Government Agencies Participate in Geography Awareness Week to Share Expertise with School Kids
Twenty-five years ago, the National Geographic Society’s Geography Education Program launched Geography Awareness Week (GA Week), an awareness program focused on highlighting the importance of geo-literacy and geo-education. GA Week is celebrated every third week of November with educational programs, activities and celebrations around the world.
Increasingly, geography professionals have gotten involved in GA Week activities, volunteering their time to help produce activities, make presentations at local schools, and otherwise share their expertise with their communities. Professionals who give their time during GA Week say they find it gratifying to share their expertise with the public, educate their communities about the important discipline of geography, and spark the interest of future geographers.
U. S. Forest Service Demonstrates 3D Aerial Imagery to Families
For instance, the University of Alaska in Fairbanks hosted its third annual GeoFest, and a number of volunteer geography professionals took time to share their work with the children and parents in attendance. Mark Riley, a remote sensing specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, was on hand to demonstrate the service’s new capabilities for viewing and measuring full-color digital aerial imagery in a 3D computing environment. Getting involved in GA Week “is a unique opportunity to share with the public and other agencies the advances and developments in geospatial technology that are helping to more efficiently manage and better understand the natural environment,” Riley says. “But mostly it was to spark some imagination and interest in kids.”
The most rewarding part of the day? “The reaction from kids and adults when they saw glaciers, streams, meadows, and trees for the first time from a birds-eye digital 3D perspective,” Riley says. “One kid became so immersed with looking at the landscape in digital 3D that his mother had to pull him away to visit some of the other activities. All of the kids reached for the 3D display to see if they could ‘touch’ the tops of miniature Spruce and Hemlock trees.”
U. S. Bureau of Land Management Teaches Kids Mapmaking Skills
Cindy Hamfler, GIS specialist at the Fairbanks office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, staffed a booth where children could make maps of Alaska with play dough, complete with toothpick labels for major features like the Yukon River and Mt. McKinley. At another table, kids used a computer to digitize their favorite places for shopping, recreation/play and their school. The mapping exercise used recent high-resolution aerial photography of the Fairbanks area. “Maps and geography are becoming integrated into so many facets of everyday life as computers, especially mobile devices, bring maps and imagery into classrooms and the palm of your hand,” Hamfler says.
Local Utility Department Educates Community About GIS
In Florida, the City of Palm Bay hosted its 6th Annual GIS Day this year at Brevard Community College, Palm Bay Campus. In addition, GIS staff from the city’s utility department also participated in a number of community outreach events to the local high schools and Girl Scout troops in conjunction with Geography Awareness Week. “The most rewarding things from doing these events is when we pique [students’] interest in the GIS field, as well as sharing and informing people about GIS and the many options it offers them,” says DeAnna Krishak, GIS technician at Palm Bay Utilities. “We ask students the [field] they may want to [study] in college and we show them how GIS can be used in those fields because we not only want to enlighten them about what GIS is, but also make the connection on all the many areas it can and is already being used.”
In addition to Fairbanks and Palm Bay, geography professionals and educators across the country presented a wide variety of programs to commemorate GA Week 2012. Some other ideas include:
- The Rhode Island Geography Education Alliance held a Global Connections Bookmark Contest to celebrate Geography Awareness Week, asking schoolchildren across the state to design a bookmark that showed their connection to a location in the world. More than 100 students entered the contest.
- In Chicago, geography education company Footprints of the Mind hosted Holidays Around the World, a geography enrichment workshop that allowed children to experience geography by “traveling” to different countries, experience new languages, and learn about people and cultures while creating fun craft projects familiar to the locations. The event focused on holiday traditions central to the countries they visited.
- The National Air and Space Museum hosts an online “Geography from Space” contest during GA Week. Contestants view online photographs of Earth, taken from space and take a quiz to name the countries, states or bodies of water in the photos. The first three eligible entries received with all correct answers receive prizes.
Online resources and activities for GA Week are available online year round at GeographyAwarenessWeek.org. This year’s Geography Awareness Week theme explores the idea that we are all are connected to the rest of the world through the decisions we make on a daily basis, including what foods we eat and the things we buy. Next year’s theme will be announced in midsummer.
By Nancy Mann Jackson
Nancy Mann Jackson is a freelance journalist who writes regularly about local government and sustainability issues. Learn more about her at www.nancyjackson.com.
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