Geography Awareness Week starts a week from now, on Sunday, November 11. This year's theme is Asia, the world's largest continent in both area and population (Asia is home to 60% of the world's population).
While Geography Awareness Week was once a pretty significant event, supported and sponsored by National Geographic, there no longer seems to be any effort put toward publicizing the week or supporting or even encouraging events around the U.S. to publicize geography. GIS Day, which was created and falls on the Wednesday of Geography Awareness Week. You can find out about GIS events for GIS Day but I can't seem to find a database of Geography Awareness Week activities. I guess Geography Awareness Week has just fallen off the map (pun intended). I always thought it was a good way to promote geography...
Comments
Geography Action! Asia Toolkit – Texas Version
Freda Johnson, Humble Independent School District, was selected by National Geographic to serve as the 2007-08 Geography Action! coordinator for the state of Texas. With Geography Awareness Week (November 11th – 17th) right around the corner, Freda has developed a great Geography Action! toolkit for Texas teachers and parents. National Geographic has designated this year’s Geography Action! theme “Asia: Continent of Contrasts” and Freda’s toolkit is full of great resources, suggestions, links, etc. to help students and adults alike celebrate the vast physical, cultural, historical, and ethnic wonders of the Asian continent.
The Texas version of the Geography Action! Asia toolkit will be available on the website of the Texas Alliance for Geographic Education at
http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/.
For more information about National Geographic’s Geography Action! outreach and conservation program, visit http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geographyaction.
As the Geography Action Coordinator for the state of Florida, I agree it is getting more difficult to promote Geography Action Week. The Florida Geographic Alliance has worked hard producing materials for not only GAW but for the 2007 year promoting Geography Action with emphasis on Asia; Continent of Contrasts.Some states are not as fortunate as we are to have as many active alliance members, nor the money to publish materials. NGS doesn’t seem to have the sponsors they once did, so it is pretty much up to the individual states to do what they can. Florida would love to share our website with all teachers. It is very informative and has free resources. We hope teachers everywhere will enjoy this site and have an enjoyable and informative Geography Awareness Week.
Every year, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Geography Student Organization (GSO) (http://www.unl.edu/ag/geography/gso-gtu.shtml) holds a variety of events for GAW. Among the most popular is a campus-wide Geography Bee held in a sort of NG’s National Geography Bee style. Nearly a hundred undergraduates from numerous majors have been known to participate.
Sorry that our Florida Geographic Alliance website wasn’t included in my comment. Check out some good GAW and Geography Action information on
http://fga.freac.fsu.edu/gaw/
I always participate in the geography bee. Last year I won the school one, and went on to the state one and came in 5th out of seventy – five
P.S. I must say that the newsletter helped me alot.