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For K-12 educators, Google has a host of online resources available at their Geo Education site.  The site provides resources to using Google’s Google Earth, Maps, Sky, and SketchUp applications in the classroom.  Available on the site are their “getting started” kits, ideas for the classroom and printable posters.

           

Salt: A World History is a fascinating story of an ingredient most of the world now takes for granted as easily available and affordable.  Mark Kurlansky takes the reader through the historical development of salt as a trade commodity and crucial food preservative.  Kurlansky looks at the earliest known uses of salt to cure food in China, the use of salt to pay Roman soldiers (hence the origin of the word “salary” and the phrase “worth his salt”, and the use of the salt in the all important cod fishing industry (many aspects of which overlap with Mark Kulansky’s Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World).

           

GeoTube is a growing collection of Geography videos from YouTube & other online sites hosted on Fliggo.  Members can add to the collection by uploading their own geography related videos or links to YouTube content.

Visit:   GeoTube

           

TIME looks at how Google is entering the realm of tracking epidemics with their Google Flu Trends tool and how such tools have the potential to serve as early warning resources.  Unlike official agency tracking that tend to rely only on hospital data, Google uses user-driven data which results in real-time information about people’s behavior even before they see a doctor about their illness:

Google Flu Trends claims it can pick up signs of health troubles up to two weeks ahead of official health reports, giving communities precious time to protect themselves and hopefully contain the spread of an infectious disease like influenza.

The article also looks at Veratect which produces a disease trend tracking program. 

Veratect’s tracking method includes analyzing Internet data (blogs and other sources), maintaining on-the-ground contact with health officials, text-mining news reports and government resources for keywords related to infectious-disease outbreaks and using satellite images of weather patterns to detect and predict the progress of global events like disease and civil unrest.

Read more: Is Google Any Help in Tracking an Epidemic? – TIME

           

Infra-red and GPS technologies has helped provide the most detailed measurement of the Great Wall of China, increasing the official to now 8,850km (5,500 miles).  Previous measurements were based on historical records and have been proven to underestimate the total length. 

Read more: Great Wall of China ‘even longer’  – BBC News

           

Carlton College has several online resources for using Google Earth as a teaching aid for geoscience education.  Their “Teaching with Google Earth” provides a comprehensive set of resources for understanding and using Google Earth as a teaching tool.  The “Examples of Google Earth Activities” has a list of activities that can be used in the classroom.  Lastly, check out the “Teaching Geologic Map Interpretation Using Google Earth” tutorial page.

           

The NY Times (which, in my opinion always does a great job at information design) has another interactive map of the United States showing the unemployment rate by county.  The graphic is a companion piece to a the recent article by David Leonhardt entitled “Job Losses Show Breadth of Recession“.   The map shows a correlation between higher unemployment rates and areas that had experienced a large housing bubble, are manufacturing centers or were already experiencing high unemployment rates.   Visit: Geography of a Recession – NY Times

USA Today also has a related graphic on the jobs growth forecast for 2009.  Visit: How jobs growth forecast was done – USA Today.

           

Taking the Pulse of our Planet: Volunteers Needed to Track Seasonal Signs of Climate Change
Released: 3/2/2009 12:00:00 PM

           

My Wonderful World (National Geographic) has started a campaign to encourage residents of the United States to notify their legislatures to support geography education:

Geography is essential to understanding today’s interconnected world—but our kids aren’t getting enough of it. Tell your lawmakers that you support geography education and urge them to do so as well.

Visit My Wonderful World’s Action Alert page to notify your lawmakers (seen via About Geography).

           

The Vulcan Project, which seeks to measure and map out carbon dioxide emissions across the United States, recently unveiled an interactive map using Google Earth (plugin required).  Using data from 2002, the map displays carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft, commercial, residential, electrical and other sources.  The project is a result of collaboration of researchs from Purdue, Colorado State University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and is funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy.

           

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, will be putting online their “Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing “.  This atlas, which has been in print form since 1996, documents the nearly 2,500 languages that are either in danger of becoming extinct or are recently extinct.  There are currently roughly 6,000 languages spoken around the world.  Currently the continent of Africa is online and plans are to add the rest of the globe.  Visitors can browse by language or country. 

Visit: Endangered Languages in Africa

           

Happy Valentine’s Day: 9 Gigantic Hearts From Above

           

David Gallo talks about some deep and shallow sea wonders on this fascinating video from the TED site.  The video starts out showing some bioluminescent fish.  The second part of the video reviews the amazing chamoflage abilities of cephlapods. Click on the gray box in the upper right hand corner to make the video larger.

Watch the Video: David Gallo: Underwater astonishments

           

The Boston Globe has some fantastic imagery of hurricanes taken from space.  Some of the imagery was captured from the International Space Station and others were taken by satellites. 

Read more: Hurricanes, as seen from orbit

           

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