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May 15, 2001
Armchair Excursions:
Geography Adventures on CD-ROM
By Carol S. Holzberg, Ph.D.
Interactive, virtual visits to faraway places teach kids about world geography. Are your students game?
Can you name the three largest metropolitan areas in the world today? Where would you go to find Timbuktu, the Taj Mahal, or the Caribbean island that Fidel Castro calls home? What is the origin and destination of the Orient Express?
Most American schoolchildren-and a good many adults-may be hard-pressed for correct answers to these questions. Fortunately, educational technology has responded to our "geography gap" by offering a wide range of programs designed to teach geographical literacy. Geographical literacy means knowing about the earth's physical space, climates, and natural resources. It also means understanding how geography affects politics and how political choices impinge on geography. By exploring geographical diversity, students gain a better understanding of their place in the grand scheme of things and their potential to affect lasting change.
Geography games differ in the skills they develop and the content they emphasize. Some, like National Geographic's GeoBee and Great Wave Software's World Discovery Deluxe, use gamelike competition to promote fact mastery. Others, like Tom Snyder's Geography Search, The Learning Company's Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and DK Interactive Learning's My First Amazing World Explorer 2.0, promote critical thinking and problem-solving while emphasizing spatial reasoning. All draw on high-quality multimedia sights and sounds to accommodate a variety of learning styles. Some even provide links to the Internet, enabling children to research topics of interest in greater detail. While technology is no substitute for an actual visit, an interactive geography skill builder helps make the foreign more familiar and encourages children to develop map-reading and thinking skills in an entertaining way.
GeoBee (National Geographic) 
GeoBee combines the competitive thrill of a fast-paced interactive game with over 2,000 questions drawn from National Geographic's National Geography Bee to test children's geography IQ. All game questions are multiple choice and some have audiovisual clues. The game is set for either one or multiple players and features three levels of difficulty. The higher the level, the more quickly players must answer quiz questions. A contestant's final score depends upon the number of completed rounds and the selected level of difficulty. Players who successfully complete all three levels of play earn an "official" personalized certificate of achievement. Success depends upon mastering a wide range of geography facts, including the names of rivers, mountain ranges, famous landmarks, political boundaries, history, and current events.
Packed with photographs, maps, pop-up puzzles, challenging questions, and unexpected light-ning rounds, GeoBee turns geography into lively play. The goal is to have students learn new facts through drills that build memory skills within a highly competitive environment. However, while games can be paused, players can't turn off the timer. In pause mode, the question disappears from view to prevent challengers from gaining a competitive advantage.
GeoBee is not for all students. Youngsters who enjoy the thrill of competition will appreciate GeoBee's drill-like challenges, while those who prefer critical thinking to quick reflexes should be encouraged to look elsewhere.
Geography Search (Tom Snyder Productions)
Designed for as many as six small groups of four to five players on a single classroom computer, Geography Search is a simulation that involves students in a realistic seafaring drama to explore the unknown. It offers an information-rich environment in which they can learn about five geographic areas: Oceans, Latitude and Stars, Longitude and Time, Wind Patterns, and Weather. The game's role-playing emphasis promotes cooperative learning, problem solving, and decision making.
Students are first presented with a concrete problem. They must journey back in time as crew members on a sailing ship in search of New World treasures. Using navigational aides such as the sun, stars, ocean depth, climate, and trade winds, they set sail from their port of Vesuvia to find the uncharted, treasure-rich City of Gold. To succeed they must return home safely, their ship laden with gold for the queen. To achieve this goal, they will have to work in collaborative crews and share information from four Navigation Log Books: Longitude Measurement, Latitude Measurement, Wind Recording, and Provisions and Depth Recording.
In groups, students determine the distribution of ship's labor and navigational course while negotiating temperature, weather conditions, wind patterns, and the state of their ship's provisions. The objective is to have them consider options, make decisions, and examine the consequences of their actions.
While trying to achieve their goals, students strengthen reading, oral, and written communication skills; measure distances based on lines of longitude and latitude; and learn more about the history of exploration. Geography Search succeeds because it motivates interest in geography through critical thinking and teamwork.
