Friday, November 20, 2015

Time for sharing some neat geography sites



Image above:  Watch the reverse waterfall. Rather strange but true! The reverse waterfall is near Pune in India and it's called the Rayareshwar Waterfall. This reverse effect only happens in June and July month due to freaky air pressure - I think!


Related links to Spatialworlds
GeogSplace (a teaching blog for Year 12 geography)
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace

Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
manning@chariot.net.au


Getting back into it!

I have been busy in my non-geography DECD world during this year and as a result the Spatialworlds blog postings have been limited. As I begin to leave the bureaucratic world behind upon retirement from DECD, I can get back into the fascinating spatialworld of geography. Here are just a few neat sites I have come across in the past week. Plenty more to follow!!




The federal government has announced it will withhold childcare benefits for parents who do not vaccinate their children. What areas of Australia have the lowest child immunisation rates? Here is another example of the power of maps to show difference across space. The question as always, is why dos the variance occur from one place in Australia to another , in this case about immunisation rates.




This map shows the per cent of children aged five years who were fully immunised 2012-2013. It's a choropleth map - areas are shaded in proportion to the measurement.

The areas shown are the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Statistical Area Level 3 geography standard (SA3) - a standardised regional breakup of Australia for the analysis of ABS data. The SA3 areas have populations between 30,000 and 130,000 and they are often the functional areas of regional cities and large urban transport and service hubs.


* Interactive World Population map: a very interesting interactive map to show demographic status and change





* Some great geography games for this time of year

Spacehopper is a game based on Google Maps Street View imagery. Spacehopper shows you a Street View image and you have to guess where in the world the image was captured. You can click the clue button to have the country identified before making a guess. After three incorrect guesses the correct answer will be revealed to you. You can play Spacehopper on a global level or you can specify that you only want to see images from a particular continent.


Overlap Maps is a free service that can be used to quickly compare the size of countries, states, provinces, and some bodies of water. To create a visual comparison of two countries select one country from the "overlap this" menu and select one country from the "onto this" menu. The comparisons you make are displayed on a map. You can make comparisons from different categories. For example, you can overlap Lake Erie onto New Hampshire.

Where is...? is another good game geography game. This game uses a popular format for geography games; the name of a city is presented to the players and they have to click the map to guess where the city is located. Players are given immediate feedback on their accuracy in the form of a measurement, in kilometers, of the distance between their guesses and the correct answers.

Smarty Pins is a Google Maps game develop by Google. Smarty Pins presents players with a trivia question that they have to answer by placing a pin on a map. Players earn "miles" for correctly placing a pin on the map. Players can lose miles for answering incorrectly and or taking too long to answer. Games are available in five categories; arts & culture, science & geography, sports & games, entertainment, and history & current events.

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