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

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 […]

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

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 […]

What makes the first week of the school year challenging?

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 […]

How do you define geography to your students?

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 […]

My favorite teacher

There is always that one teacher in your past. That one person that if it weren’t for their presence in your life, you may not be the person you are today. I was fortunate to have that teacher when I entered the 5th grade. Herman Bowden was one of the single most important people that I’ve […]

Build the World

I was recently approached to describe with more detail the process that I use for a Grid activity (If you want to read more about building the Grid, check it out here, and here) that uses data points for cities so students can construct a map of the world. This post will be fairly Spartan […]

Welcome to Google Earth

Here are a few of the large KMZ/KML files that I have created in Google Earth for you to download and use as foundation files for your own creations. They are: Blank Polygons of all world countries Countries of the World Rivers of the World Deserts of the World Mountain Ranges of the World Latitude […]

Preparation

You probably felt the dread creep somewhere into your soul this morning. It’s the last week of July and the next school year is still almost a month away (for most of the country, I recognize that many school districts are starting next week in some parts of the country) and yet many of […]

The Grid

This post might be a bit longer than ones I’ve been writing recently but I’ve been challenged by @cheffernan75 to write a description for a photo that I used in my recent blog post on a flexible learning space. The image in question has all the tables stacked and moved out of the way and […]

“How has social media changed the way you teach in the middle grades?”

After almost a month of frustration and self loathing about my reflection writing, I was re-inspired last night to get back up on that bucking bronco and write about #MSchat! The conversation was a weighty one and for good reason. Any time you gather a bunch of connected educators and administrators together to talk about […]

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