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Danny Edelson is Vice-President of Education for National Geographic.

November 5, 2008

Dear Senator Obama,

Like so many Americans, I am filled with hope this morning. One of the many reasons is your belief in the importance of taking the interconnectedness of Americans—to each other, to the other peoples of the world, and to the environment—into account when you make decisions.

So many of the challenges we face in today’s world are the result of our failure to recognize this interconnectedness when we make decisions as individuals or as a nation. The growth of Anti-American sentiment abroad in recent decades, this year’s global food shortages, human-induced global warming, and the international credit crunch of the last quarter are all examples of how our interconnectedness magnifies the impact of decisions that individuals, businesses, and governments make.

From what you have said on the campaign trail, I am confident that your administration will set a new standard for taking this interconnectedness into account in decision-making. But I hope that you will not stop there. I hope that you will make sure that learning about this interconnectedness and how to account for it in decision-making will be part of the education that every student in America receives.

The U.S. has done a dismal job of educating our young people about the world and the complex interdependencies that link us to each other and to the natural resources and ecosystems that sustain us.

Why has this happened? Because the U.S. has abandoned geographic education in favor of other priorities. Of course, for most of us, the phrase “geographic education” evokes an image of map-coloring and memorization of country locations, an image that has nothing to do with understanding interconnectedness.

The reality is that the image of geographic education we formed in our school days could not be farther from the reality of modern geography. The essence of modern geography is, in fact, interconnectedness.

Modern geography is the study of systems on Earth and how they interact. These include social systems like countries and markets, cultural systems like religions and languages, ecological systems like food webs and habitats, and physical systems like oceans and the atmosphere. Other disciplines study these systems as well, but what makes geography uniquely important is that it focuses on how these systems connect places to each other, so that geographic education teaches us how causes in one place lead to effects in others.

Modern geography teaches us how each individual’s decisions about energy use could contribute to a chain of causality that, through the intermediate effect of climate change, could lead to a precipitous rise in sea-levels and the loss of hundreds of millions of homes around the world over the course of a century.

Geography also teaches us how the decision to convert agricultural land in Illinois to the production of ethanol could contribute to food shortages in Africa and Southeast Asia within a year. Maybe most important, it teaches us how differences in the placement of public transport, grocery stores, and banks can make the difference between a residential area of alienated and isolated residents and a community with a sense of shared responsibility.

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Adam J. Schwartz is My Wonderful World’s public engagement coordinator for New York City. He teaches Geographic Information Systems and Global History at the Academy of Urban Planning in Brooklyn, New York, and is an historical tour guide for the Center for the Urban Environment.

We live in an age of maps. According to author and cartographer Dennis Wood, over 99.9% of all maps ever created were created during the last 100 years. They surround us in our daily activities: in newspapers, on weather reports, and throughout our day. With tools like Google Maps and the National Geographic Map Machine  they are available at the merest click. We are all map consumers, including our students. 

Having a map at your fingertips is an everyday luxury, but the fact is that someone has got to make all those maps. That someone could be your students, or even you! Making your own maps is a great option for teachers who want to create their own materials. And for students it can be a hook for getting involved in geography and geographic careers. Many of our students are already interested in technology. So by showing them how they can apply that to making a map, you open up a whole new potential career, in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

So what’s GIS? GIS technology is the nuts and bolts behind almost every map we use, and is vital for many of the services we use everyday, both public (power and water systems) and private .GIS is, at its simplest level, software that combines location and information in a simple visual format.  And during the last few years, it’s become easier to access than ever before. 

More importantly, Geospatial Technology, of which GIS is a subset, is one of the fastest growing sectors of the technology industry. If a student chooses GIS, the chances are great that there will be a job waiting for them after college, or even before. 

A tool for teachers and students

Vocational education is not what brings most teachers to GIS. And it doesn’t take any special training for you to get started using it in your classroom.  I’m certainly no mastermind at GIS, I’m just a teacher who loves maps, and making them! That’s what led me to take a short teacher training course with Carol Gersmehl of New  York's Regents Center for Geographic Learning. Beyond that, most of what I’ve learned is from the same tutorials my students use. At the Academy of Urban  Planning, I’m lucky to co-teach with an experienced geographer, Josh Lapidus, but most of what I have learned is on the job.

The most important lesson I’ve taken out of making maps is that while it may be the “long way round”—as compared to using published maps--you can get much more out of the journey.

As a teacher, GIS mapping can be the simplest way to get just the right map. Yes, you can Google for hours for just the right map for that special activity. Or, with a little practice, you can make it yourself.  And whether you give your lessons with an overhead, a projector, or a SMARTboard, the multiple layers of a GIS map enable you to better explain any spatial phenomenon.

