“The Five Themes of Geography Meet the National Football League”

I will be presenting a paper at the Popular Culture Association of the South / American Culture Association of the South conference this fall.

This year, the conference will be held in downtown Wilmington, NC on September 26-28, at the Hotel Ballast.

My abstract for the conference is below:

The Five Themes of Geography Meet the National Football League

ABSTRACT:

Sports references are one way to teach basic geographic concepts to K-12 and general education college students. There is a great interest in professional football (The NFL) although there is less interest in esoteric geographic concepts such as spatial diffusion, cultural landscape, altitudinal zonation, etc. Most college students only take one “general education” elective in college, and many remain uninformed as to how geography relates to their interests. This project presents several discussion topics which could be used to teach the classic “Five Themes of Geography”. The five themes of geography are 1) Location 2) Region 3) Movement 4) Human-Environment Interaction and 5) Place.

Geography as a natural science is discussed in such issues as environmental influences on franchise location, and how the atmosphere influences game physics. Geography as a social science is discussed in issues such as the controversy over team names, marketing problems, and ethnic or cultural identity. Teaching modules were developed for general education courses in geography, which were particularly aimed at education majors. The expected outcome is for these future educators to utilize and embellish these concepts further when teaching the five themes.

Keywords: Five Themes of Geography, Professional Football, K-12 Education, Geography of Popular Culture

For more on the PCA South Conference, see the link here:

http://pcasacas.org/dir/

All of the graphics I used are linked on the slide. Original graphics are the property of the original artists/photographers. No copyright infringement is intended.

View the slideshow in this gallery:

AP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY PROJECT “FIVE THEMES OF GEOGRAPHY — THE PHILIPPINES”

AP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY PROJECT “FIVE THEMES OF GEOGRAPHY — THE PHILIPPINES”

I was cleaning out and reorganizing some old files on the home computer today, when I found my son’s AP Human Geography project from last fall. The class was studying the “Five Themes” and the assignment was to make a presentation on an assigned country. Lucky Ducks — my son was assigned The Philippines. They were actually supposed to tack it all to a posterboard, but this is a copy of the PowerPoint he made before cutting out and posting the components. I think that it stands up pretty well as just a PowerPoint! I am glad that we kept a copy of the file. He turned it in and received an “A” grade. His teacher wanted to keep the posterboard, but unfortunately — Hurricane Florence happened. The teacher said that the high school’s second floor roof leaked during the storm, then water dripped all over the stack of student posterboards — ruining every one of them.

TGF PowerPoint! Here is his original presentation.

Of course, if it was me … I would add in all kinds of animations, film clips and  picture postcards, and add in all this detail, … etc.

Here is another version he made that references all the images. Just in case you wonder where the images came from.

If you want a quick view of the slides, see this YouTube link:

What country would you want to make a “Five Themes” project of? Please comment!