The construction and infrastructure of a city provide the foundation of an ideal urban lab for high school students to discover how to dissect the multifaceted layers of a place and make it their own. For six weeks in the winter of 2008, ninth-grade students in Providence, Rhode Island's Hope High School/Hope Arts Community learned to look closely…

English 302: Writing about the Arts is a practicum course offered at the University of Windsor for upper-level English undergraduate students. The course asks students to write about a variety of art forms and requires engagement with multiple genres of writing as a way for students to effectively order their experiences, reconstruct meaning in…

Beyond acknowledging for spatial--more specifically map--literacy to the intellectual development of lifelong learners, teachers need to know how they might teach these tools. This article describes a collaboration to help teachers integrate spatial literacy in the school. The author suggests excellent web resources that supported an integrated…

This study investigates an elective English class, in which students in grades 10-12 collectively read and collaboratively wrote fantasy fiction in four groups. The purpose of the class was to have students consider the choices fantasy and science fictions writers, directors, and video game designers make when creating a fictional world. The…

Children's cognitive skills change substantially from the time they enter school at about the age of five to when they graduate from high school a dozen years later. Some changes can be attributed to the school curriculum, but others are part of children's developmental evolution as they mature and interact with the world. Rather than reviewing…

In an attempt to hone the role of learners as designers, this study investigates the effectiveness of an instructional software application resulting from a design process founded on the tenets of participatory design, informant design, and contextual inquiry, as well as a set of established design heuristics. Collaboration occurred among learning…

Relative to other fields, social work has been slow to adopt geographic information systems (GIS) as a tool for research and practice. This paper argues that GIS can benefit social work by: (1) continuing and strengthening the social survey tradition; (2) providing a framework for understanding human behavior; (3) identifying community needs and…

One of the most characteristic features of geolinguistic study is the recourse to maps and diagrams; authors often supplement words with illustrations of patterns and processes stemming from the spoken word. This transposition of word and image is significant, for maps and diagrams are a sign of language. The concerns of the linguistic map maker…

Tactile maps are an important means for the education and mobility of people who are visually impaired (that is, are blind or have low vision). Because of the importance of tactile maps, it is essential that they are accessible to people who are visually impaired and correctly interpreted. There has been considerable research on the design of…

Maps are fundamental in geographic explanation and education, but as map-making becomes firmly entrenched in the GIS lab, it becomes harder for students to imagine how they can make maps for their papers. Students need to illustrate papers with maps: among other things, maps provide clarity, links to real places, and insights into patterns and…

In an increasingly competitive economy, the capacity for self-motivation, problem-solving skills and an ability to think critically are core graduate attributes. However, the capacity to create an educational environment that develops and harnesses such skills is a distinct challenge as resources become increasingly restricted. Geographical Skills…

Using maps, tables, and photographs, this article provides a history of the land use and development of a small island contained within the city of Guangzhou (Canton). The phases covered are treaty port phase (1860s to 1948), Maoist phase (1949 to 1970s) and the modern, post-Mao phase. (JDH)

This textbook is a course in elementary surveying. It has been the intention of the author to begin with the very elements of the subject, and to combine those elements in the simplest manner, so as to render the higher branches of plane-surveying comparatively easy. All the instruments needed for plotting have been carefully described; and the…

The approach to topographic map production has been highly organized and systematic with respect to scale, projection, grid, etc., so that the user can expect a high degree of locational accuracy. Less attention has been given by cartographers to symbolic information yielded by the map. Symbolization (information reduction) is required at all…

Describes the hardware and some of the choropleth mapping software available for the IBM-PC, PC compatible and Apple II microcomputers. Reviewed are: Micromap II, Documap, Desktop Information Display System (DIDS) , Multimap, Execuvision, Iris Gis, Mapmaker, PC Map, Statmap, and Atlas Map. Vendors' addresses are provided. (JDH)