Originally posted on Simply Health of Maine:
This is going to be a 3-part post. I’ll put the next two segments up separately to break up the reading… With very few exceptions, we all find ourselves every so often, stuck in a weird place. It’s called The Plateau. Whether it’s in fitness, healthy living, education,…
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?"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 […]
Read more "My favorite teacher"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 […]
Read more "Build the World"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 […]
Read more "Welcome to Google Earth"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 […]
Read more "Preparation"
peter spiegel 