I recently revisited the Geospatial Revolution episodes created by Penn State Public Broadcasting and created a new worksheet for the series. I was reminded how good they are. If you haven’t seen these, I recommend taking the time to watch them, if even just for yourself. Not only does the video tackle about seven AP course objectives, but it also gives great real-world examples of how geography is being used to solve real-world problems. I updated my worksheet for the videos. I like to assign students an episode a night for the first week of school and digest/discuss key terms and ideas in class. For example, after episode 1 we used the class to talk about GIS, GPS, and remote sensing. I used an example in Google Earth of the Grand Canyon in 3D mode to show physical typography created by remote sensing data, and then I showed a major U.S. cityscape in 3D to tell them that 3D modeling using Google Sketchup and Google Warehouse is used to create all of the buildings and built features that they see. We then spoke more about why locational technologies are so important to companies and looked up the closest supermarket on Google to show the “busiest hours” bar charts and also Google Maps directions to show real-time traffic data. This would also be a good time to show them a recent news article about Google and privacy issues. (And that’s just day 1 people!).

AP Course Essential Knowledge Objectives:

• Geographic information provides context for understanding spatial relationships and human– environment interaction.
• People apply spatial concepts to interpret and understand population and migration; cultural patterns and processes; political organization of space; agriculture, food production, and rural land use; industrialization and economic development; and cities and urban land use.
• Maps are used to represent and identify spatial patterns and processes at different scales.
• Geographical issues include problems related to human– environmental interactions (e.g., sustainable agriculture); conflict and cooperation among countries (e.g., European Union); and planning and public-policy decision making (e.g., pronatalist policies).
• Geospatial technologies include geographic information systems (GIS), satellite navigation systems (e.g., global positioning system), remote sensing, and online mapping and visualization.
• Geospatial data (e.g., census data, satellite imagery) is used at all scales for personal (e.g., navigation), business (e.g., marketing), and governmental (e.g., environmental planning) purposes.
• Data may be gathered in the field by organizations (e.g., census data) or by individuals (e.g., interviews, surveys, photography, informal observations).

Procedure: Students will watch the video, The Geospatial Revolution, provided by Penn State Public Broadcasting and answer the worksheet questions. Tell students to come prepared with ways in which their personal location data is being used.

The updated worksheet is below. There are QR codes that students can scan with their smart devices to link them directly to each episode. Did you know they can do this with their phone’s camera? I didn’t until yesterday! Enjoy the classroom discussion!

Download Here: The Geospatial Revolution

Older worksheet with two general questions below.

the-geospatial-revolution-youtube