Spatial starters



Image above: Perth, Western Australia: sprawling and developing.


Related sites to the Spatialworlds project
Spatialworlds website
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website
Humsteach blog

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au

Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'

Starters for geographical thinking

Many of the great Internet sites listed on this posting are not teaching resources of extended substance in themselves but fantastic starters to get students thinking and working on a geogrphical and/or spatial theme. The engagement value of these sites is great to get students to start thinking geographically.

* Britain’s invasion map: interesting to discuss and verify.

Britain has invaded all but 22 countries in the world in its long and colourful history, new research has found. This is a great map to show the historical impact of colonialism on the world map. 

* Twitter languages in London: A great map visualising the language communities of Twitter. The map, perhaps unsurprisingly, closely matches the geographic extents of the world’s major linguistic groups.

* Stunning images show globalization, urbanization, digital interconnectivity and development through geotagged images

* Every picturetells a story: true and false.  An interesting look at Hurricane Sandy coverage: fake or not!

* Disaster warning interactive map from the US National Weather Service: in demand with Hurricane Sandy. This interactive map of coastal Massachusetts and Rhode Island shows some basic flooding data including: 1) where are the flood warnings (essential the entire coastline), 2) how high the storm surge is, and 3) how high the waves are

* Creating askyline: urban fun!

* Icons of place: with place such an important concept in the Australian Curriculum: Geography, this site is a great discussion point (and checklist for the bucketlists!)

* Manhattan evacuation map: Interesting for Disaster panning studies and change over time in a city.

* Population video from National Geographic, made to coincide with the arrival of the world's 7 billionth person on October 31, 2011.

* Shocking Facts You Did Not Know A Minute Ago

* The power of human geography: a fun way to promote geography!

* The power of spatial technology: Using Google to Track Down Criminals

* Geo-ignorance: A Ted Talk on geographical news coverage: The U.S. News is remarkably USA-centric, so in the era of globalization and the fragmentation of information, most American TV viewers know less about the world than they did 40 years ago.

* The Global Concerns Classroom resource: A way to overcome the role of the media as discussed above in the Geo-ignorance Ted Talk

* Geoglyphs: View a Google Earth tour of Geoglyphs from around the world. Andrew Rogers' "Rhythms of Life" is the largest contemporary land art undertaking in the world..." Simply beautiful...you need to maximize screen extent to appreciate the wonders

* Competitive Globalisation: This trailer shows the first 3 minutes of the actual film Two Million Minute: a film showing the lives of high school students in India, China and the US and how globalization is impacting them and education.