Go Geocaching!
Geocaching is a great activity to get kids outside for hands-on learning experiences. Last summer season I outlined a handful of concepts for utilizing geocaching to teach lessons on geospatial awareness, Earth science, and digital citizenship. Learn more about those concepts here. If you can get parents to set up the Geocaching app on their phones, geocaching could make for a great “at-home” geography lesson for moms and dads to do with their kids.

Nations Inside Countries (Bizarre Borders, Part 1) was produced by CGP Grey seven years ago to highlight where a few of the landlocked nations of the world are and how they ended up being landlocked. The video likewise highlights nations that have only one next-door neighbor..

Scribble Maps is a digital mapping tool that lets anybody make free-hand drawings on top of a variety of base maps. To utilize it just head to ScribbleMaps.com/ develop/ and choose one of the drawing tools.

Mathigon Maps Lessons.
When attempting to develop maps of the world, in Surface Area of a Sphere Mathigon consists of an interactive diagram that highlights the problem that cartographers have. The interactive diagram reveals 4 map forecasts and the locations of the map that are misshaped by each forecast. Trainees can click each of the map projections to see a comparison of an area on the 2D map to the same area on a globe. In general, its an excellent way for trainees to see how two dimensional world maps can distort the size and scale of an area..
Mathigons Map Coloring Challenge asks students to use as couple of colors as possible to color in all 50 U.S. states without having the same color touching two states at the same time. If I color New Hampshire purple, I cant utilize purple on Vermont, Maine, New York, or Massachusetts however I might use purple on Pennsylvania.
On an associated note the USGS provides a free map projections poster (link opens a PDF). You might likewise wish to have a look at Projection Wizard as another tool for revealing students how various projections misshape the regions of the world..

As soon as youve made your selections you can save your map as a PNG or JPG file to disperse and print to your students.In this brief video I demonstrate how to use Mapbox Studio to produce your own custom-made coloring maps.

Odd Borders.
Earlier this year I read an intriguing post titled Belgian Farmer Accidentally Moves French Border. The whole story is practically exactly what the title states. When plowing a field, a farmer moved a stone that was in his method. It just took place that the stone he moved is a marker for the border between two little towns in Belgium and France. The border itself is not in conflict and the border is a relatively normal one between two friendly next-door neighbors. Still, checking out the story advised me of a couple of videos that Ive bookmarked about irregular country borders..

Canada & & The United States (Bizarre Borders, Part 2) describes why border in between the United States and Canada may appear like a long straight line in lots of places, however is not a straight line. The video likewise looks into some border quirks and disputes. The Google Earth file used in video is readily available to download here on CGP Greys site.

Seterra uses hundreds of geography games in 39 languages. You can play the video games online in your web internet browser or download the apps to use a phone or tablet. In the following video I demonstrate four manner ins which you can play the online version of Seterras location video games.

Roadside America supplies a nice method for trainees to discover some pieces of Americana present and past. I d utilize the map as a way to spark students interest to conduct a little research study about a few of these fascinating roadside destinations. I might also utilize the map as a model for having trainees produce their own roadside destinations maps of locations in their home states that they might have seen and or taken photos of.

Mult Dev is a totally free tool that lets you quickly produce animated maps. In this short video I show how to produce an animated map with Mult Dev.

Roadside America.
The Library of Congress houses the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive. That archive includes nearly 12,000 photos of interesting roadside attractions all over the United States and eastern Canada. The collection consists of photos of things like gas stations formed like a dinosaur, windmills that act as ice cream stands, funky miniature golf courses, and great deals of neon indications for restaurants and motels..

In.
this short video I show how to see timelapse imagery in the web variation and in the desktop version of Google Earth.

Make a Group Map of Stories.

MapBox Studio.
With a free Mapbox Studio account you can create a customized outline map of any city, town, or community of your picking. You can choose how much or how little detail you want to include in the map. Once youve made your selections you can save your map as a PNG or JPG file to print and distribute to your students.In this brief video I show how to use Mapbox Studio to produce your own custom coloring maps.

In.
The US-Canada Border Splits This Road Down the Middle he goes to the border in between Stanstead, Quebec, Canada and Derby Line, Vermont, United States where the border truly does divide a road or, relying on who you ask, the roadway splits the border. In the video he discusses what you can and cant do on the roadway in addition to how border enforcement has actually increased in the last couple of years. (Speaking as someone who has lived reasonably near to the US-Canada border for all of my adult life and has actually crossed the border countless times, border crossings today are a lot more controlled today than they were the very first time I crossed in the late 90s).

This is a concept that I got numerous years ago from my buddy Jim Wells. Jim had his trainees write narratives of pleased memories and then place those stories on a printed map. Today, you can have students do this on Google Maps or Scribble Maps. This activity can help students see the significance of place in the development of memories. You can even have your entire class contribute to one map by having them enter their stories in a Google Form then using the corresponding spreadsheet to create a Google Maps of stories.
My video on how to do that is ingrained listed below..

The Library of Congress released an ESRI Story Map of pictures in the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive. I found it enjoyable to click on the markers on the map to find some roadside attractions in my house state as well as others around the country.

City Walks.
City Walks is a neat site that you can use to opt for a virtual walk in more than a dozen cities worldwide. You can experience the cities with or without sound. You can choose virtual walks in the daytime or in the evening. At the start of each walk youll see some fast facts about the city that might assist you understand a little bit more about what youre seeing during the walk.City Walks is essentially a truly nice display screen of street-level YouTube videos with some additional menu choices overlaid on them. Thats not indicated as a knock on the website as it is a great site. That does mean that there isnt any interactivity built into virtual walks like you may experience in a virtual truth experience. The video sources for City Walks are clearly identified in the lower-right corner of each screen.

