 Your new post is loading...
|
Rescooped by
Seth Dixon
from RIGEA
|
How Many Rhode Islands is a simple web application that shows and tells you how many Rhode Islands would fit inside a given country.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
"Schools used to be the heart of a neighborhood or community. Children and not a few teachers could walk to class, or to the playground or ball field on the weekend. This was relatively easy to do, because the schools were placed within, not separated from, their neighborhoods. They were human-scaled and their architecture was not just utilitarian, but signaled their importance in the community. Now it has become hard to tell one from a Walmart or Target."
What better way to demonstrate the concepts of urban sprawl, automobile-dependent city planning and economies of scale than by analyzing the very geographic context of our schools themselves? This is a very nicely arranged photo essay that most could spark conversation and would foster some discussion on how best to plan neighborhoods and spatially arrange the city.
Tags: transportation, planning, sprawl, education, scale.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
The world is becoming more and more interconnected. Globalization changes how people consume, work and live almost everywhere on the world. Today, many economic, political, cultural or ecological relationships are not explainable from a national perspective. At the same time, a controversial debate about the consequences of globalization has begun.
Questions to ponder: What are the driving forces behind globalization? What areas are most impacted by globalization? How does globalization benefit some, and adversely impact others? Why?
Tags: Globalization, economic, industry, NGOs, political, scale, unit 6 industry.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
We often talk about life expectancy data at the national level; this simplification has a great deal of utility but obscures regional distinctions within a country. Some counties in the United States have life expectancies on par with Japan (84), while the worst off counties are more similar to Indonesia (69). Even more startling, in 661 counties, life expectancy stopped dead or went backwards for women since 1999. This is a dramatic look at the importance of scale within any geographic analysis to arrive at reasonable conclusions. So let's start looking at local demographic data instead of just nationally aggregated data. For more on this press release, see: http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/news-events/news-release/girls-born-2009-will-live-shorter-lives-their-mothers-hundreds-us-counties
|
Suggested by
Lou Salza
|
Everything in the known universe, created by 14-year-old twins. After you follow the link, click "Start," and then use the slider across the bottom, or the wheel on your mouse, to zoom in -- and in and in and in... or out and out and out... It will take you from the very smallest features postulated by scientists (the strings in string theory) to the very largest (the observable universe). This really is a fabulous visual demonstration of scale at micro and macro levels. This is an excellent way to bring spatial thinking into the math curriculum as well. See this on the twins website at: http://htwins.net/scale2/
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
This blog post outlines an excellent craft activity designed for K-6 students to teach the concept of scale.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
This type of mapping project is a fantastic way to teach scale to elementary school students.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
Discover why and how scale matters in geography education, with real-world examples using fieldwork, GIS, and much more. This video introduces the topic and ... This is a sample Youtube clip from the 'geographyuberalles' channel which has over 800 videos produced by @josephkerski (NCGE president, Educational Manager at ESRI). This is a great resource.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
A fight broke out at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem after rival groups of Orthodox and Armenian clerics clashed over the boundaries of their jurisdictions inside the church. This is a great video to show religious geography and how scale plays a key role in a patterns. Not only does the macro-religious geography of the Levant lead to politically contentious situations, but the micro-religious geography can also be problematic. This building itself has a curiously devided spatial pattern among Christian branches that demands tolerance, cooperation and searching for ways to share a place that many groups find holy...this could be seen as symbolic way to look at the whole area.
|
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
Two Yale architects pose the question in an ambitious research project.
"Hsiang and Mendis have increasingly come to believe that the only way to study and plan for our urban planet is to conceptualize its entire population in one seamless landscape – to picture 7 billion of us as if we all lived in a single, massive city."
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
It was just over two centuries ago that the global population was 1 billion — in 1804. But better medicine and improved agriculture resulted in higher life expectancy for children, dramatically increasing the world population, especially in the West.
