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Five Ways to Teach Black History Month

By Sarah on February 3, 2012 11:39 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
February is the month when we celebrate the rich history of the Black Diaspora and honor the brave men and women who have fought for the civil rights of African Americans.

National Geographic Education has just released a collection of resources to help educators teach this important topic to students of all backgrounds. Here are highlights from the collection comprising five ideas for classroom instruction.

Blog_Seacole_29419_250w.jpgRead inspiring profiles of prominent African Americans, from inventors of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries to Mary Seacole, the black nurse/businesswoman/author/war heroine your students have probably never heard of.



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Relive the drama of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches through an article and photo gallery documenting the 54-mile walk that led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. 



Images this page: 1. Mary Seacole, courtesy Mary Evans, Picture Library 2008 2. Selma-to-Montgomery sign, courtesy Mary Schons

Continue reading Five Ways to Teach Black History Month.

We JUMPED into a brand new Guinness World Record!

By My Wonderful World Intern on December 15, 2011 3:11 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Way to go jumpers! With your help, National Geographic Kids has broken the Guinness World Record for the most people doing jumping jacks in a 24-hour period! Between 3 p.m. on October 11 and 3 p.m. on October 12, 300,265 jumpers all over the world took part in the event--far surpassing the existing record of 20,425!

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Check out this awesome video of Michelle Obama congratulating all the jumpers who helped contribute to National Geographic's new Guinness World Record!



Breaking the record is a huge accomplishment. But the First Lady and her organization, Let's Move, still have a lot of work to do to meet an even bigger goal: ending childhood obesity within a generation so that all children have a chance to grow up healthy and strong. To reach that goal, Let's Move is working to make sure all kids get the nutrition they need, have a chance to be active each day, and receive support from their schools, families and communities. (Let's Move Blog) For more resources to educate your classroom about healthy living, refer to our National Geographic Education article on health at every size.

Photograph by Aloha!, NG Kids My Shot
--Julia from My Wonderful World

World AIDS Day 2011

By My Wonderful World Intern on December 1, 2011 1:05 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
2010-12-12_0982424.JPGToday is World AIDS Day. HIV/AIDS is a very real condition of our human population on Earth and thus an important part of our geographic education. Please take a couple minutes to educate yourself about the global impact of this devastating disease. The following are some basic facts from aids.gov that I encourage everyone to deeply consider on this day of observation.

  • More than one million people are living with HIV in the U.S.
  • One in five living with HIV is unaware of their infection.
  • By race, African Americans face the most severe HIV burden.
  • Every 9 1/2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is infected with HIV.
  • 33.4 million are currently living with HIV/AIDS worldwide.
  • More than 25 million people have died of AIDS worldwide since the first cases were reported in 1981.
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Above is a map of HIV prevalence by county in the United States, 2008.
Source: http://www.aidsvu.org/

Growing up in an environment where HIV/AIDS is someone else's problem, it can be easy to put it out of mind most days of the year. Please take this opportunity on World AIDS Day to help fight the virus by expanding your AIDS education. You can make a real difference by becoming informed and helping educate others. To learn about the history of HIV/AIDS, check out this useful AIDS timeline and other resources from aids.gov.

Also, this year The One Campaign is creating a digital quilt for people of the world to share their voice.  Add your piece to help The One Campaign achieve their goal of eradicating AIDS by the year 2015.
Photo Credit: Danielle Baron (Your Shot)
--Julia for My Wonderful World

Five for (Black) Friday: New Traditions

By My Wonderful World Intern on November 25, 2011 5:02 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks
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Black Friday is undergoing change, and the geography of holiday shopping is changing with it. With more consumers online, mega retailers are adapting their Black Friday strategies to make the most of America's favorite day to spend, and local businesses are using social media to stay relevant.  From newly extended shopping hours to cutting up credit cards, this shopping extravaganza extends the spectrum of human geography.  This week's Five for Friday spotlights several new traditions to consider for your holiday shopping.

1. Small Business Saturday: Initiated in 2010 by American Express, this localized approach to holiday shopping is helping support community-based economies across the nation.  According to the Senior Vice President of American Express, "Last year, we saw a 28 percent rise in sales volume for our small business merchants versus the same day in 2009." Interestingly enough, Facebook has played a major role in the success of Small Business Saturday because it provides free and socially engaging advertising for the effort. Make this holiday shopping season the best one yet by starting a new Black Friday tradition and supporting your local economy!  Check out: Facebook.com/smallbusinesssaturday

2. Cyber Monday: Created by Shop.org in 2005, Cyber Monday was coined to support the growing industry of e-commerce. According to data gathered by the National Retail Federation, consumers will shop online for more than a third of their holiday supplies and gifts in 2011. Consumers can expect roughly nine out of 10 "e-tailers" to offer deals on Cyber Monday (the Monday following Thanksgiving), making it one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. The National Retail Foundation found that shoppers spent nearly a billion dollars on Cyber Monday in 2010.

