National Council for Geography Education

Summary Field data collection remains one of the most important ways to collect geographic information. An increasing number of commercial applications rely on OpenStreetMap so adding pedestrian-level detail to OpenStreetMap yields broad-based benefits for everyone in a community. Field mapping is a fun way to learn about the landscapes as well as how to collect […]

Summary Using geo-literacy skills, students can engage in learning about the Holocaust in new ways. How we map the Holocaust can both answer and raise important questions. Knowles (2024) identified five challenges of mapping the Holocaust. Among the challenges, Holocaust maps tend to represent the actions of the perpetrators, perpetuate outdated narratives of the Holocaust, […]

Summary "Students can find facts on the internet; we should focus on teaching skills." This observation is common, but it is also naive and dangerous. If students lack a framework of accurate and well-connected facts for comparison, it is hard to teach a skill of evaluating new facts for accuracy or relevance. The key word […]

Summary The editors of the two NCGE journals – the Geography Teacher and the Journal of Geography – invite you to learn about the publication process for the journals and how you can become a successful author. Take half an hour to learn about preparing and submitting manuscripts, completing the publishing process as an author, […]

Summary In this session, participants will explore one of the consequences of climate change, that of sea-level rise. Attendees will participate in a lesson which uses blocks to model the topography of various coastlines, and then document the effects of various levels of sea-level rise around the world. Participants will brainstorm possible solutions coastal communities […]

Summary Cities change their structural space and are a part of globalization, but how does this affect residents across a city? This two-part session discusses the challenges of urban growth, both in the past and present by centering on our third largest city, Chicago. The first part focuses on the effects of redlining in Chicago […]

Summary This session will provide participants with practical, engaging activities about Taiwan for the geography classroom. Taiwan is an island that mixes unique indigenous cultures with Chinese, Japanese, European, and American influences; it provides an interesting and topical area of study for human and physical geography students. The participants on this panel spent two weeks […]

Summary Through a Spencer-funded research project, 14 social studies teachers from the Midwest and 3 teacher educators collaborated with the goal of enhancing teachers’ racially literate curriculum making in the social studies. The eighteen-month endeavor draws from the international GeoCapabilities project and the recent book “Race, Racism and the Geography Curriculum” (Morgan & Lambert, 2023). […]

Summary Join us for a “re-exploration” of regions, those mental constructs that shape how students learn about their world. Can regions be constructed to be more accurate, fair, and useful? Regionalization, and the relationships between power and space, are an important part of AP Human Geography and other geography courses. Geographers have long questioned the […]

Summary Interactive maps, spatial data, and web based GIS tools can enhance and enliven inquiry and instruction. In this hands-on workshop you will be empowered to use these resources and tools to teach about landforms, biomes, ecoregions, climate zones, oceans, and other physical regions of Planet Earth. This workshop will focus on instructional tools and […]

Summary In the winter 2023, Geographic Educators of Nebraska obtained funding from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Documents (TPS) grant to conduct a summer workshop and fall follow-up activities. The workshops took place in the summers of 2023 and 2024, The workshop focused on the “Historical Geography of the City” which used the […]

Summary High on engagement, this session will showcase a medley of “kid-tested and teacher-approved” classroom activities that allow students to tap into their place-based knowledge, leverage their cultural capital, and share their geography connections with one another. Participants will engage in a sampler of experiential activities, that foster cultural responsiveness (Multicultural Bingo), build map skills […]