Sep

28th 2007

New Euro coin leaves Turkey off the map

Filed Under Current Events, Europe | Leave a Comment

The design of the new two Euro coin has caused a stir after Turkey is markedly absent from the map while parts of Belarus and Russia are included.  Charges of politics have arisen as an argument for why Turkey was not included despite the intentions of the European Commission to portray a larger map on the coin.  In defense, commission spokesperson Amelia Torres stated “The idea was to have a new design that would be a more stylised design, rather than a true geographical representation of Europe, which admittedly is more difficult to represent on such a small surface.”  The possible admission of Turkey to full European Union membership has been a point of contention with countries such as France in opposition. 

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Source: EUObserver.com ~ Turkey cut out of new euro coin map

Sep

25th 2007

Earth as Art now available as a Google Gadget

Filed Under World | Leave a Comment

Beautiful images of the earth are now available as a Google Gadget from the USGS that you can add to your iGoogle page.  Gadgets are mini-applicationst that can be added to your iGoogle homepage or to your own web site.  Use the <– and –> arrows to scroll through the gallery and download full-resolution, full-color JPG images of the ones that you like.  You can also add the Google Gadget to your own web site to make these images available to your visitors. 



Sep

24th 2007

Graduation Rates Map

Filed Under Education, Map Servers | Leave a Comment

The Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center recently announced a new mapping web site showing high school graduation rates across the United States by state and by district.  Along with panning and zooming, graduation statistics can also be searched for by place or by school district.  When you zoom in, place holders for each school district can be clicked on which results in a popup with summary information about the school district, number of schools, students and the percentage of students graduating.  Click on the report link to access a more detailed report about that particular school district. 

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Sep

24th 2007

Rote Geography Mastered at 23 Months Old

Filed Under Education, Offbeat | Leave a Comment

For a little balance after all the incoherent lack of geography education explanations and exposure to people who don’t know if the world is flat, I present to you “Lily: The World Map Master Baby Genius”.  I think the little dance she does on the bed helps her geography acumen. 




Lily was profiled on KSL News based out of Utah in August.  For the past six months she’s been locating countries around the world on a wall map and can consistently identify about 50 countries. 

Sep

23rd 2007

Visualizing Economics

Filed Under Education, United States | Leave a Comment

Described on her personal web site as an Interaction Designer, Catherine Mulbrandon has a very interesting site called “Visualizing Economics“.  As the name suggests, Visualizing Economics is a blog that focuses on taking data from government web sites and displaying them in a way that can be easily understood.  Most of the data is visualized as thematic maps and originates from the United States although there is one map entitled, “Where do Britain’s rich and poor live?” .   Also on the site is a poster section where some informative posters on economics can be ordered.

Sep

23rd 2007

Geography on your iPod

Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment

Matt from the About Geography site has some good pointers to podcasts relating to geography.  A list of GIS related podcasts can also be found on the GIS Lounge site. 

Sep

23rd 2007

Latest Geo Gaffe

Filed Under Current Events, Education | Leave a Comment

The latest round of fury in the geography realm was ignited when Sherri Shepherd, the newest host on the television show “The View” admitted during a lively debate that she didn’t know if the world was flat.  Her defense of her ignorance is that she was too busy feeding her child to look into it.  Given that this is something that I would have hoped she would have learned in elementary school (were there no globes where she was educated?), this latest gaffe only adds to the debate about the quality of education in geography within the United States.  Take a moment to make sure that geography education gets the funding it deserves. 



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