This article reports on teacher candidates' use of e-learning tools and activities designed for their future students. Candidates offered comments to give an idea of the strengths and challenges of each. Suggestions are made for teacher educators on the types of technology-integrated activities that lend themselves to both traditional and…

The document describes the use of weather maps and data in teaching introductory college courses in synoptic meteorology. Students examine weather changes at three-hour intervals from data obtained from the "Monthly Summary of Local Climatological Data." Weather variables in the local summary include sky cover, air temperature, dew point, relative…

This paper describes the development of the hardware-software configuration required for a computerized digitizer-graphics system for encoding locational information at the University of Iowa's Department of Geography and Institute of Urban and Regional Research. Topics covered include system requirements, data structure, hardware configurations,…

This monograph discusses the importance of maps and mapping techniques for students in elementary and secondary school geography classes. Maps are interpreted to include plotter print outs, space and aerial photographs, plastic three-dimensional relief models, spatial images on cathode ray tubes, and holographs (images produced by laser beams).…

Exercises were developed using tornado statistics to provide students with a better understanding of the spatial and temporal characteristics of these phenomena in the United States. Four categories of exercises were considered beginning with the simplest and progressing to the more complex. The first set of exercises required students to…

The purpose of this study is to investigate elementary students' explanations of how physical features of the land influence the location of humanly defined structures including trade routes, such as the silk routes. The silk routes were a series of caravan trade routes that extended from Turkey to China and were located as far south as India and…

An analysis of the content and methods of college courses in map use yields a three-section result. The first is a rather traditional overview of the general uniformity in content (scale, coordinates, symbols, relief, and directions) but some diversity in methods. The focus is usually on map use skills. The second part classifies and analyzes the…

The paper describes a method of using simulation games with inverted maps to teach college undergraduates basic cartographic and spatial knowledge in geography. The author discusses the nature of simulation gaming in terms of the conflicting needs for structure and open-endedness, then identifies his major objective in developing the new approach.…

The paper is designed to help instructors in college-level geography courses design urban field trips. The objective is to illustrate how a few core materials and concepts derived from urban geography texts, census tract maps, and social space models can help provide order and pattern to students' understanding of a city. Census tract maps are…

A wealth of unpublished or unstructured educational materials for all aspects of cartographic instruction are widely dispersed and unnecessarily difficult to obtain. The Cartography Assistance Brochures Project of the Cartography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), the North American Cartographic Information Society,…

Four geography concepts illustrate the varied nature of the science and provide a pluralistic basis for uniting professional and pedagogical geography and for promoting communication with laymen. The spatial tradition, based on interest in geometry and movement, separates aspects of distance, form, direction, and position from events themselves.…

The process of constructing a test to assess geographic knowledge and understandings of fifth and sixth grade pupils is discussed. In addition, a draft of a test to measure geography skills and knowledge of physical and human geography is presented. The document is presented in three sections. In section I, information is presented on test…

Ten exercises based on the weather map provided in the national newspaper "U.S.A. Today" are used to teach intermediate grade students about weather. An overview describes the history of "U.S.A. Today," the format of the newspaper's weather map, and the map's suitability for teaching weather concepts. Specific exercises, which are briefly…