Virtual Geography Convention 2014: Teaching Geography with SpatiaLABS

Welcome to the Virtual Geography Convention 2014!  If you wish to submit to the virtual geography convention please contact catholicgauze [at] gmail [dot] com.
ESRI is promoting the use of SpatiaLABS, a series of lessons using GIS to teach geography and solve geography problems.  These lessons sound interesting and educational.  I especially support the emphasis of GIS as a tool and the main thing to learn.

ESRI describes the project as
SpatiaLABS are standalone activities designed to promote spatial reasoning and analysis skills. Covering a wide variety of subject matter useful in standard computer-lab sessions and longer term projects, SpatiaLABS illuminate relationships, patterns and complexities while answering provocative questions like "How might visibility have affected political boundaries in ancient civilizations?" or "Is there a connection between ethnicity and exposure to industrial toxins?" or "How worried should I be about the stagnant pond a quarter mile away?"

So what's the role of geographic information systems, GIS, in SpatiaLABS? GIS is merely a tool for revealing those illuminating relationships, patterns and complexities. Students will undoubtedly develop GIS and cartography skills while performing SpatiaLABS, but these are secondary outcomes. SpatiaLABS concentrate on introducing, developing and reinforcing spatial reasoning and analysis skills. Levels of labs
You'll find instructional materials in Microsoft Word and other common formats. Go ahead, change or add self-assessment questions, tweak the context for the analysis, rework the lab to use local data. Customize SpatiaLABS to suit your non-commercial needs.
Available lessons are

INDEPENDENT TOPICS

• Delineation of Watersheds: Adirondack Park, New York
• Groundwater for Many People: The spatial science of a shared resource
• The Spatial Distribution of Poverty: A geographically weighted regression (GWR)
• Change in the Right Direction: Monitoring land-cover change by satellite
• Early Childhood Education: Distribution of Pre-K facilities and children under five years old
• Educational Performance and Family Income: Diamonds on the soles of scholarship?
• Glimpses of the Past: Investigating settlement sites of prehistoric humans-stream proximity
• Glimpses of the Past: Investigating settlement sites of prehistoric humans-  slope and aspect
• Environmental Equity and Air Toxics
• Does Green Go with Gold? Environmental assessment vs. economic development in the United States
• High School Dropouts The effect of neighborhood characteristics
• Street Kids: Geography and risks for homelessness
• Analyzing Ancient (Yoruba) Political Power and Urbanization Patterns
Water & Weather
• Assessing Nonpoint Groundwater Contamination: Florida caves
• Assessing Point Groundwater Contamination Potential: Florida caves
• Assessing Point Groundwater Contamination Potential: The Floridan Aquifer
• Creating and Analyzing a Phoenician Navigational Safety Zone
• Impacts of Sea Level Rise and Storms on Manhattan
• Hurricane Katrina Understanding physical and social vulnerability
• Assessing Risk and Accessibility to Search and Rescue Teams
• Timber Harvest Planning Using GIS
• Predicting West Nile Virus Outbreaks
• Population Mapping and Modeling for Manhattan
• The Global Oil Market

BUSINESS COURSE

• Finding Market Opportunities Understanding the Market Environment Spatially
• Creating Sales Territories Sales territory design and balancing
• Retail Site Selection Identifying the optimal location for a business
• Assessing Global Markets Identifying international market opportunities
• Customer Profiling Demographic and lifestyle segmentation
Advanced (Business) Projects
• Finding Market Opportunities: Understanding the market environment spatially (using online software)
• Finding Market Opportunities: Understanding the market environment spatially (using desktop software)
• Customer Profiling: Understanding customers to identify penetration and expansion opportunities
• Initial Site Selection: Finding the best location for a new business
• Sales Territory Design Creating Balanced Territories for the Sales Force
• Initial Site Selection Finding the Best Location for a New Business
• Retail Site Location Identifying Optimal Location for a Business
• Business Trade Area Market Analysis Lessons Set
• Customer Profiling Demographic and Lifestyle Segmentation

FORESTRY COURSE

• Point Patterns in Forest Fires
• Forest Inventory Analysis
• Forest Planning for Sensitive Wildlife Species

Videos and Teaching Aides About the Irish Potato Famine and the Great Migration

There are an estimated 80 million people worldwide who claim Irish heritage/ethnic identity.  About 40 million United States citizens claim Irish as their main ethnicity.  The entire population of the island of Ireland, both the Republic and Northern Ireland, is only 6.3 million.  The reason for this practically unrivaled 12 to 1 ratio of diaspora to homeland (there are 1.6 Jews outside of Israel for every Jew living in Israel, for example) is the Great Irish Potato Famine and migration due to the famine.

