Strollerderby : geography

When Education Works

Adrienne Martini — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Feel good stories about Rwanda are thin on the ground. Which is how it should be. It's hard to find genocide heartwarming. But in 1993, a few months before Rwanda exploded in bloodshed, something kinda cool happened in a classroom in rural Nebraska.

Global geography teacher Tim Walz decided to try something a little bit different with this group of high school students. Rather than simply require them to memorize facts about the globe and the Holocaust, he had them look deeper into how genocides happen. On the final, he asked them to predict where the next one would be.

The result gives you just a little bit of faith in the American education system. It might also kill any faith you had in people when it comes to avoiding mass murder. But let's focus on the good.

Map credit: Perry-Castenda Library

My New Geek Obsession Helps Teach My Kids Too

Karen Murphy — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:45:00 GMT

I'm probably one of the last to get on board with this sort of thing, but I've become a bit obsessed with the Travelpod Traveler IQ Challenge app on Facebook. You know the thing I'm talking about? It's the thing where you can ~~amaze~~ ~~astound~~ ~~challenge~~ bore your friends with your knowledge of geography and your skill with clicking (oh woe to you if you're working with the mouse of a Macbook, which under my sausage-like protrusions is less than accurate at times).

But even better, I've hooked my older son on this, and he routinely challenges me (sucker). And he seems to be learning stuff too.

We Americans are *cough* notoriously lacking in knowledge of geography outside our own country (what! castles in Ethiopia! not just mud huts?), and I'm finding this a perfect way to help my kids learn about their world. We already own an atlas, which is wonderful and gets a fair bit of use in between the Legos and the light sabers, and my kids have traveled outsdie the US several times, but there's something appealing about adding the competitive element that has hooked not only my son but likely soon his little sister as well (since she infiltrates everything he does anyway). And this is one computer game I am definitely on board with for either of them.

Oh. No, my kid doesn't have a Facebook profile, but I sent him to the app's parent site, Travelpod, where all the games are available.

Photo: www.caseresources.org

With an Atlas, Kids Can Have the Whole World in Their Hands

Karen Murphy — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:24:00 GMT

One of my favorite things to do as a child was pore over the family's atlas, a huge red tome weighing nearly as much as I did. I'd drag it out on to the living room floor and lie there flipping pages, lost in the enormity of the world so far away yet right there at my fingertips.

I had forgotten how much pleasure I derived from that until I read about the upcoming release of the 12th edition of the Philips Children's Atlas. Surely my kids could use the same rich experience I had of discovering the world via the glossy pages of an atlas, couldn't they? The fact that the atlas is published by what appears to be a nice old English couple makes it all the more appealing. I actually own one of their travel maps of Europe and it's pretty good, and they're planning future atlases for the really wee ones, for ages 5-7 and 3-5.

It's never too soon for geography, is it?