A VerySpatial Podcast
Shownotes – Episode 391
January 13, 2013
Main Topic: Some thoughts on digital globes
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The AP (Advanced Placement) College Board has announced that it particularly needs AP Exam readers to score AP Human Geography and Environmental Science exams. Their website states that, “Each June, AP teachers and college faculty members from around the world gather in the United States to evaluate and score the free-response sections of the AP Exams.” In 2012 more than 11,00 readers participated, receiving an honorarium, travel expenses, and in some cases continuing education units.
The purpose of an AP exam is to provide college credit and advanced placement for high school students entering college. According to the AP website, AP placement helps students to qualify for college scholarships. The advanced placement exam for Human Geography uses the National Geography Standards with an emphasis on spatial analysis. They provide course descriptions and practice exams, which would be challenging for many geographers. The advanced placement exam for Environmental Science is interdisciplinary and includes many elements of the geosciences. They provide an Environmental Science course description and practice exam with questions about physical geography.
For students planning to take the AP Human Geography or Environmental Science exams, there are many practice exams and study guides available in book, website, and even web app format. The Human Geography exam takes over 2 hours and includes a 75 minute written exam section. Last year, one of the questions was to identify three examples of walls or other barriers built by countries in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Good Luck! to all students studying for the upcoming AP exams.
The ZSL London Zoo‘s annual census of every zoo animal as part of their zoo license renewal is an example of how to turn a seemingly routine geospatial task into international news. The media and public discuss the event in a way that evokes the celebration of an annual holiday like Ground Hog’s day. While the zoo keepers use clipboards to count each animal in the field, it is logged into the International Species Information System (ISIS) software to manage international breeding programs for endangered animals from zoos around the world. ZSL London Zoo participates in breeding programs for 130 species. An interactive map on the ZSL London Zoo website gives visitors an idea of the animals being counted during the census. It is a great way to highlight the work of everyone involved and introduce them to aspects of zoo management beyond watching animals.
The Zoological Society of London opened the London Zoo as the world’s first scientific zoo in 1828 and continues to add new technology, innovations, and discoveries as they develop.They award a scientific medal, like the one awarded to Prof. Simon Hay for his work investigating the spatial and temporal aspects of mosquito born disease epidemiology and manages the Malaria Atlas Project to improve cartography of malaria. It is one of several different divisions that fall under the Zoological Society’s umbrella including the Whipsnade Zoo and the ZSL Institute of Zoology. The Zoological Society utilizes geospatial professionals in capacities from Dr. Chris Yesson‘s work on phyloclimatic modeling and classes in GIS to field scientists using remote sensing data donated by GeoEye for gorilla conservation. The ZSL created the EDGE Evolutionary Distinct & Globally Endangered program as a global conservation effort to protect species with unique evolutionary history using Google Earth to create awareness and interest. The ZSL encourages partnerships, collaborations, and opportunities for citizen science and volunteers on their website.
The National Endowment for the Humanities and SUNY Cortland is accepting applications for two one week workshops at the Great Camps of the Adirondacks exploring the Gilded Age of America and it’s wilderness called “Forever Wild” Workshop. According to their website, it is open to a diverse group of interdisciplinary and mixed grade level educators from teachers, librarians at any type of school, including home schooling parents. Applications are due by March 4, 2013. Attendees will be some of the first educators to also have the opportunity to visit Great Camps Sagamore and Uncas. SUNY at Cortland owns Camp Huntington, where the workshop will take place.
The schedule for the week includes topic areas that are geography or geospatial related. This includes discussions of urban versus rural landscapes, a seaplane ride of the Adirondack’s geography, and explorations of how industrialists used their space. There are also opportunities to integrate geospatial technologies into a group digital stories teaching project and other project development. Although it isn’t specifically stated on the website, educators and librarians with a geography background would be a great addition to the group participants at the workshop.
I recently got an Ipad Mini and started to look for free books to download from Kindle, Google, Project Gutenberg, and the many other free resources that are available online. Once I started looking for geospatial and geography related books the list became almost mesmerizing. I found old books from “Home Geography for Primary Grades” in Google ebooks to The Atlas of Ancient and Classical Geography by Samuel Butler in Project Gutenberg. Some of the books are good examples of traditional cartographic methods such as “Terrestrial and Celestial GLOBES: Their History and Construction Including A Consideration of their Value as Aids in the Study of Geography and Astronomy which was scanned in to Project Gutenberg. Kindle ereader and Project Gutenberg both have copies of “Geography and Plays” by Gertrude Stein, which is written in the then modern style of the 1920’s about different countries around the world. Exploring the old geography books online is a fun way to spend an afternoon.
If you are looking for something more recent, Google ebooks and Google Scholar provides a significant number of chapters for more current books and journal articles on GIS and geospatial technologies including from 2013. Google Scholar also includes a patent search, legal documents, Federal and State courts. This is interesting reading even if it isn’t specifically in your industry, because you might just come across a new area of interest.