Bits and pieces worth a look

Images: City spaces for the people in two large cities: left image: San Diego, US and right image: Brussells,Belgium.

Related sites to the Spatialworlds project
Spatialworlds website
21st Century Geography Google Group
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website
Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au


* The Maplecroft site: employing spatial technologies and maps to assess risk. As a follow up to the “Risky Geography” Spatialworlds posting this site just confirms the potential of examining risk as a concept in geography classrooms.
The site contains over 500 risk indices and indicators, 100+ interactive maps, plus scorecards, briefings and in-depth reports for all countries and risk issues. Every week there is a new map of interest to the geographer.
The site also has a mapmaker.
The Maplecroft blog is also full of some great geographical information.

* Harking back to another posting, this time on saving the humanities, the site “4Humanities: Advocating for humanities" provides more great discussion on the need for humanities education in our schools.
The article titled “On the Value of the Humanities” by Martha Nussbaum and John Armstrong is of particular interest.
The articles published in The Australian by philosophers John Armstrong and Martha Nussbaum make the case for the value of the humanities and for the need to speak to a mass audience about this value. Nussbaum, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of the recent book "Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities", makes the case that the humanities are more important than ever in the 21st Century.

* Finds home! Here is a great human interest story involving spatial technology.
Read the story of an Indian man living in Australia being reunited with his birth family after 25 years with the help of vague childhood memories — and Google Earth.

* The World Water Day site is also a valuable resource for the geography teacher. The site will keep you informed on issues related to this years World Water Day theme of 'Water and Food Security' by watching interviews, documentaries and animations.

* Never get sick of this site! AirPano is a noncommercial project focused on high resolution 3D aerial panoramas. AirPano team is the group of russian photographers and panorama enthusiasts. During the next 2-3 years they plan to shoot the aerial panoramas and create the virtual 3D tours of the most interesting places of the planet.

* Another 360 site, this time of South Africa. This Virtual Tour Guide site gives 360° views of different areas in South Africa. It takes a little navigation but there are some great views, eg the Amphitheatre from the Sentinel in the ‘berg, the red desert near Port Edward (thought to be the world’s smallest desert) etc.

* A great new resource called Global Words was released last week.
The twelve units of work in Global Words have been produced by World Vision Australia and the Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA) to integrate the teaching and learning of English and global citizenship education.
At the centre of both global citizenship education and the study of English is the aim of supporting students to become ethical, thoughtful and informed citizens, predisposed to take action for change. These units, and the supporting resources of Global Words, aim to build the essential knowledge, skills and values young people need to participate actively, critically and creatively as global citizens. A resource certainly worth looking at for geography.

* Indigenous languages map of Australia
The ABC language map is based on language data gathered by Aboriginal Studies Press, AIATSIS and Auslig/Sinclair, Knight, Merz, (1996). The map attempts to represent all of the language or tribal or nation groups of Indigenous people of Australia.
The Indigenous Language Map is just one representation of other map sources that are available for describing Aboriginal Australia. This map indicates only the general location of larger groupings of people which may include smaller groups such as clans, dialects or individual languages in a group. Boundaries are not intended to be exact.

* Another GIS option worth looking at
'A Gentle Introduction to GIS' at http://linfiniti.com/dla/
It uses Quantum GIS, which is free and open source and includes screencasts. The whole thing is downloadable so you can work with it offline.

Saving the Humanities

Images above: Ibrahaim Primary School Madang, July 2011: Love of books and learning about the world. 

