Friday, September 27, 2013

World Vision website: a wealth of resources for Geography





The link to World Vision 
Many of you would be aware that the Patron of the Australian Geography Teachers Association (AGTA) is Tim Costello. Tim agreed to be AGTA's Patron because he believes in the power of geographical education in schools to provide objective and considered views on the plight of millions of people around the world experiencing poverty, famine, war and other debilitating experiences foreign to most of us in Australia. Tim has been very supportive of AGTA and the development of the Australian Curriculum: Geography and wrote an excellent article on the release of the curriculum in May this year called 'Mapping out the world.

As the CEO of World Vision, Tim has done more than just talk, he has got his people to create wonderful resources to support geographical education (and other learning areas) in schools.  Since the publication of the Australian Curriculum: Geography these resources have been linked into the year levels of the new curriculum. If you go to the School Resources page of the website you will see that there is a fantastic array of engaging and relevant resources for the teaching of the Australian Curriculum: Geography. Just do a search to see what you find. Just to name a few, the topics include:  Child Rights, Disasters, Global Food Crisis, Climate change, Global inequalities, Overseas Aid, Water, Refugees and Migration. The site also contains numerous country profiles, simulations, videos and posters etc.  

Of special note is the recently released resource from World Vision (co-badged by AGTA) titled 'Australia's Engagement with Asia: Indonesia'. The resource contains case studies on water, food, urbanisation and human wellbeing. The resource includes six DVD chapters with related texts and worksheets developed by World Vision and AGTA. This is an excellent resource, highly relevant to the Australian Curriculum: Geography (you will never be able to eat cashew nuts the same again!) . The resource can be downloaded from the World Vision site for free. 


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