3. Buy Nothing Day: Originating in Mexico circa September 1992, the Buy Nothing Day we know today was officially moved to coincide with Black Friday in 1997.  Buy Nothing Day is an internationally celebrated protest of consumerism that includes activities such as credit card cut-ups, free street parties, public protests, community clothing exchanges, and more.
Continue reading Five for (Black) Friday: New Traditions.

Five for Friday: Geography Awareness Week in the News!

By My Wonderful World Intern on November 18, 2011 2:13 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Geography Awareness Week is sweeping the nation! Check out some of the local news, activities, and events that are going on around the country for this week's Five for Friday. Awesome job geography lovers!

1. The Trib Local: City of West Chicago Brings Geography Adventure to Pioneer School. The geography education community celebrates Geography Awareness Week in the United States the third week of November with its theme, "Geography: The Adventure in Your Community". It invites participants to see their communities through a geographic lens, discovering new things about the places where they live...To read the rest of the article, follow this link.

2011-03-14_0000098.JPG2. The Chicago Tribune: And now just a little closer to home. Travel to exotic places is always exciting. New sights to see, new cultures to experience, new history to explore, new architecture to admire. But sometimes in pursuit of the faraway exotic, we overlook the exotic and unusual in our own backyards.

That's what prompted the National Geographic Society to choose "Geography: The Adventure in Your Community" as the theme for Geography Awareness Week, which runs this week. The theme "promotes the idea that the geographic perspective is an important way to understand every community, no matter what size, or how long or briefly one has been a part of it," according to geographyawarenessweek.org...To read the rest of the article, follow this link.

3. The Juneau Empire: Juneau to Celebrate Geography Awareness Week. In celebration of Geography Awareness Week, Nov. 13-19, Juneau will host its first GeoFest, a free family event that draws attention to geo-literacy and the importance of geography education. Geofest will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center.

The event will reflect the theme, "Geography: The Adventure in Your Community," highlighting the idea that a geographic perspective can be an important way to understand communities while building geographic skills...To read the rest of this article, follow this link.

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Continue reading Five for Friday: Geography Awareness Week in the News!.

Five for Friday: Best of BioBlitz 2011!

By My Wonderful World Intern on November 4, 2011 2:54 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
On October 21-22 National Geographic and partners hosted BioBlitz, a 24-hour event in which teams of volunteer scientists, families, students, teachers, and other community members worked together to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, microbes, fungi, and other organisms as possible; in Saguaro National Park, Tuscon, Arizona. The results were fantastic: Scientists and citizens identified 859 species in one day (This is an unofficial count, the final numbers will be confirmed in January.). Congratulations BioBlitzers! To celebrate the outstanding success of this year's event, My Wonderful World is highlighting five of the many fantastic factors that made this year so special.

1) Glowing scorpions
Quite literally, these unusual creatures were a major highlight of the BioBlitz. Found most easily at night, glowing scorpions are located by using black lights, which then re-emit the light as green light. According to Paul Marek, an entomologist at the University of Arizona, "[if] you go out at night into the Sonoran Desert with one of these UV lights, these scorpions light up and glow like a little star field on the ground."

glowing scorpion.jpg2) The "Water Bear" (Tardigrades)
--a microscopic species found for the first time in Arizona! Watch this video of Baker University Student Kyrie Bair as she talks about this exciting new discovery.
waterbear.jpg3) BioBlitz-inspired technology is an awesome new way to participate in the event year-round. For starters, check out the social media website, Project NOAH, a tool to explore and document wildlife and harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. This community-based site "makes a scientist out of all of us" as it allows users to report species and share them with tens of thousands of others. Another way new technology has expanded the reach and longevity of the event is through an electronic field trip designed to allow students around the world to "attend" the BioBlitz in Saguaro National Park. Although the event itself happened October 21, the recording of the electronic field trip can still be enjoyed by following this link: electronicfieldtrip.org
Continue reading Five for Friday: Best of BioBlitz 2011!.

New "Borders" at the New York Times

By Sarah on October 25, 2011 11:09 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
MiddleEarthRisk792Kofficial1291674287.jpgAnyone who is a self-described map geek--and we number many here at National Geographic Education--can cite some formative early experiences with maps, both real and imaginary. For me, it was the Candyland map, a delicious marriage of my fledgling passions for sugar and space. I used to love to manipulate my game piece through this colorful fantasyland of gumdrop mountains and lollypop woods.

For Frank Jacobs, it was a map of the mysterious world of J.R.R Tolkien's Middle Earth, and an incidental connection between the made-up Bree and his family's ancestral home in the real-world Bree, in Belgium.

In the first installment of a new New York Times series called In Praise of Borders, Jacobs recounts his childhood experiences navigating Bree, in a curious corner of Europe's German-Belgian-Dutch region shaped by a unique history. It is at once a personal yet relatable narrative.


Continue reading New "Borders" at the New York Times.

Five for Friday: Five Highlights from Let's Jump!

By My Wonderful World Intern on October 14, 2011 3:59 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Let's Jump!, a National Geographic Kids movement to promote active, healthy life styles for kids, joined with Michelle Obama October 11-12th in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for most people doing jumping jacks. Participants had a 24 hour window to preform, document, and submit proof of one full minute of jumping jacks in order to be counted towards the record.  It will require over 20,000 submissions to set a new world record and final results will still take a few weeks to be tabulated. From what we have seen so far, the event was quite successful; it connected students, clubs, sport teams and friends across the world to compete for a common goal. This week's Five for Friday celebrates an amazing effort in childhood health and education by bringing you five highlights from the event!

