maps4kids teamA Brief History
Geography Awareness Week is November 15-19 for 2021. This event has been going on for over 25 years and was started by National Geographic. For far too long, Geography had been losing ground as a subject in the United States. The field was relegated to a subtopic within Social Studies and only covered briefly, and not to any significant depth. Universities often did not even offer Geography as a subject.
I studied at the George Washington University from 1984-1987 and graduated with a BA in Geography. Sadly, that year, the university actually dropped its Masters program in Geography. Happily, the Masters was added back in a few years later. Check out the BA Program to get a better idea of the types of courses in their major.
Presidential Action !
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation declaring an annual Geography Awareness Week. The key takeaway from the proclamation was:
For generations, comprehension of world and national geography has been
Presidential Proclamation 5700, September 7, 1987
considered essential to the education of Americans. Yet today, in an interdependent world where knowledge of other lands and cultures is increasingly important, studies show that Americans need more geographical knowledge.
“Americans need more geographical knowledge”. This rang so true for me as I had the opportunity to go to an International School in Vienna, Austria. I had Geography as a high level subject for my International Baccalaureate diploma. When I returned home to the States after those four years, I noticed that I was miles ahead of most other students in geographic knowledge and understanding. This led to my decision to major in Geography and the hope for a career as a Geography teacher. While that didn’t pan out directly (I ended up being a data engineer), I eventually did develop Maps4Kids.com. Since 2006, I have been able to reach more than a million visitors and provide geographic data and maps too students.
In 1999, GIS Day was added as a part of Geography Awareness Week. The day was created by ESRI founder Jack Dangermond. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) “is a scientific framework for gathering, analyzing, and visualizing geographic data to help us make better decisions”.
Projects for Geography Awareness Week
There are many ways to celebrate this event and participate with your students, friends and families. Check out these options and keep reading to see what Maps4Kids can help you do.
National Geographic offers a great list of activities to consider.
ESRI has a list of 101 Ways to Participate in GIS Day.
Go Geocaching ! A fun geography treasure hunt game you and the kids can play from their app.
Maps4Kids and Geography Awareness Week
The Maps4Kids.com site has a wealth of activities available to teachers and students.
One of our most popular pages is the US Map Explorer. This interactive selection of maps contain many data points about the United States. Have each student in your class find the type of map they like best and explain the data they found there. Ask what drew them to the map. This dashboard was made using Tableau Public, a free software teachers and students can download use to create data analysis and mapping projects.
Outline Maps are a great way to get students to visually understand the world. Maps4Kids offers dozens of outline maps that can be downloaded for free. Have your students choose a state, province or continent and download and color in the maps. Teach you students how any map can be colored using only four colors by watching this video !
Every kid loves to play Concentration ! Maps4Kids has different varieties that will help your students understand map symbols, the Seven Wonders of the World and with recognizing US State Flags.
A final suggestion is to have the students play the Maps4Kids Word Finder Game. This game offers different categories of geographic words from land forms to states to climate types. This is a great way to get kids interested in concepts they might not have known and then follow that curiosity to learn more.
So there is a lot to do during Geography Awareness Week ! Please let me know if you have found this post helpful in the comments below. We’d love to hear what you all did.
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