Even though it might sound like a long time, meteorologists have only been able to use satellite imagery for fewer than 50 years. The insights gained with this one technology revolutionized weather forecasting.

I'm going to call this a "Current Event" because every year we face the inevitable, a tropical storm or worse. Read More...

Here are the lecture notes for Realm #1: Europe.

It would be a good idea to "complete" the notes on your own rather than during class. If you leave plenty of blank space it will be easy to include information or examples from class discussions or from current events, for example. For those of you who really want to keep sequential and "continuous" notes, this is really the only way to do it. Remember to include and/or draw pictures, diagrams, graphics, maps, and so on.

Here's a political cartoon that we'll all use for week three.

Can you see the cartoon in the context of regionalization?

As a reminder, here are the assignment instructions. Click on the "Read More..." link to see a larger image.

Here are the notes on World Regional Geography.

This is one of the most interesting photographs of the Earth that I have ever seen. It's a picture of a rocket launching from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Unfortunately, I do not know the source though I surmise that it was taken from aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which resides in "low Earth orbit", approximately 250 miles above the Earth.

1. Write the title of the article, the source, the date, and the author.
   
2. Identify the Topic and Sub-topic that most accurately fits the subject of the article.
   
3. Summarize the article in no less than three complete sentences.
   
4. Find five 5 identifications/key terms from the list of Key Terms & Identifications on my website that either specifically appear in the article or conceptually similar. Include a short definition for each.
   
5. Sort the list of AP Free-Response Questions and find a question for which you can use the article as an example. Explain why in a sentence or two.
   

Hans Rosling is a remarkable speaker on the TED stage. We spent time watching and discussing his TED Talk because Rosling presents information that will be useful in each of the AP Human Geography Topics—but just as important, he provides a myth-busting perspective: Sub-Saharan Africa, traditionally viewed as the poorest and most backward of the world's cultural regions, has, in fact, made much progress over the past several decades.

While we discussed the presentation at length, and took notes in class, it is probably a good idea to spend some time re-viewing it later in the course, or during ExamCram.

Here's a link to the TED Talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty?language=en

Topic 1 of the AP Human Geography course is about the perspectives and tools that geographers use to explain what is obvious to anyone: people and places are different. Geographers seek to explain why that is so.

Here is the lecture on William Pattison's Four Traditions of Geography.

Here is the lecture on the five themes of geography.

Each week, I will ask you to search the world wide web for a political cartoon that relates to the AP Human Geography course. You'll need to print the cartoon to paper, trim it, and paste, tape or staple it into your Course Notebook. The cartoon need not concern a current event, but it should reflect what we are currently studying in the classroom. (In fact, classic, old cartoons are really helpful, so search carefully.)

Tom Friedman is the author of a very important recent book titled "The World is Flat". While it would be a rewarding experience for all of you to read it, we watched an MIT "open courseware" talk by Friedman in class to provide an historical context, or framework, to help you understand the immense changes that have taken place in human civilization over the past several centuries.

Here is a link to the video we watched.

Here is a link to the notes pages for the video.