The need to improve the geographical literacy skills of college students is something we heard a lot about at a focus group Soomo conducted at APSA earlier this month. The IR professors who joined us (you know who you are and we thank you profusely!) told us that one of their greatest challenges is helping students to step outside of  a U.S. (or Maine or California) perspective. We bounced around ideas for how to do that online, and ways to incorporate those ideas into our assignments and user interface are percolating in the great brains in Asheville who think in curly braces, blocks, and parsing expression grammars.

If you’re grappling with this issue in the classroom, here are a few resources that may be helpful. First up: how do geographers define geographical literacy?  This column, by Daniel C. Edelson of the National Geographic Society, makes the point that geographical literacy isn’t merely a matter of understanding where Latvia is on a map. It’s about analysis and critical thinking. In Edelson’s words:

Today, most Americans go from kindergarten through college without ever being taught how to trace causes forward or backward across space or to analyze spatial relationships in order to predict or explain.

Without this analytic ability, how would we ever expect them to make good decisions about where to live and work, how to transport themselves, what to buy and how to dispose of it, how to prepare for natural disasters, whether to go to war abroad, where to locate a store or factory, or how to market goods abroad? The list goes on and on.

So, in addition to the online geography quizzes you can find here, you might also want to take a gander at a diverting blog aptly titled Strange Maps. If you’re teaching American Government, look at post number 402 on FDR’s vacation. Teaching CG and IR? Here’s a U.S. map that portrays the states using the flags of countries of equal population. And if pop culture is a way you enjoy reaching your students, how about this post?

The image below (link here), is a Tom Meeks find. Tom makes Soomo support supportive and has an answer for every question–Mac, PC, or just plain English. Clearly he also speaks french fries.

Everybody at Soomo was high-fiving when U.S. News and World Report included Asheville, North Carolina, in its Top 10 Cities for Political Junkies list. Most of Soomo works out of our Asheville office, and those of us who work virtually from home (yours truly included) remain haunted, if not a little tormented, by our inability to lunch with the crew at 12 Bones on a regular basis.

So, think of us as a regionally and politically diverse band of web-fluent education geeks headquartered in a city where political differences are often front and center. Seems like a good way to stay honest about the range of students and instructors using our collections, not to mention the crucial issues Americans are thinking and talking and arguing about.

The call for proposals to the APSA Teaching & Learning Conference has been extended to October 2. The conference will be in Philly February 5-7 and should, once again, be a remarkable gathering of a few hundred people passionate about teaching and learning in political science.

A mere 222 years ago today, September 17, 2009, the Framers signed the U.S. Constitution.

If you’re considering this post over your morning coffee on September 18th, take a few moments to sing along to the Preamble with Schoolhouse Rock and consider asking your students to go to the National Constitution Center’s website to play Which Founder Are You? and test their knowledge by taking the site’s Naturalization Test. The video here provides a brief introduction to the Founding that could be used to start a lecture. (The Constitutional Timeline here is the basis of one of Americans Governing‘s core assignments.)

And if you want to be prepared for next year’s Constitution Day, consider purchasing 50 pocket-sized Constitutions from the Center’s store to hand out to friends and neighbors in a rush of civic-minded euphoria. In fact, I’ll send you one myself if you share a link I end up highlighting in a post written within the next month…we could all use a little quality reading material these days. Send your suggestions to melissa@soomopublishing.com.

As Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) continues to receive smackdowns and kudos in the wake of his verbal incivility during President Obama’s nationally televised address on health care reform, accurate information about the proposals on the table seems more important than ever. A good place to start: the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org.

Articles addressing the veracity of claims made in President Obama’s September 9th speech and Representative Charles Boustany’s response to it provide insight on the different approaches favored by the Democratic and Republican camps. And in the process of focusing on the facts, these analyses do a nice job of revealing the depth and breadth of political spin aimed at winning hearts, minds, and grassroots support.

Yep, we’re geared up for APSA and looking forward to talking to a slew of political scientists over the next four days at Booth #315 in the Exhibits Hall.

Unable to hightail it to the shores of Lake Ontario for the Labor Day Weekend? Spend a little time researching the great Toronto Garbage Strike of 2009. The video record ranges from the dismayingly documentary to the creatively unhelpful…with a slight Green Day vibe.