GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

Saudi Arabia unveils plans for ‘entertainment city’ near Riyadh

“The 334 sq km (129 sq mile) attraction – about the same as Las Vegas – will offer cultural, sporting and entertainment activities – including a Six Flags park and a safari park. The announcement boasts it will be the first of its kind in the world. Building will begin early next year and the first stage finished by 2022.

It forms part of a wider master plan. Vision 2030, announced by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman a year ago, aims to diversify the economy and reduce the kingdom’s reliance on oil, through a series of projects.”

Source: www.bbc.com

This brings up so many more questions than answers. Is this geared to attract tourists from Saudi Arabia, the region, or possibly even international tourism? Will the entertainment amenities be gender segregated as most public places in Saudi Arabia are? Is the idea of an entertainment city in one part of the country going to be culturally compatible with a holy city on the other?

Tags: tourism, culture, religion, Middle East., Saudi Arabia, gender, Middle East.

April 15, 2017 0

iScore5

“The app built by expert teachers for savvy students. Practice hundreds of real AP-style questions. Level-Up from easy to expert; learn while you play.”

Source: www.iscore5.com

With all the great functionality and content of their prior version, iScore5 APHG is now updated (with no more lockouts and practice FRQs with rubrics for users to work through). Available on Apple and Google Play platforms and at a reduced price for bulk purchases. Also available is our AP Psych app, our AP US Government app and very soon for AP World History.

Tags: APHG, teacher training, edtech.

April 13, 2017 0

‘Charging Bull’ sculptor says New York’s ‘Fearless Girl’ statue violates his rights

Arturo Di Modica says ‘advertising trick’ placed in Wall Street before international women’s day infringed artistic copyright

Source: www.theguardian.com

The meanings embedded in the cultural landscape can shift, and often carry meanings that the artists, architects, and planners never intended. Certain meanings in the landscape are going to be more valuable to particular cultural groups and there will always be attempts to shape the narrative about the meanings of a given place and what it ‘should’ be. Power and resistance to power are both deeply ingrained in many landscapes.

Tags: gender, space, monuments, urban, architecture, NYC, place, landscape.

April 12, 2017 0

Mapping the human impact on the Great Lakes

“It’s no secret that the Great Lakes are suffering tremendous ecological strain — Lake Erie was even pronounced “dead” for a time during the 1960s because of an overload of phosphorus from municipal waste. Back in 1615, though, when the entire region was pristine and explorers Samuel de Champlain and Étienne Brûlé gazed out together from Lake Huron’s shores, they dubbed it la mer douce, ‘the sweet sea.’ Today roughly one-quarter of Canada’s population and a 10th of America’s population drink from the Great Lakes basin; the beleaguered lakes alone hold more than a fifth of Earth’s freshwater.”

Source: www.canadiangeographic.ca

Questions to Ponder: What watershed do you live in? Where does your drinking water come from? When you flush the toilet, where does it go? How are places in your watershed linked? How does this similar map shed more light on these issues?

Tags: Canada, environment, resources, water, spatial, scale.

April 12, 2017 0

Syria’s war: Who is fighting and why [Updated]

“After four-plus years of fighting, Syria’s war has killed at least hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. And, though it started as a civil war, it’s become much more than that. It’s a proxy war that has divided much of the Middle East, and has drawn in both Russia and the United States. To understand how Syria got to this place, it helps to start at the beginning and watch it unfold.”

Source: www.youtube.com

Over a year ago I posted a previous version of this video highlighting the complexities behind the Syrian war. Much has happened since then and this updated version adds more detail and includes a very helpful timeline to show how more internal and external forces became involved in the fighting. This is an incredibly complicated geopolitical situation because of all the regional and international players involved.

Tags: Syria, war, conflict, political, geopolitics.

April 11, 2017 0

Sprawling Shanghai

If you could go back in time to the 1980s, you would find a city that is drastically different than today’s Shanghai.

Source: earthobservatory.nasa.gov

This series of seven satellite images shows how quickly the economic development of China has impacted the urban sprawl of China’s biggest cities. Pictures of the downtown area’s growth are impressive, but these aerial images show the full magnitude of the change.

Tags: urban, remote sensing, megacities, China, urban ecology.

April 10, 2017 0

Water Is Life

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled South Sudan to escape the civil war. When they arrive in Uganda, water is what they need most. Without it, they will die.

Source: www.youtube.com

Next to nothing in this video will make you happy about the way things operate for refugees in Northern Uganda who have fled from South Sudan. We all know the about the dire conditions that refugees face, but knowing about the specifics, and hearing stories from the refugees about their lives and living conditions is powerful. A huge influx of refugees can tax local resources, especially water. Food can be shipped in, but water a much more locally variable resource. The UN refugee camps recommend at least 15 liters of water per person be made available each day, but often it is more like 4-8 liters in these camps. Dedicated wells (or boreholes) are more effective, but costly. Trucking in water from the Nile River is the preferred method to simply keep these drowning people’s heads above water.

Questions to Ponder: Consider how much water you drink, use for cooking, bathing, etc. per day in your household. How difficult would it be to live on 4 liters of water a day? What about your lifestyle would be changed?

Tags: Africa, development, Uganda, South Sudan, migration, refugees, environment, water, environment depend, sustainabilit y, resources.

April 7, 2017 0

Brexit, UK, Great Britain, and England

“An update of an earlier sketch we did before Brexit, the situation has become a little more unclear since.”

Source: www.youtube.com

PRE-BREXIT VIDEO: The difference between the UK, Great Britain, and England can be confusing (the short version can be shown on a map, but the long version is much more complicated than this). This is an amusing look at how these complexities lead to real-world complications besides using the right toponym.

GeoEd Tags: Europe, UK, sport, political, autonomy, toponyms.

POST-BREXIT VIDEO: This is a fun song, poking fun add the UK’s difficulty in getting out of the Union, but bringing up all the countries in the old British Empire that also struggled to leave a political Union.