{"id":187692,"date":"2012-10-29T09:39:01","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T16:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/?p=1401"},"modified":"2012-10-29T09:39:01","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T16:39:01","slug":"geoliteracy-so-what","status":"publish","type":"insider","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/geoliteracy-so-what","title":{"rendered":"Geoliteracy: So What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trooping into my room on the first day of school, my 8th grade geography classes would look above the board and see a sign:
\nGeography is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What\u2019s where?<\/li>\n
  2. Why is it there?<\/li>\n
  3. So what?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I would tell them that they didn\u2019t need to know a lot of facts for my class; primarily they needed thinking skills. They would build up their background knowledge by exercising those skills endlessly. We quickly began exploring.
    \nTheir growing background knowledge and thinking skills would allow them to answer the first and second questions. But to answer the third question they needed to always be alert, not just \u201cgo through the day.\u201d They needed to be attentive wherever they were, look for patterns and relationships at various scales, and pay attention to what they heard adults talking about, as well as what they saw\/heard\/read in the news. I told them it was OK to ask \u201cSo what?\u201d in class, any time they wanted, and such diversions happened often.
    \n

    \"Things
    Things are different between \u201chere\u201d and \u201cthere.\u201d Geoliteracy helps people understand the world and helps students see relationships.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTrue literacy\u2014about words, numbers, graphics, personal finance, social relationships, etc.\u2014means more than simply reciting facts and rules committed to memory. It means being able to understand situations and relationships, and handle questions not previously encountered\u2014and to do so with increasing sophistication.
    \nFor geographic literacy, or \u201cgeoliteracy,\u201d this means far more than knowing the states and capitols in the US or the directions around a compass. Such facts are handy, for sure, but insufficient by themselves.
    \nSo what does geoliteracy mean?<\/p>\n
      \n
    • It means being able to detect patterns that vary across space, and to understand how phenomena in one place and time relate to other phenomena.<\/li>\n
    • It means looking at a map, a classroom, or an athletic field and seeing patterns with similar clarity.<\/li>\n
    • It means looking at a label on a piece of clothing and understanding how an item made in a distant land might have gotten to this location, and being able to describe some possible related conditions and effects of such a journey.<\/li>\n
    • It means understanding how different groups might see and describe the value of a specific tree, a species, or an ocean differently.<\/li>\n
    • It means looking at a billboard next to a vacant lot on the way home from school and being able to describe some of what \u201cFuture home of BigBox SuperStore\u201d might mean to the community beyond just one less place to play catch.<\/li>\n
    • It means hearing a discussion about labor, economy, local resources, and global patterns, and being able to talk about what different sides might value.<\/li>\n
    • It means carefully choosing which ideas to support and discard, and knowing how to learn about new things, including deciding why certain bits of information might be more appropriate than others.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Geoliteracy helps people to navigate through life and to cope with overlapping and often competing information and values, at scales from micro to cosmic. It means being able to describe for new situations \u201cwhat’s where,\u201d postulate \u201cwhy it\u2019s there,\u201d and being interested enough to wonder and skilled enough to resolve \u201cso what.\u201d Geoliteracy fosters skills in managing disparate information about complex problems. And this is exactly what employers are seeking today\u2014workers accustomed to thinking critically, learning insatiably, collaborating naturally, and using technology to analyze and integrate more efficiently and powerfully. Geoliteracy opens doors to a better future for individuals, communities, and the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10862],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187692","insider","type-insider","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esri"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGeoliteracy: So What?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/geoliteracy-so-what\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Geoliteracy: So What?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Trooping into my room on the first day of school, my 8th grade geography classes would look above the board and see a sign: Geography is: What\u2019s where? 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