Hello everyone! My name is Douglas Apple and I am currently a freshman at Penn State living in Pinchot Hall. I have spent my whole life growing up in Hatfield PA, which is 45 minutes north of Philadelphia. I am majoring in Turfgrass Science and minoring in Business Administration. Being involved in the Turf Club, I have had the chance to meet with many Golf Course Superintendents from around the area. They have taught me many tips to be successful and I hope to be in their position in the future. Although I have been living in the same town my whole life, I have had the luxury of being able to travel and learn a lot about many different places in the United State. I have never been out of the country, but I have gone to many different states as my family loves to travel. The reason I took this course is because I have had an interest in Geography ever since the Geography Bee’s in Elementary School. I also took a course in high school that was very interesting about the way human’s and the environment interact and I hope to expand my knowledge in this course. One very important thing about me is that I am a die hard Philadelphia sports fan and there is nothing that causes greater misery.
The topic that caught my attention in module one was visualization. Being a visual learner, I would much rather interpret maps, watch videos, or look at a picture and describe it rather than reading a textbook. Visuals can greatly benefit understanding, but shown in the module they could be very misconstrued. One part of the module had a map of the subway systems in London that was very simple for people to follow and the other map showed much more detail for how long the trip would actually take. I think it is very important for both of these maps to be hung up at the Subway Station. For tourist who are trying to get around the city, they would want a map that is very simple to get them from Point A to Point B. For a local, they would want to see how long it would take them to get around the city because they are probably very familiar with the Subway Systems. Another part of the module showed that in the video, maps can be misleading. This morning on the radio they had a listener who was driving to Alaska. The people on the station were than discussing how the map of the United States can be very misleading because Alaska is normally portrayed in the corner of the map as an island. The reason behind this is because they do not want to show the whole country of Canada just to show Alaska. I thought this was very interesting because for children who are reading the map could be very confused to think that Alaska is an island. I hope to go into greater detail regarding maps and visualization.
Hello Douglas, I’m Ian, I study Plastics Engineering Technology at Penn State Behrend, and you can check my blog post out here: https://wp.me/p3RCAy-aRg. I would like to note that your post caught my eye due to the comment that the radio host had on Alaska appearing on many maps to look like an island. I had a professor who mentioned that a student once confronted him asking, “Why is it so cold in Alaska when it is so close to Hawaii where it is always hot?” This is an aspect of geography may seem so simple to most people. I think many people get too caught up in trying to memorize the capital of each state or topics of similar nature when it comes to geography rather than the exact geographical location. It is also safe to say that many schools or teachers may leave aspects like map reading out because with how far technology has come most people no longer read a map, instead they rely on the GPS in their car or on their phone. This problem may only increase due to the advancement of technology.
Hey Douglas, I agree with your comments about being a visual learner. I feel the same way and I have always associated geography with constructing different maps and figures. I prefer to always be able to see a map to really understand something. Even if I am driving somewhere I would rather be able to see the directions of where I am going in the map view rather than a list of all of the different turns and steps. I think maps can be the most effective form of geography, but as you stated in your entry maps can also be very confusing and misleading. I also hope to learn a lot more about maps, and what goes into making a map.