Growing up in Loretto, Tennessee, population 1,700, people called it "going to town" when they went to any city big enough to have a McDonald's, Walmart, or a movie theater. If someone is not from a small town, they may not know what type of economic activities a small town can support. Will the town have a police department? Will there…

The introduction conveys some data on learning in India and on designing Geography textbooks in this country. The present paper is reliant on four Geography textbooks, ranging from the 9th to the 12th grade. As regards each textbook, the study considers their learning units, then analyses their structure, the unitary way of designing them, the…

Drawing from a nationally representative sample of parents with elementary school-aged children, this study used Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to examine profiles of parent involvement in school as well as home-community settings. Four profiles of school involvement and five profiles of home-community involvement were yielded from the LCA approach.…

Film as a tool for learning offers considerable opportunity for enhancing student understanding. This paper reflects on the experiences of a project that required students to make a short film demonstrating their practical understanding of qualitative methods. In the psychogeographical tradition, students were asked to "drift" across the…

This article documents regional demand for human-environment educational resources via assessment of public knowledge of the environmental crisis known as the Dust Bowl. The steadily eroding knowledge-base on the topic is discussed along with the desire for enhanced Dust Bowl educational resources. Regionally focused educational activities…

Greenways are prominent features of many urban landscapes and synthesize several geographic topics: human-environment interactions, urban ecosystems, and the promotion of sustainability within riverine corridors. Greenways are easily accessible and provide an opportunity for students at various grade levels to study interactions across physical…

PlacesOnLine.org is a Web portal that provides easy access to high quality Web sites that focus on places from around the world. It is intended for use by a wide range of people, including professional geographers, teachers and students at all levels, and the general public. This article explores the potential uses of PlacesOnLine as an…

By analyzing nineteenth-century mental health data, college level geography students discover the concept of distance decay, which describes the decrease in intensity of a phenomenon with increasing distance from some central place. (RM)

The importance and significance of the environmental education, as one of today's accentuated assignments, is unquestionable. The reasons for these are approached from different perspectives, both by specialists and by educators/pedagogues, but also by the entire society. In this article --selecting from various possibilities--we shall demonstrate…

The production of an American pencil is the result of complex interactions involving many people, places, and resources. Learning activities dealing with the making of a pencil that will help students learn about global interdependence are described. The activities can be adapted to fit any elementary grade level. (RM)

Provides concrete ideas for increasing the interest level of elementary and secondary students in geography. States that instruction must begin with the personal interests of students, and recommends such activities as using maps to trace the "geogeneology" of students, the origins of rock groups, athletic competitions, and natural disasters. (JDH)

Life-story mapping is a technique for exploring personal identity and family history within the context of human geography. Site-specific autobiography develops a sense of how place influences identity. (SK)

Classroom activities that geography instructors can use to help students analyze two aspects of a health care system--the amount of disease present and the use of facilities to help cure disease--are suggested. The spatial patterns of morbidity and hospital utilization patterns in Central Harlem are used as examples. (RM)

After a brief introduction to political redistricting, this article describes a learning activity to teach secondary or college level students about malapportionment and gerrymandering. The activity can be used in political geography, political science, or social studies courses. (RM)

By conducting a pedestrian survey, secondary or college level students answer the question "What is the best location for a new business requiring maximum pedestrian traffic?" They collect data on the number and types of people on streets in a commercial area of a city. (RM)