Take your Geography lesson to a new level with these 5 resource sites. Integrate technology, independent learning, and real-world data into your lesson. These apps vary in terms of purpose and complexity. Explore their different functionalities and design a lesson your learners can feel excited about.
Gapminder
This website should be one of the most well-known. It started with a Ted talk in 2006 by Hans Rosling. Its amazing data visualizations took the world by storm. Interactive charts represent data with quick-select features, allowing you to quickly change the data you are researching. This website is also easy to use and can be integrated effectively into any Geography lesson plan.
There are many features that Gapminder has. The charts are zoomable, and data in the chart can be selected to look at them in detail. If you run out of ideas on what topics to cover, you can read some of the suggested articles.
Global Forest Watch
Global Forest Watch tracks the condition of the forest with advanced tools and real-time data. The information is provided for free, and it is accessed by governments and world leaders who are concerned about their forests. The data helps them make better decisions and at times, can even stop criminal deforestation by companies. By using this website, a teacher not only teaches the required topics, they are also supporting a movement by spreading awareness.
One especially useful feature is that you can track human business activities like logging or mining land use. You can overlay these different data with deforestation to analyse their relationship.
NASA Climate
NASA Climate has a few interactive apps and galleries. A couple of interesting ones are Climate Time Machine, Eyes on Earth, and Global Ice Viewer. These apps are interactive but with less information compared with the previous two recommendations. In Climate Time Machine, you can view sea ice or sea level over time to see the changes over time. To create lessons around this resource, there should be other supporting materials. This resource can also be used for younger learners. To view the apps and galleries, scroll down the page.
World Bank DataBank
While NASA Climate is simpler, World Bank Data is more comprehensive and complex. It holds data from many countries with important indicators. It has a great filter function allowing users to filter a specific selection. You can also choose to view your results in table or chart form. This is definitely for older learners to do research and analysis. For educators who always need to find case studies or data when setting assignments, this is a great place to come.
World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence
This app from World Economic Forum curates research from many well-established sources and presents them in a transformation map. The issues covered go beyond Geography. When a topic is chosen, the map will show interconnected topics that will affect the main topic. When a topic is chosen, there will be information on the topic. This app is great for broadening learners’ perspectives. They can see that a simple topic is affected by many other topics they may not have thought of. An educator using this website must scope their learning objectives as the transformation map is like a rabbit hole.
Conclusion
These websites are good resources for learning and can cater to a wide range of learners’ age. Take time to explore the websites and determine which is suitable.
Share your teaching ideas or any comments below!
Thanks for sharing the links to all the useful sites for Geography educators. We can use it for teaching or setting assignments for students so that they can use real data to analyse current world issues. Hope to have more articles from you on other websites for other geographical topics too like tectonic hazards.