Timelapse Imagery in Google Earth.

Make Your Own Compass.
Make Your Own Compass explains to kids what a compass is, how it works, and how they can make their own with typical home products..

In the video above I showed a few of the timelapse images of urban spread around some cities in the United States. That imagery could be used as the prompt for a research task for students to examine the causes of the development of those cities.

Find Out What Geographers Do.

Tom Scott has also produced a number of interesting videos about interesting borders in between nations. In The Most Complex Borders in Europe: Why Do We Have Nations? he discusses the complicated border in between Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands and Baarle-Hertog in Belgium..

I may likewise use the map as a design for having trainees create their own roadside destinations maps of places in their house states that they might have seen and or taken pictures of.

Discover the Towns of the Same Name.
This is an adjustment of an activity that I did as a sixth-grader in Mrs. Carlsons class in Manchester, Connecticut. She had us utilize atlases to see the number of other Manchesters there are in the world and where they are. Then we had to compose a brief blurb about each Manchester. The modern-day variation of this activity is to have students choose a common town name like Manchester and use Google Maps to learn the number of towns worldwide have that name. On their Google Maps or Scribble Maps trainees can add placemarks in which they compose about fascinating things about those towns. Trainees can include images and videos to their placemarks too.

Mult Dev.

The process that I described above for using Google Drawings and Google Jamboard can likewise be made with the online version of PowerPoint. To do that, produce a brand-new slide then use the incorporated Bing Images search to discover a map. Among the good features of the Bing Images integration in PowerPoint is that it will immediately look for Creative Commons accredited works and immediately place an attribution link. Once the image has actually been included to the slide you can use the integrated illustration tools to mark on the map.

Google Drawings and Google Jamboard both let you import images that you can then make use of top of. To do that just open a new Google Drawing or new Google Jamboard then use the incorporated image search to find a map. As soon as youve chosen a map you can use the drawing tools to mark on it. Heres a demonstration of how that process can operate in Google Drawings.

The Mind-Blowing Map Quiz is created to help students understand how Mercator forecast maps distort our view of the world. The interactive diagram shows 4 map projections and the locations of the map that are misshaped by each projection. Trainees can click on each of the map projections to see a contrast of an area on the 2D map to the exact same area on a globe.

Seterra.

Today is Geography Awareness Week. Its one of my preferred weeks of the year! Every year at this time I publish an updated list of a few of my preferred games, tools, lessons, and activities to promote geography awareness. Heres my upgraded list for 2021..

Developing layers and tours in Google Earth and Google My Maps can be a fantastic way for students to put together collections of geolocated info to summarize research, develop a book tour, or even develop safe walking and biking paths. In those cases, releasing Google Earth or My Maps is a bit more than you need.

The very first location to start a look for geography awareness week resources needs to be National Geographic. On their Geography Awareness Week page youll discover great deals of ideas including this one for hosting a geography test night ( link opens a PDF).
WorldCover ViewerWorldCover Viewer is an interactive land use map produced by the European Space Agency. The map lets visitors see how land is utilized worldwide and in specific locations. Visitors can zoom and pan to see land usage for a location or utilize the stats explorer tools constructed into the map to see land usage stats for a country, state, or province. Views of the map and associated data can be downloaded from the WorldCover Viewer. As youll see in my video overview of WorldCover Viewer, it include a tool for measuring areas of land usage. In my video summary I likewise show how to allow various layers on the map..

Making Use Of Digital Maps.

On its own the “Im Feeling Lucky” button supplies a good method for trainees to discover brand-new places.
This short video demonstrates how trainees can explore Google Earth in more information after clicking “Im Feeling Lucky.”.

There are likewise more than two dozen video games based on major cities around the world. And there is a game based on monuments of the world. In addition to the brand-new video games, City Guesser 3.0 has two brand-new video game play modes.

Im Feeling Lucky!From trips to video games to basic measuring tools, the web variation of Google Earth has a great deal of neat functions that can help students learn about the world. Among those cool functions is the “Im Feeling Lucky” button that is found on the left hand toolbar in Google Earth. Clicking that button will take trainees to a randomly-selected place worldwide..

GeoQuiz.
GeoQuiz is an online geography video game that just asks you to attempt to name as many nations as you can in fifteen minutes. As quickly as you go into a countrys name the globe on the screen spins to focus on that nation. If you misspell a nation the world does not spin and your entry doesnt count. You can play GeoQuiz on your own or you can complete versus other players in online spaces. In either case, you do not require to sign up or enter any personal information in order to play GeoQuiz. To bet others you can sign up with an existing room or create your own and invite individuals to join it. To have others join your space all you need to do is choose a name for your space and tell people to join it in the “online mode” on the GeoQuiz homepage.

Quizzity!Quizzity is an online geography video game that utilizes a concept discovered in lots of map-based games. That concept is to show you the name of a place and after that have you think its place by clicking a map. Quizzity quizzes you on cities all over the world. To increase the accuracy of your guesses you must zoom-in on a region before clicking the map. Each round of Quizzity presents you with six city names. Points are awarded for precision and speed.

What is a Map?
By seeing What is a Map? students can find out how maps developed over time, the political implications of maps, and how maps are utilized to represent information in addition to places.

The Mind Blowing Map Quiz.
The Mind-Blowing Map Quiz is created to help students understand how Mercator forecast maps misshape our view of the world. A couple of fun facts are tossed into the explanations of each response.
Can You Make an Accurate Map? is a great video to reveal after trainees have played The Mind-Blowing Map Quiz. The video offers a concise description of why Mercator projection maps do not accurately represent the size of things near the poles however are none-the-less used in many applications.