The reality show "The Amazing Race" serves as a useful text for the cultural geography classroom. As competitors travel the world, they complete challenging tasks designed to be both educational and entertaining. Audiences see actual images from destinations around the world and learn about the unique cultures of these places. They also…

This article describes the findings of a study involving a professional development program that prepared middle school teachers to integrate content on the earliest eras of world history and world geography. In particular, this study focused on participants' (n = 37) use of geographic resources to integrate geography and history and to encourage…

This article evaluates the learning outcomes of a month-long cities in film course offered during an intensive, four-week semester at a liberal arts college in the United States. The course was divided into four shorter units that explored specific cities and subregions in detail through multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives. It begins…

This article reports the results of a case study that employed user-centered design to develop training tutorials for helping middle school social studies teachers use Web-based GIS in their classrooms. This study placed teachers in the center of the design process in planning, designing, and developing the tutorials. This article describes how…

Designed as a hybrid undergraduate class that includes online exercises and in-class discussion, Places in the Media helps students better understand the spatial politics of media that help structure our everyday lives. The article is meant as a do-it-yourself guide for instructors interested in building a course like Places in the Media. As such,…

Teaching world cultures in the middle-level geography classroom presents challenges both because of the complexity of culture and because of the characteristics of students of this age. One effective way to teach about a culture is through the use of cultural artifacts. This article discusses how to collect and use cultural artifacts in the…

Swiss-born Arnold Henri Guyot (1807-1884) was the first professionally trained geographer to hold an academic position in the United States. After his migration to this country in 1848 he lived for several years in Massachusetts. During this period he introduced contemporary German-Swiss ideas of geography to key opinion leaders in an important…

This article presents a design-based research study of the implementation of an energy unit developed for middle school students. The unit utilized Google Earth and a geographic information system (GIS) to support student understanding of the world's energy resources and foster their spatial thinking skills. Findings from the prototype study…

This article examines whether questions embedded in geography textbooks address three components of spatial thinking: concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning. A three-dimensional taxonomy of spatial thinking was developed and used to evaluate questions in four high school level geography textbooks. The results…

Presents an annotated list of nine selected resource materials from the ERIC Information System database that were designed by classroom teachers. Maintains that these provide effective alternatives to textbooks and other commercially produced materials. (CFR)

Kites allow teachers to illustrate wind patterns by calling on past experience and by present demonstration. Features of the wind illustrated by kites--the effect of surface friction on wind speed, change of wind direction with elevation, gust and lull sequence, and atmospheric stability and turbulence type--are discussed. (SR)

This article examines the results of an online national survey of K-12 educators who attended a series of GIS training workshops conducted by the authors between 1998 and 2004. Data from the self-report survey (N = 186) suggest new information about potential changes in instruction and assessment patterns following GIS training. The survey…

Presents a dynamic diagram designed for use in introductory college geography and geology classes to illustrate the processes which form the earth's crust. (AM)

The purpose and validity of the HSGP objectives are closely examined, selection and sequence of concepts are analyzed in terms of their academic, commercial and political expediency. The writer is a visiting academic on study leave from Australia. (Author/JB)