Geographic Resources & Ideas: Some Spring resources to Energize and Engage

I think spring is finally upon us!!

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Some resources and strategies to energize and engage!!

WHY POVERTY?

Why Poverty? uses film to get people talking about poverty.

We commissioned eight documentaries from award-winning film makers and 30 shorts from new and emerging talents. The films are moving, subtle and thought-provoking stories, but they also tackle big issues and pose difficult questions.

The films were shown around the world in November 2012 on more than 70 national broadcasters. The documentaries are now all free to view online. We'll make them available on DVD and in languages other than English soon. We'll also be adding educational resources to help people use them as teaching tools.

Very interesting web site that addresses poverty from many angles. I especially liked the video on oil drum boats. Many great supports that are part of the web site.

http://www.whypoverty.net/en/

A Digital worksheet is still a worksheet.

“ When it comes to technology too many believe that by dropping it into a classroom magic happens. Even the most ardent supporter of tech will tell you that does not, and never will happen.”

Interesting read

http://tomwhitby.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/a-digital-worksheet-is-still-a-worksheet/

Search for four maps with one search

This resource speaks for itself. Great for comparing various spatial search engines

http://bit.uz/Ea2F

Cascada

Tangled vines. Endless rain. Dodgy hotel rooms. Mud. Biting flies. Aggressive viruses...Perfection.

Is this a vacation? Erik Boomer, Tyler Bradt, Galen Volckhausen, Tim Kemple, Anson Fogel, Blake Hendrix and Skip Armstrong hunt the remote Mexican jungle for the perfect waterfall...and the perfect shot. Paddler and cinematographer alike explore a world beyond the expected.

Many geographical and topographical applications. Most importantly it is a fabulous video

http://vimeo.com/57343365

Topographic Map Activities

Use this scaleable set of seamless topographic maps, in this case from the USGS, inside ArcGIS Online to examine the physical and cultural geography of the USA. 20 separate landform features examined, including tombolo, col, salt dome, lava beds, marine terraces, and much more. Depending on the scale of your ArcGIS Online map, the USGS topographic maps will display as follows: 1:24,000-scale 1:100,000-scale 1:250,000-scale Notes included for studies outside the USA.

Very transferable for Canadian work and other international areas

http://edcommunity.esri.com/arclessons/lesson.cfm?id=779

New Top of the World and High Resolution Satellite Imagery

We are excited to introduce our new top of the world imagery - which includes bathymetry data from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. We are also releasing over 13 million sq km of updated satellite imagery!

Bing can be a great alternative to Google Earth and maps. It is fun to compare when certain areas were shot. Great for comparisons over time.

http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2013/02/28/new-top-of-the-world-imagery.aspx

Sinkholes around the world - in pictures

From Guatemala to China, sinkholes come in all shapes and sizes. Who ever thought?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/jun/03/natural-disasters-guatemala?CMP=twt_gu#/?picture=363335090&index=1

Explore the ocean with Google Maps

Google Maps strives to provide people around the globe with the most comprehensive, accurate and usable map of the world - including the underwater world. This ocean collection includes six of the world's most incredible underwater spots, including coral reefs (and their inhabitants) in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii. This imagery is available to millions of people through the Street View feature of Google Maps and in our Street View Gallery at: maps.google.com/ocean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7syWPIZt9B4&feature=youtu.be

The Shifting Diets of a Fast-Urbanizing World

Here, Popkin talks about the complex reasons for why developing nations are adopting America-like food systems, and why reverting back to more traditional, nutritional diets en masse is going to be difficult, to say the least.

http://bit.uz/TWe

Video on the wealth inequality in the US

This video presents the fascinating misconceptions surrounding the perceived extent of wealth inequality in the US. The central theme is that there is such a disconnect between what is seemed to be the reality, what is seemed to be the ideal and what IS the actual.

http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2013/03/video-on-the-wealth-inequality-in-the-us/

Royal Geographic Society – Ask the experts series

Explore the growing series of interviews and questions and answers (Q&As) from leading geographical experts and practitioners on a variety of topics that are available on the Geography in the News website.

Topics range from Geophysical Global Events and GIS for disaster management to urban climatology and ocean acidification.

http://www.rgs.org/OurWork/Schools/Geography+in+the+News/Ask+the+experts/Ask+the+experts.htm

The Water Cycle

Viewed from space, one of the most striking features of our home planet is the water, in both liquid and frozen forms, that covers approximately 75% of the Earth’s surface. Geologic evidence suggests that large amounts of water have likely flowed on Earth for the past 3.8 billion years—most of its existence. Believed to have initially arrived on the surface through the emissions of ancient volcanoes, water is a vital substance that sets the Earth apart from the rest of the planets in our solar system. In particular, water appears to be a necessary ingredient for the development and nourishment of life.