For our students, we all want to make our activities more engaging. And most educators would agree that students remember more of what they do than what they read, see, or hear. And they are more interested, too.

Consequently, a student making his or her own map can build new levels of understanding as they see how borders change, and how topography, climate, and demographics interact to explain historic or scientific processes. It’s a constructivist approach to geography, with the students doing the constructing. 

And best of all, when they are finished with a GIS map, a student has the pride of printing it! These polished artifacts not only celebrate what’s been learned, they look great on a wall, or even better, in a portfolio. This year at my school, the Academy of Urban Planning, many of our students are submitting portfolios for colleges focusing on arts, architecture, and design. And in each of those portfolios is a map they made with me.

We don’t expect many of our students to come out of our program as cartographers, but they all come out with a greater mastery of real world computer skills, better literacy skills (from all those tutorials!), and a more insightful understanding of the world around them. I am lucky enough to teach a yearlong dedicated GIS class, but everything we do is taught in connection with Science (Urban Ecology), AP Human Geography, and US History. Along the way, our students also develop skills in technology and geography. 

Here’s how it works for us: After starting with Google Maps and Google Earth, my students worked up to AEJEE, a very basic GIS program (more on that below). They are currently following AEJEE tutorials, in preparation for building their own mapping projects. The published tutorials have dealt with settlement patterns in US history and the US Census. We have also written our own tutorials on the 2008 election.

As for projects, we start those in the spring. In past years, we have focused on environmental justice and local history. This spring, we will be combining both themes by making maps for a local environmental group that is working to clean up NYC’s dirtiest body of water, Newtown Creek.

Of course, not everyone can dedicate the time we do to mapping with GIS technology. But there's a new place for it in your classroom. It's just a matter of getting started!

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If you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting Joseph Kerski, Education Manager for ESRI, at a conference or, better yet, in a hands-on classroom setting, you know that he is as dynamic, passionate, and charming as he is adept at what he does.  We were thrilled when Joseph agreed to take a moment out of his recent trip exploring GIS education in Taiwan to answer some of our questions about geospatial technology and his work with ESRI.

Please tell us a bit about what you do as Education Manager for ESRI.
What do you like best about your job?

As Education Manager, I am part of a team that focuses on expanding the geographic perspective and spatial analysis through the use of GIS technology and methods at all levels of education, both formal and informal. I write GIS-based curriculum for a variety of disciplines and levels, seek and support partnerships with organizations to advance GIS in education, conduct online, face-to-face, and hands-on workshops and courses, provide technical and pedagogical support for educators working with geospatial technology, and conduct research in the effectiveness and implementation of GIS in education.  What I like best about it all is the opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of thousands of people annually, around the world.  Another wonderful part of my job is the talented and dedicated people on our ESRI Education Team that I serve with, and the fact that ESRI is so supportive of education.

How did you get to your current position? I notice that you hold a PhD degree—is this in geography? Education? Another related field?

After serving for 4 years as Geographer at the US Census Bureau, 17 years as Geographer at the USGS, and as adjunct instructor at several universities, the fine folks at ESRI convinced me that to join their team would allow me to have a greater potential impact on society, as well as allow for increased opportunity for personal and professional growth.  As I have 3 degrees—all in Geography, I guess you would say I have a one track mind!  Actually, one could say that all geographers have a multi-track mind, right?

What trends have you seen in the use of geospatial technology in the classroom in the last five years? Ten years? What do you think classroom trends will look like into the future?

In the past 20 years, geospatial technologies have been affected by six trends that directly impact the classroom.  First, the software moved from something confined largely to a mini- or mainframe computer to something that could be effectively run on any computer.  Second, the software moved from a prompt requesting user input to a series of graphical user interfaces and wizards that guide the user through processes, and thus GIS software has become much more visual as well as more user-friendly.  Indeed, some GIS work can be done entirely with web-GIS portals on the Internet.  Third, because of the Internet, educators using geotechnologies easily share what they are doing with others, access spatial data sets without the need to transfer them via tapes, disks, and other media, and collaborate with others to learn about the Earth and its people.  Fourth, geospatial technologies have gone mobile—on your PDA, on your cell phone, in your car, and thus is becoming familiar to the general public.  Fifth, the expansion of GIS into more fields more rapidly than workers could be trained brought a focus by the US Department of Labor on geotechnology education and subsequent funding by NSF and others.  Sixth, a community of educators who are passionate about teaching with GIS and teaching about GIS has become a growing international community.  Each of these trends has hastened the use of GIS at all levels of education, both formal and informal.  Because I see GIS as “applied geography,” I believe that these trends have increased the breadth and depth of geography being used in everyday decisions.  However, one only needs to look at the deforestation and urban sprawl that continues on a daily basis to realize that we still have a long way to go.  Still, I have great hope for the future.

