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Geography, Diversity, and Personal Interest

10/6/2013

4 Comments

 
As our classes make steady progress on the Geographic inquiry, a familiar theme emerges -Geography is all about diversity. This simple idea of diversity defines geography beyond where something is located. Diversity leads us to ask interesting questions about the world around us, we naturally want to know how and why characteristics differ from place to place.

What a boring world it would be if every location had the same characteristics and all people  shared a similar way of life. Fortunately our landscapes do change from place to place, along with the natural processes and functions or the land and the cultures of people who live there. Students have formulated so many great geographic questions according to their own interests  and spent several classes researching, exploring, and drawing conclusions.

Clear examples of diversity  can be seen in the student research questions. Here are a few examples:

  • Why does California have mega-farms and Vermont does not?
  • Why was Disney World built in Orlando, Florida?
  • Why was the Statue of Liberty placed in New York?
  • Why do some cities have high crime rates?
  • Where are the most shark attacks? Why do they occur more in these locations?

So many interesting topics and they are all geographically interesting thanks to our diverse world. Check out my slideshow featuring some of the places I have been, the pictures demonstrate the idea of geographic diversity quite well.  Where have you traveled and  how did it differ from Vermont? Please take a minute to post a comment.
4 Comments
Rob ward
10/7/2013 08:32:11 am

That is a great picture if you with those huge salmon. I went to morocco a couple of times and it was really different than anywhere I have been in the us. For one thing, the entire concept of time was much less important there. People walked slowly, planes left when they were full, people worked about 10 hours a week. A greater emphasis was put on spending time with people in tea houses and chatting during dinner. It was not unusual for a dinner to last 3 hours! I also went to a wedding there and the groom was 4 hours late. No one seemed to mind, least of all the bride who sat on a huge throne that whole time. It was really weird to adjust to the idea that people did not really care about getting things done and they seemed to live in the moment better.

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Rob ward
10/7/2013 08:36:16 am

Also the toilets in morocco looked like this.
http://www.visionnomad.com/2011/12/bathroom-101/squat-toilet/

So THAT. Was different.

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Matt R.
10/14/2013 03:40:18 am

Nice toilets! That must have been awkward...

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Julia E
10/13/2013 11:02:31 pm

I have been to Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, New York,Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D.C., all these places are different from Vermont because they are much larger and have a bigger population, and most of them are near the ocean.

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