My good friend and worldgeochat moderator Peter Spiegel often times says, “geography isn’t just the most important of the social sciences, it’s the most important subject.”

I must admit that there are times where I sort of give Pete an eye roll when he tweets that. While I’ve always thought geography was important, the most important? With so much emphasis put on reading and math scores, I’ve always considered them to be the granddaddy of the academic subjects. So despite my love for geography and the social sciences, I’ve always accepted our role as being “the other academic subject.”

But this week I did an activity that I had never done before. It was an idea that started on my way to school and evolved as the day went on. The supporting question that we were dealing with was, “what are the tools of geography?” I needed the students to…