Archive for the ‘Teaching’ category

20 Geography Term Paper Topics

July 29th, 2008

Below is a list of Geography term paper titles generated by students at Piedmont Virginia Community College. These selected titles were chosen because the students that prepared them approached the topic from a personal level while applying the geographic principles we learned in class. They acted like Geographers:

  1. Internet Infrastructure: The Tangled Web We Weave – M. Murphy
  2. The Geographic Variation of Tattooing Technology – C. Motley
  3. Globalizing “Miller Time”: Industrial Location of the American Beer Industry – S. Oberhauser
  4. The Geography of Golf: Conquering the World and the Environment – S. McKeown
  5. The Changing Political Landscape of Post-Katrina New Orleans – K. Kiss
  6. The Spatial Diffusion of Reggeaton – J.Cortez
  7. A Nursing Shortage in The United States – P. Catlett
  8. The Geography of the Hearing Impaired – C. Rosenberry
  9. The Geography of Jazz -J. Pleasant
  10. The Geography of Counter-Stike: A Global Phenomenon – M. Murphy
  11. The Dances of North Africa and the Middle East – J. Jackson
  12. Cancer Incidence Around the World – J. Stathos
  13. The Geography of Beatlemania: The Atlantic Echo-Chamber – M. Schaeder
  14. Disparity of Internet Access in Urban and Rural America – P. Thompson
  15. Invaded Country: The Pre-September 11 Military Invasions of Afghanistan – T. Lacy
  16. A Cultural Geography of the Diffusion of Opera – J. Slohada
  17. The Geographic Signficance of High School Drop Out Rates – D. Bryant
  18. The Ukrainian Diaspora: One Family’s Journey – F. Bakke
  19. The Forum of Sao Paulo: a 2005 Assessment of Communism’s Resurgence in Latin America
  20. Where is Margaritta-ville? The Geography of Jimmy Buffett songs
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Obama Has A Crowd of Map-Makers

July 15th, 2008

I wondered when a major party presidential candidate would assemble a Geographic Information Sciences Team. It was confirmed when the Campaign put out a call for volunteers over at the GIS Jobs Clearinghouse. I signed up to help and heard the electrical thumps of the team getting slammed with volunteer cartographers and other GIS folk clamoring to help the put their candidate’s train in motion.

To the candidate, I would like to say that it is fantastic that the GIS Team you assembled are applying the technology in some very interesting ways. I wonder if the other campaigns are running their GIS teams as effectively. I offer the floor to the techno-critics over at the Low Tech Times for their position on the role of technology in presidential campaigns.

Give up? Barack Obama is taking a crowdsourced, collaborative approach to his GIS Operations. Will Obama be the first Open-Source President? As an academic advisor, I would suggest to any student working on the campaign to treat this like a laboratory of ideas worthy of doctoral dissertations. But remember, there will also be a lot of boring old production cartography. Either way, the Obama Campaign has embraced an important technology and an interesting method of crowdsourcing.

Also, the Low-Tech Times has asked that you not use the GIS as a  campaign SPAM-building effort.

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    Geography, I Welcome You Back to My Life!

    July 14th, 2008

    In preparation for the academic world, I have sought and found a new adjunct teaching position in Geography at Virginia International University. Deals aren’t done until contracts are signed, but I am confident I will be in the classroom this fall. I am still seeking used Geography Textbooks if anyone has any to share, Donate Used Geography Texts for Open-Source Geography Project

    Anyway, below are my notes from my sample lecture about Boundary-Making Processes in Washington DC, as well as a statement of my teaching philosophy.

    Teaching Philosophy

    • Conversational
    • I am No Smarter Than You, I have Only Read More about Geography
    • A Student’s Work Has Value Beyond The Classroom
    • The Student Should be able to teach a concept
    • Assignments should be Personally Relevant
    • Authentic Assessment Strategy
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    Ideas for Internet Infrastructure Analysis for Economic Geographers and Industrial Location Specialists

    July 5th, 2008

    In Geography is Dead, Warwick E. Murray’s revisits the economic geography theory that Globalization is the end of Geography. Using Amazon as an example, he claimed brick-and-mortar book sales losses would collapse the bookstore industry. We know they adapted and survived and his thesis is deftly countered by Kevin Morgan’s “Exaggerated Death of Geography.”

    As a PhD applicant actively seeking Graduate Funding, any one of these topics is a viable PhD dissertation topic. There are observable geographic patterns of Internet Activity that can be measured and statistically modelled within commonly understood models of Industrial Location.

    • Mutually Beneficial Economic Development as Optimization Variable in Industrial Location: A Google, Government and Energy Management Case Study
    • Patterns of Starbuck Store Closure: A Correlation with the Commercial and Residential Development Market.
    • Geographic Patterns of Crowdsourced Loans: A Prosper.com Case Study (for Academic purposes, Prosper offers a download of its entire dataset).
    • The Economics the Pioneer Fringe: An Empirical Revisit to Isaiah Bowman
    • Pre-Revolutionary Land Use Patterns and Concepts of Ownership
    • Open-Source Micro-Franchising: A Distributed Distribution Method for Incubating Crowdsourced Content
    • The Geography of Long Tail Economics-(Perhaps this one actually is killing the record store).
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    Building an Effective Student-Professor Relationship

    June 8th, 2008

    Having taught four semesters (18 credit hours) as an Adjunct Geography Professor at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, VA, I have come up with a few conclusions about the relationship between a students and their professors. These few points are intended for both students and aspiring professors. As a student, remember these so that you can walk into the classroom with confidence that you are an adult. As an aspiring professor, keep these tips in mind as your prepare for your student’s.

    • A student’s work has value beyond the classroom.
    • Student’s should tailor their work, papers and presentations, to the class not the professor.
    • The professor is no more intelligent than you. They have only read more than you.
    • The professor should not view themselves as a lecturer but as a developer of colleagues.
    • Conversations are more informative than lectures.
    • Its not what you know, but how to find it.
    • Focus on quality, not the grades.
    • You learn more by being wrong than you do by being quiet. Speak Up!
    • A student is an early stage of professional life and should be expected to act and work in a professional manner.
    • A professor should be able to use the tools of their students and vice versa.
    • To Reiterate: A student’s work has value beyond the classroom. The professor’s job is to show the student that value.
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