The Irish-American fraternity group the Ancient Order of Hibernians created a series of videos and teaching tools about the An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger.  Their teaching tools such as document-based questions, crosswords, fill in story, multiple choice questions, word searches, and even a vocabulary sudoku are available at the An Gorta Mor website.  The videos are available on YouTube or the DVD can be purchased.  I have posted the videos below for easy access.

Foreign Service Institute Language Classes Available for Free

The language education site 101Languages.net has multiple Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the State Department agency in charge of training diplomats in foreign cultures and affairs, language courses for free.  Users can download the course work and audio tracks for

• Bulgarian 
• Cambodian 
• Cantonese Chinese 
• Czech 
• Finnish 
• French 
• German
• Greek 
• Hebrew 
• Hungarian 
• Italian
• Korean 
• Lao 
• Lingala
• Mandarin Chinese
• Norwegian 
• Portuguese 
• Russian 
• Shona
• Spanish 
• Swahili
• Swedish 
• Thai 
• Turkish
• Vietnamese 
• Yoruba

The website also has other teaching aids for additional languages such as Basque and Tagalog.  There are also language-appropriate keyboard layouts, word of the day, links to newspapers, and useful phrases.  Learning languages can be hard but fortunately there is alot of information available for free.  Many thanks to Z Geographer for showing this website to me.

Additionally, FSI Language Courses has even more languages available   Some like Serbo-Croatian and Arabic have both text and audio available.  Other languages like Igbo only have the text book for download, however.

Geography is Regional Science Meme

I have been working on creating a series of memes to show the diverse use of geography.  If you have your own geography meme feel free to submit it to catholicgauze at gmail dot com and we will post it!

REGIONAL SCIENCE

like travel literature

The first regional geography texts were world descriptions for ancient rulers.  Today this style of regional geography has a popular manifestation in travel literature.  These easy to read books are often more educational (and accessible) than many text books.

Geography is Environmental Science Meme

I have been working on creating a series of memes to show the diverse use of geography.  If you have your own geography meme feel free to submit it to catholicgauze at gmail dot com and we will post it!

Geography is ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

like water pollution research

Human caused water pollution ruins drinking water, negatively impacts agriculture, and kills wildlife.  Geographers study the cause and effect as well as proper response to help protect our environmental resources.

Geography is Place Science Meme

I have been working on creating a series of memes to show the diverse use of geography.  If you have your own geography meme feel free to submit it to catholicgauze at gmail dot com and we will post it!

Geography is PLACE SCIENCE

like real estate

When buying a home people consider the local geography: condition of the land the property is built upon, nearby property values, the local economy, school quality, crime indexes, demographics, and climate.

Geography is Spatial Science Meme

I have been working on creating a series of memes to show the diverse use of geography.  If you have your own geography meme feel free to submit it to catholicgauze at gmail dot com and we will post it!

Click to enlarge

Geography is SPATIAL SCIENCE

like customer research 

Businesses need to know where their customers live.  Using this data and combining it with demographic and habit research businesses can improve where advertising is placed and better market their products and services to make additional profit.

Geography is Location Science Meme

I have been working on creating a series of memes to show the diverse use of geography.  If you have your own geography meme feel free to submit it to catholicgauze at gmail dot com and we will post it!

 Click to enlarge.  Photo from Oxford Land Surveying

Geography is LOCATION SCIENCE

like surveying 

Knowing the layout and exact boundaries of the land are critical for engineering, resource exploration and exploitation, and property ownership.

New Free Online Course: Mapping with Google

A new online course, Mapping with Google, is available from Google. Completion of the course results in a certificate for mapping with Google Maps and one for Google Earth as well.

From the excellent Google Maps Mania

Mapping with Google starts today and continues until June 24th. Complete the course and not only will you learn all about Google Maps and Google Earth you will also earn yourself a Google Maps Project certificate and / or a Google Earth Project certificate.  

The Google Map part of the course involves completing three units, each unit consisting of a number of activities. Unit 1 is really just a short introduction to the course. Unit 2 is a general introduction to some of the useful features of Google Maps. The unit involves searching and sharing links to Google Maps and learning all about directions on Google Maps. Unit 3 actually involves making your own maps using Google Maps Engine Lite.  

If you have never used Maps Engine Lite the unit is a great introduction into how to import data into Google Maps Engine and how to create well designed and nicely styled maps.

I personally recommend takes these courses.  Online cartography is not the height of the art but it is none the less easy and usable (and appropriate) in multiple fields. 

Experiment on Soil Cover, Runoff, and Water Quality

I was sent the above photo from a friend via the Homesteading/Survivalism Facebook page.  This experiment can be modified many ways using household items to show how soil cover from plants, foliage, and bare top soil affect run off and water quality.

Potential Geography Exercise: Exploring Places with Same Names

One of the first senses of place a person develops is home.  Whether it be a home town or the street they grew up on, the place and name of the place develop a special meaning.

