Week+Three+Fall+2016

Week Two Assignments Read Chapter Two: Portraying Earth Read North America Map Study Prezi Quiz on Chapter Two opens Quiz on North America opens Discussion for Chapter Two Discussion for North America

This week your assignment is to read chapter two Portraying Earth and review the supplemental material located here: Chapter Two Portraying Earth, and you will also need to review and label the North America map, located here: North America Map Study. You will have a quiz on chapter two and you will have a quiz on North America on Blackboard.

You have two discussion assignments this week, one for Chapter Two and one for North America. For the Chapter Two post, since it is all about the tools of geography, I would like for you to write about one of the tools of geography that you find interesting, enjoyed learning about, or had any difficulty understanding. I would like for you to use at least one vocabulary word in your posting. For your North America posting, I would like you to have fun with this one, and write about a place in North America that you would like to visit, or that you have visited. Please include a picture in your North America post and feel free to use pictures, maps, or videos in your Chapter Two discussion. You are not required to comment on others students posts for points, but you may if you wish, and please keep comments positive, such as "I agree" or "that's the one I picked too because..."

Explanation of Chapter Two - Chapter Two is all about the tools of geographers and how we use them to portray Earth. It is one of my favorite chapters to lecture on. I have included several videos in the Prezi to help with the different concepts and I also have more articles and videos on the class web page that I have not had a chance to embed into the Prezi yet. There are also links on the chapter two page to several apps that use GPS and GIS. Of course you are not required to use the apps or read any of the supplemental material, but if you are interested, there are a lot of neat things that connect to this chapter. There are also a lot of local jobs that involve the use of these types of tools, so I am enthusiastic about them in the classroom. I hope you enjoy this chapter. In November, there will be a field trip to ESRI in Redlands, which is the company that invented GIS (and is a major employer in our area) that you are all invited to - I will provide more information as it becomes available to me, but at ESRI, you can see many of these tools in action and how we use them to better understand Earth.

Here is a list of some of my favorite apps that I like to talk about in class that use geospatial technology:

Latest Quakes Maverick GPS Wunderground Weather Google Earth & Google Maps Google Sky Map App Map of Life App Map My Walk Pokemon Go

You can search Google Play for these apps, or the App Store. All of these are free (at least for Android, sorry for my Apple Users, not all are free through Apple.) I like to talk about the apps that use geospatial technology because I like for my students to take away from my class skills that they can use in the real world. Latest Quakes will give you real time earthquake information. Maverick is a GPS app, so you phone will work like a handheld GPS, great for geocaching, or finding anything with GPS coordinates. Wunderground Weather is a great weather app, which will give you real time weather information as well as letting you adjust the layers on the weather map for what you want to see - which makes is a public weather GIS that you can use for free. You may be familiar with Google Earth and Google Maps - both of which use GPS and GIS. Google Sky Map App is one that you can point at the sky and it will show you a map of the stars where you point it, so you know what you are looking at. Map of Life App is a great tool for learning what you are looking at in nature - you can go to the map, select a location, and then a directory of all of the plants and animals comes up and you can identify species that you see - you can also report sightings which helps biologists better understand where things are located and possibly bring protection to threatened or endangered species - this is one of my favorite apps and I have used it to identify many species of birds, lizards, snakes, plants, and trees. I gave my summer students extra credit to post photos of things they identified using the app and there were some excellent pictures. I might do that for your class if you are interested, so let me know if you are. Map my walk is another favorite of mine, you can open the app when you are going to walk and it will map where you go and tell you how many calories you have burned. I listed Pokemon Go because it does indeed use both GPS and GIS and because of this, I learned how the game worked and how to play it. I have linked a video at the very bottom of the Chapter Two page, a 30 minute documentary about Pokemon Go which included some serious discussion about the game - about who has access, who does not, what happens to public spaces, and other serious points, there is an Urban Geographer on the show who is interviewed because some of the things that have happened with the game are very interesting to geographers, and by the way I am an Urban Geographer, so I am interested in the game. Also, if you like to play the game, I could be talked into a Pokemon field trip : )

Information Regarding North America Map Study

I know that this is your fist map study and quiz, so I wanted to say a little bit about what is expected of you. On the North America map page, you will see first the North America map which is uploaded onto Slideshare. Directly below it, you will see the pdf of the map - you will need to print this out, or come and pick one up in the Physical Science office, unless you have purchased the Geography coloring book. I have posted the map on Blackboard too. The first page of the map packet is the cover page, the next page is the list of terms - this is what you need to learn - the page after that is the physical map of North America, that is the one that you will work with. There is also a political map, but this is just for reference - your map study is of the physical geography of North America. The political map is included because some of the descriptions may use states as a reference, and you have the political map with all of the states just in case you need it. So anyway, it is your assignment to learn where all of the map terms are and what their significance is. There is a Prezi of North America, it will walk you through the map study. It follows the terms in order, and there is a map, picture, and description of each map term.

I know that some of you may have some anxiety over this first map study and quiz, please relax, it will be OK. My last online classes were able to find all of the terms and several of them had perfect scores on the quiz. Also there have been a number of times that onsite students have missed map studies and they are also able to find all of the terms and most are able to get A's too. North America is first because I am hoping since you live here, you may know where some of these place are. If there is a term you cannot locate, try doing a Google search because all of the places are well known. Of course you can ask me too if you need any help.