  Related sites to the Spatialworlds project Spatialworlds website 21st Century Geography Google Group Australian Geography Teachers' Association website 'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website 

Email contact manning@chariot.net.au 

  Where am I?? Canberra: Australia: S: 35º 15' E: 149º 08' 

THE THREAT OF FOCUSSING ON UTILITARIAN EDUCATION 

 With today’s global competition, there is increasing concern about the nature and quality of education– should it be primarily practical and utilitarian and equipping students to be competitive in the workforce or should it rather a liberal education with broad ideas and values to prepare a well-rounded student with the capacity to be fully functional democratic citizens, prepared for life in contemporary society? For students to be successful in today’s global economy, it should be seen that utilitarian and liberal education need to be tightly coupled, and that students’ academic, developmental, interpersonal and experiential lives are entwined. Schools should move towards developing transformational learning for students and not just focus on providing knowledge and understandings based on employability. Such questioning of the utilitarian trend in education around the world is critical when we consider the decrease in curriculum time for humanities in schools and the significant drop off in the number of students studying geography in particular in the senior school in Australia and around the world. “Transformational learning means that the “whole student” has to develop so as to prepare him or her as a thinker and citizen for a challenging world; to question and affirm or change what she or he believes; and come to a greater understanding of the complex questions of his or her own life and the lives of others than they otherwise would. By attending to both leads to transformational learning and the development of the whole person into a flourishing individual and citizen.” Traditionally in our school system the humanities’ (history, geography, studies of society etc) have developed those capacities referred to as liberal education. Ironically, it was the liberal subjects that dominated early education! In the present economic and educational environment the humanities in the senior school are being devalued and squeezed out of the curriculum in face of utilitarian demands. In Australia the humanities is declining in schools in terms of numbers, prestige and general influence. Many young people now leave school with a scant knowledge of history, geography and our society in general (law, government etc). The impact is particularly serious in the senior secondary year that provides a sophisticated understanding of the humanities for young people. The utilitarian demands on a young person when choosing subjects has resulted in significant reduction of the perceived ‘non employment direct’ subjects such as history, geography etc (in fact these subjects do have significant and much needed career pathways but often not seen as direct and thus not promoted as getting a student a job). As this blog has highlighted and discussed over the past 4 years, the opportunities in the spatial industry is enormous and subjects such as geography and history have an important role to play in developing student knowledge, skills and capacities in-line with the needs of that industry. Australians hold what appear to be conflicting aspirational and practical notions of the purposes and value of a schooling. Economists and corporate leaders refer to this function of education as the development of human capital. “…education is more than preparing for a job; it should be for acquiring the knowledge, skills, competencies, values, dispositions and capacities for many life roles in a world of inevitable change and that this is ultimately the more “practical” preparation for life.” Anecdotally the trend away from the liberal humanities in school education, towards the demands of a utilitarian education, in particular in senior secondary, is common throughout the western world and similar OECD countries to Australia. There is a need to get quantitative and substantiated data on the trend away from the humanities and to research what other countries are doing to arrest the trend away from the humanities as highly respected (in number and prestige) subjects in schools. Those involved in humanities education consider that the trend away from the humanities towards utilitarian education in our schools (and universities) is undermining and threatening the development of a ‘well-rounded, thinking, socially analytical young citizen ready for the demands of the 21st Century globalised world. Here are two really interesting articles from the UK re: importance of geography and diminishing numbers. Seems that the drift to utilitarian education is happening everywhere. Geographers need to be strategic and work towards reversing this trend. 1. "Without geography, the world would be a mystery to us" Geography is the subject that contributes more than any other to young people’s knowledge of the world, writes David Lambert. 2. "History and geography 'diminishing' in schools", says head Subjects such as English, history and geography are being marginalised as schools ditch academic rigour in favour of “accessibility”, according to a leading headmistress. The irony is that geography and the associated spatial technology tools it uses are seen as a non-vocational area of study and just a nice subject to do for those interested. As this blog repeatedly highlights, geography is a great humanities subject for young people to do as citizens now and in the future but it also is a subject with increasing vocational opportunities in the branches of geography (climatology, economic analysis, planning, environmental management, disaster mitigation etc etc) and the related areas of the spatial industry which continues to say that they have a human resources shortage. Geography is also a subject which goes somewhere in the world of employment. There is a lot of work to be done with subject counsellors, vocational consultants, parents and the community to get the message across that geography and all the knowledge, skills and capacities it develops in young people is and should be promoted as a learning area with great (and increasing) vocational opportunity.