Playing off this relationship between sense of place and place name can be a fun and easy geography teaching exercise.  Using Google Maps, look up places which share your hometown's name or search for places with the same address as your's.  Look around using Satellite View and Street View.  What is similar and what is different?  Why does the place have the same name/street address?  Does it reference an important person to the region?  Does it refer to a geographic feature?

I found this a good learning exercise for people and students as it "hits close to home" and is easily modifiable by teachers.  Enjoy!

Online Geography Quiz Games

The British website Quiz Factor has an online assortment of geography and travel quizzes.  These are of varying difficult and could be useful for instructors.

GeoThentic: The Useful Geography Eduation Tool

When National Geographic released their Geo-Literacy videos I did a rebuttal video showing how geographers should emphasizes how geographic thinking is a marketable and useful skill for a wide set of real world problems.



I received positive feedback from many readers as well as questions as to why National Geographic does not do something similar.  Well, apparently National Geographic is involved with something incredibly useful (though none of my teacher contacts knew about it).  GeoThentic is a joint project between the University of Minnesota and National Geographic which uses real world-like scenarios to introduce geographic thinking and geosptial tools.  The program is free for teachers to register and use.

From a description of the online software:

Currently, the software offers five modules: Build a Hospital, Global Climate Change, Avian Flu, Build a Stadium and Population Density. Within these modules, students play the role of a geographer, taking advantage of various digital resources and data to determine, for instance, where the best place is in San Francisco to build a hospital, or which U.S. states will be most impacted by population growth and decline by the year 2100.

This is the type of examples the public wants to see on why geography matters.  Now if only National Geographic would tell people about it.


Do you have a geography project idea which the public would also find informative and useful?  Be sure to register for the Geographic Travels Geo-Literacy Outreach Awards!

Freeware and Open Source GIS Software and Guides

Right now I am brushing up on my GIS skills via training books.  The books come with 180 day-trial versions of ESRI's famous ArcGIS software.  However, to obtain a permanent copy of ArcGIS I would need to pay $1,500 American dollars.

There is hope though for people who do not want to invest so much money for GIS knowledge.  The GIS Lounge has the article How to Go from GIS Novice to Pro without Spending a Dime and a list of free GIS software.  There is also a nice introduction to qGIS with links for more information.

GIS is still a growing industry and many, if not all, geographers will use it at least occasionally to make maps or conduct spatial research.  I highly recommend geographers learn a GIS program to gain research abilities and to build one's resume.

Google Maps for Educators Videos

Contour Education is a website dedicated to providing "introductory and advanced training for educators in the field of spatial technologies (Google Earth, GIS, remote sensing, GPS and more) that cater to the specific needs of teachers today."  The website is run by geography teacher Mike Law.

On Contour Education's YouTube page, Law has posted seven videos on how geography teachers can use Google Maps beyond the simple "look at your house from above" trick.  The videos are basic but it is a good introduction for teachers who want to do more with Google Maps. (Hat Tip: Jon Wolton's @GeogAdvisor)

Plug: Free New Bible Study Software with Geographical Components

Azoic Software  has released Credo Bible Study v1.0.5 for free download on their website.  The software includes four versions of the Bible: Douay Rheims English Bible, Clementine Latin Vulgate, Greek Textus Receptus, Greek Septuagint.  All these are fully text searchable.  Also added in are commentary, catechisms, liturgical calendars, council documents, prayers, music, and much more.

Of interest to religious geographers is the map function which allows for viewing places names on given pages/books and the ability to sort searches (including of places names) by book so one can see the location of narrative move through time.

And of special note:  Future editions will combine Geographic Travels very own map of where the Twelve Apostles died!


View Larger Map

Historical Geography Helps in Understanding the Bible

Pastor Wayne Stiles is the one of the most vocal Protestants to advocate in studying what Pope Paul VI called the "fifth gospel": the geography of the Holy Land.  Stiles has written two books on the geography of the Holy Land not as general interest pieces but as study aids for better understanding the Bible and personalizing its message in oneself.

Stiles wrote briefly about how geography can help better one better understand the Bible and its message for the Jerusalem Post.  He also published an in-depth study about how early Christians viewed historical geography important as well as his research showing people's religious studies benefiting from studying the geography of the Bible.  A key background part:

The Church’s Need for Historical Geography

The church’s illiteracy in historical geography poses a problem, because apart from its inclusion in Bible study, believers cannot fully understand the context of a passage. The Christian has the obligation to know the Word intimately, for as Paul told young Timothy, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). “All Scripture,” is literally, “every [individual] writing.” The biblical text in its minute detail remains God’s means through which the believer becomes equipped to live the Christian life. The better a believer knows the Word—including the geography of the text—the better equipped he or she will be for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

History Values Historical Geography: Eusebius’ Onomasticon

In searching for relevant literature for this study, I did not find much that discussed the value of historical geography for the spiritual life. Dr. Robert Ibach provided me some assistance and noted, There are quite a few items dealing with pilgrimages to the Holy Land over the centuries. Some of them go all the way back to the fourth century. Even though these books may not deal with personal spiritual growth, the fact that Christians over the centuries have found these pilgrimages to be important speaks to their contribution to Christian life. 