Can you tell us a little about the educational value to students of creating maps, and how this compares to the practice of interpreting maps?

I believe that the primary value of creating and interpreting maps is to foster the geographic perspective.  Geography is not simply a body of content knowledge, but provides a way of looking at the world.  I would argue that with the explosion of mash-ups, GIS, and other tools that generate as many maps each day as we used to produce in a decade, it is more important to understand how to interpret maps than to create them.  We must encourage students to become critical consumers of all information, including maps, asking questions such as:  Who created this map?  For what purpose was it created?  What content is the map showing, and what content is it leaving out?  What errors are inherent in the map?  What spatial relationship is the map showing?  Nevertheless, creating maps is also valuable, because it helps students understand the value judgments inherent in the process.  Furthermore, now more than ever, we need people who know how to create maps and spatial databases to help us grapple with the complex issues we face in societies around the world.

Should non-geography teachers of subjects like science, history, mathematics, or language arts care about maps?

I will put it bluntly—without the geographic perspective, and the ability to use and apply this perspective using geotechnologies—we are going to have a rough time in the 21^st Century, and so will the Earth on which we depend.  A ‘geographic perspective’ informs just about every other discipline.  When epidemiologists study the spread of diseases, scientists study climate change, or businesspersons determine where to locate a new retail establishment, they use spatial thinking and analysis. In each case, GIS provides the critical tools and geography provides the critical framework for studying these issues and for solving very real problems on a daily basis. Geography is not simply a ‘nice to have’ subject for an already crowded educational curriculum. It underpins the critical thinking skills, technology skills, citizenship skills, and life skills that in turn underpin all other disciplines.  Geography is essential for grappling with the essential issues of the twenty-first century. If we continue to ignore geography education, we do so at our own peril.

People have always been fascinated with investigating the Earth. For centuries, maps have stirred imaginations and inspired explorations of the unknown.  Today, geography is more relevant than ever before as issues of climate change, cultural diversity, economic globalization, urban sprawl, biodiversity loss, sustainable agriculture, water quality and quantity, crime, energy, tourism, politics, and natural hazards grow in importance on a global scale and affect our everyday lives. To grapple with these issues requires a populace that has a firm foundation in geography, a populace that not only can see the ‘big picture’ but one that understands how different patterns and trends are related from a global scale down to the local community.

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Yesterday I shared details of our recent Public Engagement Coordinator (PEC) training at the NCGE conference. This morning I'm happy to report that one of our PECs has done his homework! Stephen Veliz, our industrious PEC from Florida, included this post about Geography Awareness Week on his blog "Teaching in Tallahassee"; which focuses on integrating Web 2.0 technologies across the curriculum:

Geography Awareness Week is coming up from November 16-22, and it has never been needed more than now.

Florida, like most of the country, has aggressively embraced civics education. Now let me assure you, I am an advocate of enhanced civics education. Watch any of the late-night man on the street clips and it becomes painfully clear that Americans are woefully our of touch with the workings and institutions of their country. So I am excited about the opportunity to help correct this tragedy of American education.

But there is another tragedy that is getting less attention - that of the geographic illiteracy that has swept across our nation over the past several decades. Consider the 2006 Roper study on geographic literacy:

Read the rest of the article at "Teaching in Tallahassee."

Great work Stephen! An apple for the teacher :-)

Image courtesy www.district87.org

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Last weekend geography educators and enthusiasts from across the country traveled to Dearborn, Michigan, for the annual National Council on Geography Education (NCGE) conference.

The highlight of the event for the My Wonderful World team was an intensive, spirited, one day workshop for our Public Engagement Coordinators (PECs). These are our grassroots organizers who promote the cause for geographic education in communities across the nation—and the world.

We started the training session by posing a series of questions related to messaging and strategy: 
Why is geography important?

What do we want the public to do?

How can we promote Geography Awareness Week 2008 through traditional and new media?

How can partnerships and events enhance campaign reach?

Then, we put the PECs to work developing plans to localize the campaign in their states. At the end of the day, though, I think we may have learned as much from them as they did from us. This highly energetic, experienced group of educators brought some great ideas to the table that we are excited to implement soon!

Most rewarding was that the PECs carried the energy generated at the workshop with them throughout the rest of the weekend, infecting others in the NCGE community with the same fervor for geographic activism, and actively participating in several additional National Geographic-led sessions at the conference.

 

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Three schools. Three books and award-winning authors. In three countries.

 

This is the gist of the groundbreaking Reading Across Continents program uniting students in Washington, D.C., Nigeria, and Ghana through the shared reading of literature.

