Good practices Geo-media
Below you can find two examples of lessons using different types of geo-media for a one topic:
Brazil – the country of rainforests and overpopulated cities
Subject:
Duration: 1 hour
Level: junior and senior (13-16 years)
Main goal
Developing skills to describe and explain the relationships and dependencies between human activities and the natural environment.
Tools
Map services, Google Earth, press information which can be located in space.
Description
During the lesson (teams of) students obtain information from the Internet about the ethnic structure of Brazil; its colonisation and internal migrations, distribution of crops and mineral resources. The students also investigate city plans and compare the spatial arrangement of Brasilia and Sao Paulo. Using Google Earth, they track the course of the road BR230 and they mark the relationships between the road network and the forest coverage. Based on the movie Children of the Amazon Children of the Amazon, they describe the deforestation process in the Rondônia state in western Brazil.
Then students analyse and process the data in order to answer the following questions:
- Which reasons caused the fact that half of Brazil’s population lives in the area up to 500 km away from the eastern coast (only 10% of the country’s area)?
- Why is the population of Brazil ethnically diverse?
- What is the uniqueness of the urbanisation processes in Brazil?
- Why the Amazon Forest is called “The lungs of the Earth”?
- What is the role of the Amazon rainforest in the economy of Brazil? What are the consequences of the rainforest’s economic usage?
The students create a PowerPoint presentation where they present their answers and solutions. Team representatives present their slides to the rest of the class. In a plenary summary phase the class is evaluating the economic operations in the Amazon Forest from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of Brazil and an inhabitant of Europe.
What are natural and cultural values of ‘Kozienicka Forest’? A field trip project 
Subject:
Duration: 45 min(introduction in the classroom) + 150 min (field trip) + 45 min (summary in the classroom)
Level: Junior & Senior (13-16 years)
Main goal
Foster the interest in natural and cultural values of Kozienicka Forest in central Poland.
Tools
Google Earth, national geoportal, GPS devices.
Description
At the beginning of the lesson, students are taught how to work with GPS devices. They determine the latitude and longitude of the starting and destination point of the trip. They also select other points of the trip route (5 points at the most) based on the various map services. Then, they measure the length of the planned trip using the selected map services. Next part of the activity includes field work. Students work in groups. Every group has the same task: register the starting and destination points using GPS to navigate to consecutive pre-selected points of the route. At every point of the route they register the GPS location (geographic coordinates) of the point. They also take pictures of the selected interesting natural/cultural objects. They also must fill out their worksheets. Finally, every team uploads the points and tracks, collected during the fieldwork, to Google Earth. Moreover, they add descriptions from their worksheets and pictures (visualisation of data gathered during the field work). In the summary phase the students make a multimedia presentation showing the natural and cultural values of the Kozienicka Forest.