This is a terrific overview !

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Water/page1.php?src=twitter&src=share

Infographic: How Do Natural Gas Pipelines Work?

Great visualization on Pipelines . Very topical and works well on an interactive whiteboard

http://www.good.is/posts/infographic-our-natural-gas-pipeline

Where does our sense of time come from?

It’s no longer possible to think of time as ticking along at a constant rate since the universe was born, separate from our own human perceptions.

An interesting 90 second Podcast

http://earthsky.org/human-world/where-does-our-sense-of-time-come-from

The Oceans Like You Have Never Seen Them Before

This video provides a global tour of sea surface salinity using measurements taken by NASA’s Aquarius instrument aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft, from December 2011 through December 2012. Red represents areas of high salinity, while blue represents areas of low salinity. Aquarius is a focused effort to measure sea surface salinity and will provide the global view of salinity variability needed for climate studies. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina

http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2013/02/28/the-oceans-like-you-have-never-seen-them-before/

How Code-Switching Explains The World

Interesting explanation of how we are melding world wide

http://bit.uz/HN3

Google Maps Engine Lite - Create Advanced Custom Google Maps

For years Google Maps had the option for creating custom placemarks and basic shapes in the "my maps" option in your account. But if you want to further customize your maps you really had to do that work in Google Earth. Yesterday, Google introduced Maps Engine Lite which bridges the gap between creating basic custom maps in Google Maps and creating custom layers in Google Earth.

Looks like it should have some interesting Applications. This is also a very interesting Blog

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/03/google-maps-engine-lite-create-advanced.html#.UWMGI6Jg8z9

Why our turbulent weather is getting even harder to predict?

Our weather, always unpredictable, is now fluctuating on a grand scale and becoming increasingly hard to forecast long-term. The challenge for meteorologists is to explain these unexpected outbreaks of climatic unpleasantness.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/07/science-behind-britain-coldest-easter

Great Source of Visualized World Data

http://worldbank.tumblr.com/

Ken Jennings: Watson, Jeopardy and me, the obsolete know-it-all

Trivia whiz Ken Jennings has made a career as a keeper of facts; he holds the longest winning streak in history on the U.S. game show Jeopardy. But in 2011, he played a challenge match against supercomputer Watson -- and lost. With humor and humility, Jennings tells us how it felt to have a computer literally beat him at his own game, and also makes the case for good old-fashioned human knowledge.

Interesting discussion points. Would be great for class discussion

http://bit.uz/aP6

How Geography Paved the Way for Women in Science and Cultivated the Values of American Democracy

by Maria Popova

Education historian Kim Tolley traces how the curious reversal of gender norms — much like the inversion of the pink-and-blue paradigm — took place and how geography, more than any other discipline, opened the door to science for women.

http://bit.uz/Aq2

THE SEAS OF PLASTIC

Plastic pollution in the oceans represents a major global environmental challenge. At a global scale, man-made debris has been observed to accumulate in remote areas of the ocean in large circulating gyres. The source of this plastic is assumed to be mostly land based, however little is known about the relative contribution of different land based sources to each gyre.

http://visual.ly/seas-plastic?view=true

And here is a whole raft of various resources thanks to Anne Smith at Queens (these have not all been vetted but I am sure they will be outstanding )

m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=YIPcOSNwVjw&feature=youtu.be&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DYIPcOSNwVjw%26feature%3Dyoutu.be (Thinking like a Geographer video) my favourite

holykaw.alltop.com/where-the-irish-are-in-america

http://www.myhistro.com/

http://www.ecoocean.de/ (overfishing simulation)

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/51181011

http://cartonerd.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-fallacy-of-new-cartography.html?m=1

news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/more-americans-alarmed-about-global-warming-130307.htm

m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/03/07/the-languages-of-the-u-s-in-one-map

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/03/07/a-map-of-the-world-according-to-illustrators-and-storytellers/

http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/23585/how-effective-was-crisis-mapping-during-2011-japan-earthquake

http://water.usgs.gov/ogw/pubs/fs00165/SubsidenceFS.v7.PDF

http://m.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/03/japan-earthquake-2-years-later-before-and-after/100469/