As early as the third century A.D. the value of historical geography for Bible study was recognized by Origen of Alexandria. “Once he had moved from Alexandria to Caesarea, [he] went on ‘an investigation of the traces of Jesus and his disciples and the prophets’ in order to understand the Bible better.^"

But it was not until the forth century that a historical geography was written down for the purpose of assisting Bible study. Eusebius of Caesarea, a pupil of Origen, remains best known for his Church History in which he “collected, organized, and published practically all that is now known of many persons and episodes in the life of the early church. Without him, our knowledge of the early history of Christianity would be reduced in half.” Having lived in Palestine all of his life, Eusebius was well-suited to the task of writing his Onomasticon (“a collection of names”) around A.D. 325, a work that became the first historical geography text of its kind. He “is both the first church historian and the first biblical geographer; without his Onomasticon many biblical sites would never have been identified.”

Eusebius recognized the value of geography to biblical study, and he systematized his work—a venerable index and encyclopedia of sites and locations—with the Bible student in mind. “Eusebius’ arrangement made sense in terms of what he expected his readers to do. He apparently imagined them engaged in a study of a particular Biblical book.”

Here we have a painstakingly methodical work of scholarship in which Eusebius maps out a landscape of sites that would become pilgrims’ goals for centuries to come. Eusebius was probably an unwitting contributor to the huge boom in Christian pilgrimage during the fourth century, and may well have been amazed at how his study became a building block in the construction of ‘the Holy Land’ as a uniting idea for Christians.

Despite the Onomasticon becoming a resource for the creation of a kind of Christian Palestine, Eusebius’ work seems to be a kind of exegetical aid to the study of the Bible, and perhaps an enticement to Christian scholars like himself to investigate sites further. Eusebius’ intended audience was not the ordinary (though usually wealthy) pious Christians who would come to see Biblical sites after [A.D.] 325, but rather scholars like himself who wanted to understand the sacred text as well as possible, even if they might not set foot in the land.

Having lived in Palestine, Eusebius recognized the value geography gave to increase one’s understanding of the Bible’s message. And so his work was the first of many tools providing a geography of the Holy Land for those Bible students who may never see it. As Carl Rasmussen has noted, “Once one has a basic understanding of the geography of the Middle East one has a much better chance of coming to grips with the flow of historical events that occurred there.”

The survey results at the end showing people admitting the benefits of historical geography in their understanding of the Bible shows how geography can be useful in more than just the stand, stereotypical settings.

(Hat tip: Bible Places Blog)

Imagery Interpreation and Remote Sensing Games

My very first experience in the geographic subfield of imagery interpretation, learning the geography of a place via aerial images, was through the game Spycraft.


Someone's video about Spycraft.  Imagery interpretation section from 0:45 to 4:15

I have always found imagery interpretation, whether the picture and metadata come from satellite or plane, fun.  It is a sort of an adventure to discuss why everything is the way it is and to spot anomalies. 

Fortunately the fun can still be experienced online for free.  Several organizations have posted educational activities games dealing with imagery interpretation and remote sensing.

America's Central Intelligence Agency has the game Aerial Analysis Challenge in which one pretends to be an imagery analyst.

Natural Resources Canada has an educational and in-depth imagery interpretation site with a twelve question activity.

The Smithsonian Institution's National Zoo has the Remote Sensing Quiz which provides an educational challenge on remote sensing.

Types of Maps Blogs

The Sami people of Europe have over three hundred words for snow (Eskimos in fact have a regular sized vocabulary for the word despite the urban legend).  The reason for this large lexicon is that the Sami operate and experience snow so much that they need a large word bank to describe the exact definition of what they operate in.  Cartographers and geographers likewise use maps for so many things that we need so many definitions for particular maps.

In what may be either a class project or the weirdest case of semi-plagiarism in the blogosphere there are several new blogs which give examples and definitions of various types of maps.  Map Catalog, Matt Mudano's Map Blog, The World of Maps, and Maps Galore all have fifty some examples of various types of maps.  Planimetric, Cadastral, Choropleth, Dot Distribution, and more shown and described.  The definitions are short but it does a good job making the map type easily understood.

If you need to know what a certain map type is then the above blogs are a descent place to start.

British Middle and High School Geography Lesson Plans

The Canadian Council for Geographic Education has tweeted a link to the British TES website which has tons of geography lesson plans for ages 11 to 18.  Topics include biodiversity, climate, development, globalization, hazards, landscape, people, resources and more.  Various plans are broken by age group.