Linking Geography with English

Image above: The Global words site. The fifteen 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 Geography with global citizenship education

Related links to Spatialworlds 
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geographical thinking Scoop.it  

Spatial literacy Scoop.it  

History and geography Scoop.it 

Spatial Education and technology Scoop.it   
Just real interesting Scoop.it

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:

manning@chariot.net.au    

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


The English-Geography link

Several Spatialworlds postings have focussed on the quite obvious link between Geography and History. This posting highlights the synergy between the learning area of English and Geography. In 2010, the Primary English Teachers Association Australia (PETAA) have helped along this link by producing a resource called Global Words with World Vision Australia. This excellent resource facilitates the teaching of geography though English.

Global education topics in Global Words units of work are approached through a range of texts and texts types. Topics are covered across the three educational levels of junior Primary, upper Primary and junior Secondary include:

• Refugees and migration
• Indigenous peoples
• Neighbours and the Asia Pacific region
• Sustainability

Recently PETAA and World Vision have updated the resource by releasing an additional three units of work which integrate the teaching and learning of English and Geography with global citizenship education. 

* We are similar but different - Year 3

* A diverse and connected world – Year 6

* Water in the world – year 7
 

As is said on the site:

"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. The Global Words units, and the supporting resources, aim to build the essential knowledge, skills and values young people need to participate actively, critically and creatively as global citizens."

PETAA is also running free professional learning sessions in Adelaide, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Darwin and Melbourne over the next three months.

Thinking about Place

Image above: Driving through the streets of a place known as McDowell County, West Virginia. 

Related links to Spatialworlds 
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geographical thinking Scoop.it  

Spatial literacy Scoop.it  

History and geography Scoop.it 

Spatial Education and technology Scoop.it   
Just real interesting Scoop.it

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:

manning@chariot.net.au    

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


More than just a location

* A place in West Virginia
This video from Seth Dixon's Scoop.it perfectly exemplifies some key geographic ideas; sense of place, regional economic decline, migration and resource extraction.  This video would be great to show students and then get them to analyse the geographic context that creates a place like McDowell County, West Virginia.  This is a great addition Seth's Place-Based Geography Videos StoryMap.  

"McDowell County, situated in the coalfields of West Virginia, has experienced a great boom-and-bust since 1950. But despite the economic decline and population loss, many still call it home and feel a great sense of purpose among the mountains. Residents speak about their connection to this place and the meaning of home."

Hear more stories at hollowdocumentary.com "

* Living in a place under a rock

*A town pops up

* Place based geography videos from Seth Dixon

* The power of place video series

* Dead places
Some fascinating pictures of ghost towns, deceased places! 

Data junkies

Image above Tempting fate with extreme adventures in amazing landscapes.

Related links to Spatialworlds 
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geographical thinking Scoop.it  

Spatial literacy Scoop.it  

History and geography Scoop.it 

Spatial Education and technology Scoop.it   
Just real interesting Scoop.it

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:

manning@chariot.net.au    

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

 
Accessing some interesting data

After learning how to use GIS, the next challenge is to find user friendly data to import. For the data junky this is the food for GIS!  However, as with anything desired, it is not always smooth sailing. There is an enormous amount of free data on the Internet but teachers often find that the data is:

• in a different projection to the base maps they have been using
• not in the file format they require i.e. MapInfo .tab format instead of the ESRI .shp format
• difficult to download
• not the local data they require
• the same old data that is easy to access ie.generic world data
• old data
• US focussed (the greatest producer of spatial data)
• poor quality data with data missing (has been deleted because of cost or confidentiality).

Needless to say, the access to data can be problematic for the novice (and experienced). 
Despite these concerns, the access to free data is easier than ever. Just check out the following sites to view the free data available in Shapefile format. The shapefile (or ESRI shapefile) format is a geospatial vector format and one of the most common (if not the most common) map format around the world.

* Free Shapefiles from Stat Silk 
On this site there are thousands of shapefile maps from a range of websites, including country shapefiles, shapefiles at province or state level, and other administrative boundaries maps. The shapefile (or ESRI shapefile) format is a geospatial vector format and one of the most common (if not the most common) map format.

