When you ask the average adult on the street how they learned about mapping when they were kids, they most likely will respond with some variation of this: “Uhhhh…. We colored a lot of maps in with colored pencils and memorized where all the countries were in the world.” Ugh. Gag me with a […]

Read more "How can we move map lessons beyond memorization and coloring?"

Wow. My head was spinning after that #worldgeochat. It is wonderful to observe a group of content specific educators get together and totally geek out about the one thing that gets them all intrigued about their subject. For geography teachers, it’s maps. I love maps. Seriously. My wife rolls her eyes anytime I see a […]

Read more "What skills do you teach to your students on how to use maps? How do you teach them?"

  By this point in the chat, most people’s heads are spinning with conversation and ideas. I wanted to give everyone a chance to slow down and share some awesomesauce (ok, spell check didn’t underline awesomesauce as being incorrectly spelled…. AWESOMESAUCE!). I was hoping to gain some new insights and ideas for ice-breaker activities and […]

Read more "What is a Day 1 activity to introduce geography to your students?"

When I first thought of this question, my intention was to figure out how geography teachers, specifically, work through the difficult task of getting students up to “geographic speed”. I was hopeful that at least a few of the chat participants were locked into my line of thinking and I wasn’t disappointed. Right off the […]

Read more "What makes the first week of the school year challenging?"

Here we go. Question two of #worldgeochat on August 30th was fairly straightforward. Or at least it appeared to be at first glance. It was another two part question that I regretted using the second half…again. I should’t have included the second part because it made for a rushed, hurried conversation. The two part question was: How […]

Read more "How do you define geography to your students?"