s largest cities once had a natural landscape of freshwater wetlands and salt marshes, ponds and streams, forests and fields with an equally diverse wildlife community. By focusing on the city’s biodiversity of 400 years ago and the modern era, information can be gathered about what has changed, what has remained constant, where the city was done well and where it needs to improve. This source is useful because it allows for the visualization of NYC in a way never seen before. Urban environments, such as NYC, have a landscape largely created by humans, so the skyscrapers, pavement, and mass population is far removed from the landscape it once was.

Find more information about the Welikia Project at http://welikia.org and more on New York City’s urban ecology at: http://www.scoop.it/t/urban-geography

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education  See on www.ted.com

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Mexico’s Drug Wars – Photo Essays

See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

Photographer Anthony Suau documents the surging influence of the drug cartels in Northern Mexico and the efforts by police to maintain law and order…

 

The issus connected to drug trafficking are intense in Mexico for a variety of geogaphic factors.  This is not something we typically see as a part of the the new global economy, but it certainly has been connected to the processes of globalization.  For more sources on the Mexican Drug Trade, see: http://www.scoop.it/t/mexican-drug-trade ;

See on www.time.com

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