This is an excellent video for population and demographic units, but also for showing regional and spatial patterns within the global dataset (since terms like 'overpopulation' and 'carrying capacity' inherently have different meanings in distinct places and when analyzed at various scales). It is also a fantastic way to visualize population data and explain the ideas that are foundational for the Demographic Transition Model.
Tags: population, scale, visualization, Demographics, models, unit 2 population, sustainability, regions, spatial.
|
Suggested by
Mary Rack
|
The Hubble Space Telescope has produced one of its most extraordinary views of the Universe to date.
The Earth is an amazing place to study...but this makes it feel remarkably small.
Tags: geospatial, space, remote sensing, scale, perspective.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
Zoom from the edge of the universe to the quantum foam of spacetime and learn about everything in between.
Click "Start," and then use the slider across the bottom, or the wheel on your mouse, to zoom in -- and in and in and in... or out and out and out... It will take you from the very smallest features postulated by scientists (the strings in string theory) to the very largest (the observable universe). This really is a fabulous visual demonstration of scale at micro and macro levels. This is an excellent way to bring spatial thinking into the math curriculum as well.
Tags: Scale, perspective, space, spatial, Unit 1 GeoPrinciples.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
An OverlapMap is a map of one part of the world that overlaps a different part of the world. OverlapMaps show relative size. The above overlap map is the United Kingdom compared to the state of Pennsylvania. This is an very simple way to demonstrate the true size of remote places, and 'bring the discussion home.' This site is as simple and intuitive as it is powerful and easily applicable. This is a keeper.
|
Suggested by
Paul Sloan
|
The Royal Geographic Society is the latest to attempt to improve the flight experience with its Hidden Journeys project. This is an article that describes the new, incredibly well-crafted module of instruction designed by the Royal Geographic Society. Designed as an alternative to standard in-flight entertainment, the user could learn about the many places they are flying over on (at the moment) 19 set flight paths. Most importantly, this modules uses the concept of scale nicely providing 12 imageswith linked information about each place at three scales: "flying at 12,000m," "flying at 1,000m" and "flying at ground level." This would be a fantastic resource for a student-guided lesson of discovery and exploration. To see the RGS modules, visit: http://www.hiddenjourneys.co.uk/
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
This resource is a comprehensive approach to teaching spatial thinking skills. Terms with spatial reference (i.e.-place, diffusion, migration, situation, scale, region, centrality, proximity, etc.) are defined within their spatial context and related to their multiple curricular connections such as Life Science, Physical Science, Earth Science and (of course) Geography. These terms and concepts then link you to teaching resources, online modules, lesson plans and classroom activities. While useful for all units, this is especially useful for the beginning of a course to teach the importance of spatial thinking skills to then have them permeate the rest of the year.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
Who wants to practice medicine in a country where they use power tools in surgery? The dilemma of doctors in the developing world. This article's title is inflammatory, but it touches on some very real interconnected geographic issues. Economic development in the many parts of the world is complicated by the migration issue of 'brain drain.' The individual choices that doctors from the less developed world face often lead the best and brightest workers to leave their home country. If you could make a very good living as in the United States (the median salary of a surgeon in New Jersey is $216,000) or go back to your home country where your skills are more desperately needed (in Lusaka, Zambia a surgeon makes about $24,000 a year), which would you choose? This is not a hypothetical example (nor one with only one right answer) but one rooted in a globalized economy, where the places that offer the greatest opportunities for individual advancement get the top talent--excellent for the individual and family economies but problematic at the national scale.
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
I live in the Providence metropolitan area so this particular blog posting about urban planning and economic revitalization hit very close to home. Rhode Islanders: how accurate do you feel this perspective on Providence and it's economic assets (and deficiencies) is? What other aspects would you discuss in trying to understand the economic geography of the area? What are the biggest obstacles for improving the city?
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
|
Scooped by
Seth Dixon
|
This site transposed global events or features (e.g.-If the Great Wall of China were in Europe, how many countries would it go through?) and placing that event on a portion of the Earth more familiar to students to help them relate more to the magnitude of global news.
|