High school students will read American author and National Teacher of the Year Sharon Draper’s Copper Sun, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, and a book by Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo. Through the use of blogging and teleconference technologies, they will discuss cultural and literary connections with each other and the authors themselves. A select group of students will culminate their experience by traveling to foreign destinations as “Literacy Ambassadors,” working with their newfound friends to develop literacy-focused community service projects.

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We're back with Silvia Tolisano, Technology Integration Facilitator at San José Episcopal Day School in Jacksonville, Florida, for the final of three posts about her Global Studies program. Silvia concludes with a  message on the power of maps to facilitate learning and build bridges between prior and newly constructed knowledge.

“Making connections” is a primary goal for educators. Understanding is directly related to being able to connect new material, facts, ideas, and concepts to previously learned knowledge.

Using maps is a great way of allowing these connections to grow. Our Global Studies curriculum is taking advantage of many different ways to incorporate maps into the program.

While studying China, fourth graders were assigned a specific province. It was each group’s goal to research particular characteristics of their province. Agriculture, animals, population and industries were some of the characteristics they focused on.

A giant map of China was placed on the wall. Each group received a large puzzle piece in the shape of their province, which they decorated with information they had learned.

As the culminating project, the students presented the research of their assigned province and added the puzzle piece to the big map. Once the map was completed, the teachers and students discussed the importance of each province in relationship to the country and world. Answers to questions, like “What would happen if this province with its agricultural production did not exist?” or “Why do these two neighboring provinces farm the same types of crops?” suddenly became clearer to the students as they were able to make these connections.

Throughout the school, maps were placed on walls and bulletin boards to show students where the traveling teachers and bear were on a daily basis.

Teachers printed out images from the photo stream on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) and created connections to the geographical location on the map.

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In her first piece, Silvia Tolisano described a global studies program combining geography, technology, and a traveling Teddy Bear named José  at the San José Episcopal Day School in Jacksonville, Florida. In her second guest entry, Silvia explains how José's adventures inspired the creation of a Teddy Bear cross-cultural communication and education network. Who needs avatars when you have a bevy of globe-trotting teddies?

 

Out of the Travel Bear’s trips to China and Egypt another project seemed to grow naturally:

Teddy Bears around the World

The site provides a space to wander around, read and communicate with different teddy bears around the world. Our students hear about their lives and adventures in different parts of the globe. It allows them to see each other’s countries, customs and traditions through the eyes of our “teddy bears” and open their horizons to a more global perspective.

                                 

 

Each time a new Teddy Bear joins the conversation, their image is added to the “Teddies of the World Gallery” and a bookmark is placed on the “Where in the World Map.”

We love to welcome new Teddy Bears. Please consider joining with your class.

Adding a Clustr Map to the Teddy Bears Around the World blog, which logs visitors and their geographic location, has also provided a great visual and opportunity for conversations with our students.

 

Twenty-first century skills not only include being able to make connections, but also stress communication as well as collaboration. Through our Teddy Bear Project, we are seeing these skills developing in our students.

For example: The Teddy Bear “Eddy” from England asked for help:

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Those of you who have been following our campaign for a while probably remember the My Wonderful World Challenge we created last fall. Basically, we selected a series of geographic proposals submitted by teachers on the Donors Choose website, and asked readers to help out with donations. We raised $1000 dollars to help fund ten proposals in total. Louise Monroe, a fourth and fifth grade teacher at Frazier Elementary School in Greensboro, North Carolina, submitted a project entitled “Geocaching: Geo-Spatial Technology,” which called for  GIS equipment to explore the exciting world of geocaching. “Geocaching” is a type of modern-day treasure hunt that requires mathematical and geospatial knowledge to uncover clues and find hidden treasures.

 
One of the best parts about the Donors Choose program is that they provide donors with substantive feedback from the teachers and students whose specific projects they helped fund. Recently, we received a package from Ms. Monroe’s class. For us, this was the most valuable part of the whole experience! We were thrilled to hear how students were using geocaching to develop a broad range of practical skills and learn about their surrounding community. As one student said, geocaching not only helped expand her geographical understandings, but also helped her to learn “the benefits of geocaching and the beauty and the mysteries of the outdoors.” And if that’s not enough, she went on to explain that “Many of us also get a good P.E. workout.” How about that: a workout that is fun AND educational!

 

 

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Guest Blogger Chris Shearer examines the state of federal support for Geography education.

Photo by Theodor Horydczak, courtesy Library of Congress.

You may be wondering to yourself, “If the world is becoming flat, or post-American, or potentially close to collapse, how is it that Geography—THE subject in school that addresses these issues so well—is given such short shrift?” Okay, maybe you weren’t wondering this but I, as a card-carrying geography education advocate, was wondering it for you.

Well, here’s one possible answer: federal policy.