Geography Education

There are plenty of regional biases about other places.  This map was generated by Google autocomplete.  If you Google, "Why is Rhode Island so...." if will automatically suggest some responses.  This was done for all the states and these autoresponses are quite revealing (and often humorous). 

This Oregon-based infographic succinctly summarizes the local food movement and taps into the cultural ethos that permeates the growing number of consumers that are demanding more home-grown products.

One of the great things about Twitter is that it’s a global conversation anyone can join anytime. Eavesdropping on the world, what what!

While many educators have been using http://popvssoda.com/ to show the linguistic regions in the United States, this is a similar map, with the added social media component.  To map out these regions, the cartographer used the word choice on geo-tagged tweets as the data source.  For another twitter, map, the following link shows which regions are most actively engaged on Twitter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/06/top-countries-on-twitter_n_1653915.html

What do these regions show us?  What types of regions are these?

"A world map used by Erik Penser Bankaktiebolag to visualize economic markets. The map contains approximately 3,000 coins and every continent is built out of its countries’ currencies. Used in various medias during 2009."  If you look closely you will notice that the coins are from the region that they are cartographically representing.  To see more by this artist, visit: http://www.penser.se/

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

In geography, the antipodes of any place on Earth is its antipodal point; that is, the region on the Earth's surface which is diametrically opposite t...

I know that most Americans have learned at an early age that if you dig a hole through the center of the Earth, you'll end up in China.  Geologic and impossibilities aside, most Americans would actually end up in the Indian Ocean as displayed by this clever pairing up maps that shows the user the Antipode of any given place on Earth.  Try it out!  http://www.antipodemap.com/

We can be connected (or disconnected) based on where we move, how we speak, and even what sports teams we root for.

This article is a great source for discussion material on regions (include the ever-famous "Soda/Pop/Coke" regions).  How do we divide up our world?  What are the criteria we use for doing so?

Along the coast, communities have largely bounced back from the recession, but inland areas are still struggling with high unemployment and a persistent housing crisis.

For those that have lived in California, northern California and southern California are oftentimes how people conceptually regionalize the state, and rightfully so based on cultural patterns.  Economically the more useful distinct might be coastal vs. interior.  "Many counties along the state’s western coastline have median household incomes well above some inland communities like Sacramento, Fresno and Riverside. The Bay Area counties of Marin, San Mateo and San Francisco have the state’s lowest jobless rates, while nearby inland counties like Merced and San Benito have among the highest.  San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, with their many vacant homes, and parts of the Central Valley near Sacramento have among the highest foreclosure rates."

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.  

"This interactive map shows the county to county social interactions given in total call minutes or total number of SMS from the anonymous, aggregated AT&T mobile phone data. Click into your county or type it into the text box to find out how it is connected to other counties in the US. You can switch between call and SMS data to reveal the changes in interaction mode. Also, the population map is provided, which is based on the 2010 Census."               -Martin Daumiller 

For more from this curator, see: http://www.scoop.it/t/wit-wisdom

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Web Site... 

Afghanistan and Burma (a.k.a.-Myanmar) are the world's leading producers of the illicit narcotic of heroin.  What environmental, political, developmental and cultural factors play a role in these distribution networks?  What geographic factors contribution to the production of these drugs to be located in these particular places?  Follow the link for a map of global cocaine distribution patterns.   

Despite Friday Night Lights portrayals, there's a lot more geographic diversity in NFL prospects than you might think.

Happy NFL draft weekend!  As I'm sure you were asking yourself, I was thinking, "where do NFL players come from?" Are there strong spatial patterns of this distribution?  How do cultural forces impact the prevalence of a particular sport in a specific region?  It's not as skewed to the South a you might think. 

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.