November 12-18 is Geography Awareness Week. Visit our new Geography Awareness Week pages for great resources (this year's theme is Africa) and local events near you.
October 2006 Archives
Can you tell me how to get, how to get to ... Plaza Sésamo?
Sesame Street, a mainstay of American children's television, has gone global--in a big way. The show is now in 130 countries, including South Africa (Takalani Sesame), China (Zhima Jie), Bangladesh (Sisimpur), and Mexico (Plaza Sésamo).
As a recent CNN report says, "Sesame Street may have different settings, but it has a universal message." Watch the report, and learn more about a new documentary, The World According to Sesame Street.
Sesame Workshop
Sesame Workshop is a member of the My Wonderful World coalition and has loads of great games and activities--many with a global focus--for kids.
Here are a few of our favorites:
What do you think about Sesame Street's global focus? Tell us!
Be sure to enter the first My Wonderful World sweepstakes for a chance to win a ten-day trip for four to the Galápagos Islands on a Lindblad Expeditions cruise. Enter now and good luck!
My Wonderful World is a National Geographic-led campaign to increase geographic learning at home, in school, and in the community. Learn more about the campaign, test your Global IQ, find games and cool sites, and much more.
It's hard to miss the commercials—or the buzz—for Borat, a new movie starring British comedian Sasha Baron Cohen as an inept and ill-mannered Kazakh journalist. The people of Kazakhstan are, understandably, a bit horrified at the false traditions—caging women and drinking horse urine, among others—attributed by Borat to the Asian nation.
So what is Kazakhstan really like? Here are a few sites to give you a better picture of the ninth-largest (by area) country in the world.
Country Profiles
News
Language
Music
Have you been to Kazakhstan? Tell us about it.
This week National Geographic News launched a special series, Digital Places, that looks at the "digital tools and trends that are changing the way we explore our world."
In the series:
Check out the series and tell us what you think—have digital tools changed the way you see your world?
It’s a big world, full of fascinating places (like the Galápagos Islands, destination for our first My Wonderful World sweepstakes). What’s the most interesting place to you? It could be as extreme as the Arctic Circle, as traditional as Paris or Rome, or as simple as your own hometown.
Tell us!
This week the population of the United States officially hits 300 million—a staggering number, but not the highest in the world. In fact, the U.S. is third, behind China and India. But what does the milestone mean? From MSNBC: "People in the United States are consuming more than ever — more food, more energy, more natural resources. Open spaces are shrinking and traffic in many areas is dreadful.
But some experts argue that population growth only partly explains America’s growing consumption. Just as important, they say, is where people live, what they drive and how far they travel to work."
Read the article and see the accompanying interactive map.
Other news articles on the population milestone:
And some sites to put the population news in context:
What do you think this population milestone means? Tell us.
The United States is not the only country where geography education—and knowledge—is lacking. Here’s a great column from On Line Opinion, an Australian social and political debate site. In it, a Macquarie University professor laments Australia’s dearth of geography education: "Do our schoolchildren not need to know about the country in which they live and how it differs from other places in the world, and why?"
And in the United Kingdom, the Give Geography Its Place campaign strives, as does My Wonderful World, to increase awareness of the importance of geography.
Check out these sites and let us know what you think—is the lack of geography education a worldwide problem?
Did you happen to catch 60 Minutes this Sunday? The show’s in-house curmudgeon, Andy Rooney, focused his weekly commentary on geography—or rather, his lack of knowledge of it. You can see the video and read a transcript of the piece here.
Then tell us: Do you agree with Andy? Should adults have to go back to school for educational brush-ups every so often?
Have you emailed your legislators to tell them you support increased funding for geography education? Use the Notify Your Lawmaker tool on My Wonderful World. Just fill in your name and information and an email will be automatically sent to your legislators. It’s easy—and important. Send your email now!
Here's a cool interactive graphic from Maps of War. It shows the seemingly constant change of power in the Middle East over the last 5,000 years.
Do you know of other cool maps or graphics like this one? Tell us!
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