* MapCruzin free Shapefiles 

* A listing of sites offering free Shapefile data
  
* Free GIS data in geography topic areas

* Free South Australian spatial data: In September 2013, the SA Premier announced a Declaration of Open Data to make government data available for use by business and the community. As a result, free spatial data in South Australia is coming on-line on a daily basis. This DATA SA site has some great data sets as Shapefiles and Google Earth KML files.  Just go to http://www.data.sa.gov.au and search for 'spatial' using the 'Search Box' to view the spatial data sets. If you are after the ever elusive crime data, just enter 'crime' in the search box (the crime data needs to be joined to another data set which is a bit of a pain but achievable with a bit of work). 

With such great data available and free GIS software, such a QGIS now available, nothing should be able to stop us using GIS in the classroom - or just by ourselves for geographical fun.
 

Just useful bits and pieces for the geography classroom

Image above: On May 28, 2008, Adam LeWinter and Director Jeff Orlowski filmed a historic breakup at the Ilulissat Glacier in Western Greenland. The calving event lasted for 75 minutes and the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide. The height of the ice is about 3,000 feet, 300-400 feet above water and the rest below water.

* Map that will blow your mind You would have seen many of the maps on the Funnado site before but it is certainly mind blowing the number of eclectic maps that seem to be surfacing everyday on the Internet.

* An amazing tree to check out

* Urban World app 
Go to the App Store on your iPad or iPhone and download the free Urban World app. This is a great app to show urban change over time with an amazing global visualisation. The
app enables you to navigate the unprecedented global wave of urbanisation. You can compare GDP, population and household income for more than 2,600 cities worldwide. You can also track the earth’s shifting economic center of gravity from 1 CE to 2025. Urban World offers a sense of how economic power will move as this unprecedented urban expansion takes place.

* Info please website
A great site providing information on everything! Of particular interest to the geography teacher is the World tab (data, maps, current events, disasters etc) and the Geography tab (What is geography and countries).

The app opportunity for the geography classroom

Image above: The Social Landscape app.  Great for visualising and comparing data across space.

Related links to Spatialworlds 
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geographical thinking Scoop.it  

Spatial literacy Scoop.it  

History and geography Scoop.it 

Spatial Education and technology Scoop.it   
Just real interesting Scoop.it

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact:

manning@chariot.net.au    

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


Visualisation of data across space and real time quake feeds

Recently there has been an interesting shift in focus when looking for classroom friendly geography resources.  On a daily basis new apps are appearing for students and teachers to use on their iPads and iPhones to teach and learn geography in the classroom.  With iPads and iPhones now able to be linked (by wi-fi or cord) to data projectors and smart boards, these apps provide a great resource for some meaningful geographical learning.  This posting just showcases two recently launched apps that I have been using in my class and workshops over the past weeks. These two are just the 'tip of the iceberg' of geographical apps available for iPads and iPhones. Go to the App Store on you iPhone or iPod and download the apps - both are of these are free in their basic form.

* The Social landscape app

Launched by a Melbourne app developer Blitzm in February 2014, Social Landscape is a fantastic local data visualisation app which provides quick and easy access to information about anywhere in Australia. By simply picking a location one can quickly explore the database of statistics to get a complete socio-economic picture of an area. The app is supported by a geospatial data platform that is highly scalable and capable of querying large volumes of geospatially organised data. The complete Social Landscape system allows statistical data to be queried and distributed efficiently so that is can be presented in a meaningful and effective way. Data from several reliable sources such as the Census from the Australian Bureau of Statistics is used by the app. The developer would love to hear data suggestions from users to gather future statistics to visualise on the app. The Social Landscape app is a really useful, easy to use resource for comparing data across space and from place to place in Australia.


* The QuakeFeed app

 

QuakeFeed has seven beautiful base maps, provided by Esri, showing plate boundaries and ocean floor topography for the real time earthquakes to be plotted. Quakefeed enables users to choose from either the 1-day, 7-day or 30-day USGS data feeds - variety of filter and sort options are also provided. The app is also location aware so you can find quakes that are closest to you. Push notifications are also free for M6+ worldwide quakes. You will receive an MSS any time of day - even during lessons - real time geography in the classroom!