I am currently applying for Geography Adjunct Teaching positions in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area. For more information about my teaching philosophy, please my recent blogpost about building an effective student-professor relationship.
Open-Source Geography is a new concept in education in which a class of students write their own Geography textbook. This idea is in accordance with my belief that a student’s work has value beyond the classroom and uses a blog as an Instructional Technology. Consider for the following reasons:
- A student’s learning should be based around the topics interesting to them
- The role of the professor is to guide the students through their learning process and to fill in concepts the students may have missed
- In opening homework and exams to the public, the student is reminded that this is for public consumption thus subject to editorial control
COMPONENT 1: Homework Blog
Each student will be required to submit their homework to a publicly accessible blog. Their homework will consist of a set number of blogposts:
1. Set number of keywords per week
- Concept Keywords: Students are required to read the text
- Bibliographic Keywords: Student are required to familiarize themselves with how to use a bibliography, tracking down the actual publication online and reviewing the document
2. In-depth discussion of a one of their keywords
3, In-depth discussion of one of the authors/publications they found in their bibliographic search
4. Submission of a current news story demonstrating one of the concepts
COMPONENT 2: No standard textbook
Student have their choice of a USED Cultural and/or Human Geography textbooks. Since the domain of Geography is a very wide domain, but the concepts contained are all relatively similar. To prevent students from learning from out-dated examples found in most textbooks, they will be required to illustrate their understanding of the concepts by applying them to current stories from the news.
COMPONENT 3: Crowdsource Topics of their Textbook. Each student is required to submit a set number of keywords from the textbook. This program then counts the number of keywords for the entire class.
Learning Model
- Student: Each student reviews the text and picks the concepts he/she finds important
- Class: The class is provided with a list of most frequent concepts
- Instructor: The instructor focuses the lectures around most frequent concepts submitted by the class
The form below is an image, but demonstrates the proof of the primary concept. 
COMPONENT 4: Student Submitted Exam Questions: When students are required to write their own exam questions, they are required to have a full understanding of the concepts.
COMPONENT 5: Open Source Exams: Requiring students memorize a list of facts does not enable them to demonstrate their true understanding of the concepts. An open-source exam requires them to synthesize the concepts they were exposed to by the class and by the Instructor.
COMPONENT 6: Final Projects: Student will be required to prepare and present a final project to the class. These will function as examples for the open-source textbook, thus providing current examples and subject to strict editorial standards.
COMPONENT 6: Edit the Open Source Textbook in Wikipedia or some other open format.
What I need: Used Geography Texts! If you have any old used Human or Cultural Geography texts you no longer need or that the bookstore would not buy-back, consider donating them to the Open-Source Geography Project. Please send them to PO Box 17128, Arlington, VA 22216.
