Geography -- a share and a request

[JanetC]

First, my share. I've been collecting supplemental resources to use for Geography next year and found some gems:

 

geographyeducation.org -- this is a great website, and if you click on the "visit my main site" icon, there's even more indexing and search ability.

 

For those with ipads -- under itunesU, search for World Geography Studies by TASA. This is published by the TX Assoc of School Administrators. Links to websites and ipad apps, and some creative activities (for example, one has students plot the cultural diffusion of domesticated chicken on a map). It's not a complete curriculum, but what's there is very interesting.

 

And, IMHO, this should be used as a family rather than independently, because it covers a number of controverisal topics: news-basics.com This is a pretty nice summary of current events and issues site that could be used in a number of social studies classes.

 

Next, my request: I still haven't found a secular World Geography textbook to use as a spine. The used book I picked up turned out to be way too out of date. I would like a people/cultural emphasis rather than a physical place names emphasis, but I don't want it to be so people-based than it becomes overly broad. I would still like regional sections (i.e. chapters by continent and region, but content that includes a lot of cultural info). In other words, I don't want something as broad as "cultural patterns around the world." KWIM?

 

--Janet

 

[Julie in MN]

Next, my request: I still haven't found a secular World Geography textbook to use as a spine. The used book I picked up turned out to be way too out of date. I would like a people/cultural emphasis rather than a physical place names emphasis, but I don't want it to be so people-based than it becomes overly broad. I would still like regional sections (i.e. chapters by continent and region, but content that includes a lot of cultural info). In other words, I don't want something as broad as "cultural patterns around the world." KWIM?

 

We've got a geography textbook at our house that I like. I have NOT used it for a full course, though, so I'd hate to steer you wrong on that. But I've often showed my son different diagrams and maps and even pictures to illustrate different population densities and physical size comparisons and the like. The last time I pulled it out was to illustrate strip mining in South Africa as described in Cry, The Beloved Country :)

 

Geography, Realms Regions and Concepts, by Blij & Muller

 

We have the 8th edition, and that's in the way out of date category that you mentioned you don't want. But it was cheap :) The newest looks like the 15th edition.

 

Julie

[JanetC]

Will look at that book. Thanks

[mumto2]

studentsfriend.com has some interesting units. The one on population density is particularly interesting imo. I haven't used them yet but soon. I need to find time to get things printed!

 

 

[TheReader]

We're using an on-line Geography course and the textbook used sounds exactly like what you are looking for, if you don't mind an actual text book (it seems good, and is my son's favorite class; he's 15/high school freshman). The book is World Geography, senior author listed as Richard G. Boehm, Ph.D, published by National Geographic Society & Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, copyright is 2003. The one we have is labeled "Texas Edition" so not sure if there are other, newer versions, or if this is it. Anyway, it's pretty thorough. Units are broken down by region, and then each region has a physical geography section, cultural geography section, and Region Today section (with sub-sections w/in each of those).

 

We bought ours on Amazon, I think.

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

Try searching for human geography. There are a half dozen or so texts commonly used for this AP class. Most are AP editions of college texts. We used Rubenstein's Cultural Landscape and there is a new edition out this year. There are several others-the Blij and Muller mentioned above being the one I saw mentioned nearly as often.