1. Michelle Obama's commitment to the event and her participation! Not to mention the additional 500 local school children who joined her on the White House lawn. Michelle was quoted saying, "As a first lady I get to do a lot of cool things, but this is really exciting. I never thought in my entire life I would be setting a Guinness World Record!" See more coverage on the event from The White House Blog.

2. Adorable kindergartners from Phillips Elementary School doing jumping jacks and their reactions to the Let's Jump event:
  • "Jumping Jacks were ok, but it'd be awesome to be in the Guinness World Records Book!"
  • "I think doing jumping jacks after lunch was really fun! I'm usually so tired after lunch, but now I'm really awake."
  • "I really liked doing it with my whole class. Even Ms. Sykes jumped with us!"
3. The event resulted in more than 350 media hits from major news outlets across the nation and around the world including:  NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, TIME, NPR, USA Today, The Washington Post, and more! Celebrities such as U.S. figure skater Michelle Kwan and NBC weather man Al Roker helped host the White House event!
Continue reading Five for Friday: Five Highlights from Let's Jump!.

Spotlight On: Benda Bilili

By My Wonderful World Intern on October 13, 2011 9:11 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
A band that calls itself "Staff Benda Bilili" uses music to stun, inspire, and beautifully blend the highs and lows of life in Kinshasa, the capitol of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).  With instruments made from garbage scraps and cardboard boxes for bedding, Staff Benda Bilili was first discovered by French film directors Florent de la Tullaye and Renaud Barret playing on the streets in 2004. Funded to record and release their music, Staff Benda Bilili's popularity has grown substantially throughout Europe.  Having once showcased their talent in a dilapidated old zoo, Staff Benda Bilili now performs their eclectic music in concerts across the globe, diffusing a message of hope to eager ears. Their story is of a group of men with humble beginnings who rose out of poverty and achieved fame, however, what makes Benda Bilili unforgettable is not only the culmination of their journey but the unique challenges they face along the way.
benda.JPGIn Lingala (a Bantu language spoken mostly in the Northwestern region of the DRC), Benda Bilili means "look beyond appearances," a fitting name for a band whose first appearance may be surprising for unprepared eyes. Second only to the quality of their musical talent in significance, appearance is central to Benda Bilili's initial struggle to be heard. Several members of the band suffer from permanent paralysis as a result of battles with childhood polio.  Polio is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease. There is no cure, but there are safe and effective vaccines. The strategy to eradicate polio is based on preventing infection by immunizing every child until transmission stops and the world is polio-free (Global Polio Eradication Initiative). While vaccines are widely administered in most areas of the world, due to their geographic location, low socioeconomic status, and particular situation within the local culture, the members of Benda Bilili were not fortunate enough to be vaccinated for polio.  Well into their adult lives, the polio makes them unattractive candidates for most job opportunities in the DRC, which eventually lands them in shelters and long, sleepless nights spent on the streets. Forced into an extenuating life circumstances, the men join together as a band to use music as an expression of their troubles and joys in being both homeless and handicapped.
Continue reading Spotlight On: Benda Bilili.

BioBlitz 2011: Saguaro National Park & Electronic Field Trip

By My Wonderful World Intern on September 29, 2011 9:35 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Mark your calendars, BioBlitz 2011 is just around the corner and it's going to be the best yet! The annual celebration of biodiversity takes place this year on October 21-22 in Saguaro National Park, Tuscon, Arizona and online as a free electronic field trip. Information about the live event, how to register for the electronic field trip, schedules, goals, links, and more are provided below thanks to National Geographic Education, and the partners of BioBlitz 2011--Enjoy!

2010-10-29_0000081.JPGSummary of BioBlitz:
BioBlitz is a 24-hour event in which teams of volunteer scientists, families, students, teachers, and other community members work together to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, microbes, fungi, and other organisms as possible. A BioBlitz gives adults, kids, and teens the opportunity to join biologists in the field and participate in bona fide research expeditions. It's a fun and exciting way to learn about the biological diversity of local parks and to better understand how to protect them. National Geographic is helping conduct a BioBlitz in a different national park each year during the decade leading up to the U.S. National Park Service Centennial in 2016. --www.natgeoed.org

Group and individual registration is now available online. Families, schools, clubs, scout troops and other groups are encouraged to participate. For questions or to receive updates and registration information when available, send an email to bioblitz@ngs.org.

Goals of the Saguaro BioBlitz:
  • Count, map, and learn about the park's diverse organisms, ranging from microscopic bacteria to migrating birds, elusive mountain lions to 200-year-old cacti.
  • Provide scientists, school kids, and the general public an opportunity to conduct fieldwork together.
  • Add to the park's official species list.
  • Highlight the importance of protecting the biodiversity of this extraordinary place.

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Continue reading BioBlitz 2011: Saguaro National Park & Electronic Field Trip.
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