Awesome New App for Geography!

Earth Observer

This app provides tons of maps. Zoom in on the area or country you want to look at and change the view. You can change the maps to view all sorts of information about the world, some examples of maps provided include, area per person, population density, infant mortality, natural hazards, weather, and lots more. This allows students to see other uses of maps, not just finding locations and directions. They are able to compare different major cities in the US by just looking at a map.

We created a worksheet for students to fill out while they are exploring this program, choosing areas to compare and different maps to look at. It is a pretty self directed activity in that they can choose the locales they want to focus on, they just have to record some of the information they find for accountability.

Some of the things we had them look at and compare were;

Identify regions/cities in the US with a large population density...Mark them on your map with squares

Why are certain regions of the US more populated than others? Explain.

What part of the US are infant mortality rates high? Mark them on your map with circles.

We then had them do the same on maps of Europe, and Africa.

Then they described similarities and differences between the US and the other country they were looking at.

The students loved this! They like looking at data and comparing it. They also want to find out why things are the way they are.

Overall this activity went really well! I think it has been one of the best yet!

Screenshot of Earth Observer App.