My First Amazing World Explorer 2.0 (DK Interactive Learning)
Getting around in My First Amazing World Explorer is simply a matter of pointing and clicking on interesting objects, map locations, place names, and flags. This multimedia journey takes kids to places on the map to learn about historic landmarks. Activities also teach interesting facts about the world's unusual plants and animals.
The program's educational message is clear. You're never too young to beef up mapping skills, visit faraway places, or learn about different cultures. The journey begins in an interactive child's bedroom filled with maps, pictures, toys, and other curious objects. Children explore by pointing and clicking. Some objects respond with a multimedia-enriched animation; others serve as gateways to a geographical destination. For example, the Show Me Train on the bedroom floor introduces youngsters to the program's main features. A Country Finder bulletin board invites children to click on a country's flag and go directly to that destination. Narrated information screens greet their arrival with interesting facts. Additional screens show country and state names and borders, major cities, and definitions of difficult concepts. On the international front, program features include preplanned boat and plane journeys to Europe, Africa, the United States, South America, and other places. If globetrotters complete all 19 itineraries, the program rewards them with a special World Explorer certificate that may be printed for coloring offline. Digital tourists can also collect colorful stickers of animals, buildings, plants, and statues for their sticker book; send electronic postcards; and take "guided tours" via submarine or space rocket, or view them on the bedroom TV.
My First Amazing World Explorer serves up an interactive introduction to geography, animals and their habitats, and world cultures, giving students an open-ended multimedia opportunity to learn more about the world. The well-written teacher's guide features 50 classroom activities to supplement CD-ROM content and enhance the learning experience.
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (The Learning Company)
This classic geography skill builder invites kids to track the thieving antics of Carmen Sandiego and her gang of pilfering pickpockets, burglars, and crooks. Game objectives have remained essentially the same over time, but the multimedia bells and whistles used to present game facts have kept pace with developments in technology. New features include digitized recordings of popular phrases in 12 languages from Arabic to Russian, plus a foreign language link-up game. A link to the Internet while the game is in play enables detectives to locate additional geography resources.
Players begin as rookie detectives at the Acme Detective Agency. They go on assignment to track down and capture a V.I.L.E. (Villains International League of Evil) thief who has made off with a priceless treasure (e.g., Hungarian goulash, the tracks to Russia's Trans-Siberian Railroad, a segment of Saudi Arabia's Trans-Arabian Pipeline, etc.). The program offers dozens of cases to solve, and players advance through the ranks of the Acme Detective Agency from Rookie to Super Sleuth with each crime-solving success. Games become more difficult at higher levels, but only Super Sleuths get a chance to go after Carmen herself.
Geographic clues point to the potential whereabouts of the crook. By talking to locals, reading maps, calling on the assistance of Acme Good Guys for location tours, and studying facts from an online database, kids must piece together information needed to secure a warrant and catch the thief. In the process of crime solving, players become more familiar with the names of world capitals, popular cities, famous landmarks, and world music and art, while also strengthening critical thinking skills.
World Discovery Deluxe (McGraw-Hill/Great Wave Software)
This geography skill builder combines 75 detailed political, topographic, satellite, and relief maps from around the world with over 10 different kinds of games. Each map can be configured to show countries, states, cities, mountain ranges, waterways, and more.
In timed activities, students identify locations, solve puzzles, or answer quiz questions as they play the program's many games. Quiz questions target landmarks, currency, national anthems, and historical events, in addition to politics and facts about famous personalities. Game options allow players to zoom in on 19 particular regions (including Australia, the Caribbean, Central America, and the Far East) to identify countries, capitals, dates of independence, flags, major cities, or geographic features. Other options let you increase the number of strikes permitted, show or hide regional borders, turn speech on or off, and play with foreign language greetings.
World Discovery's gamelike challenges motivate repeat visits. The games build reading skills because success often depends on locating a geographic match in response to a question or item of information. Games can be played by individuals in stand-alone mode or by as many as six players in tournament mode. Teachers will appreciate the program editor, which enables them to create question files tailored to classroom curriculum and custom games targeting a student's problem areas. A Print option lets players print hard copy of any map displayed on screen.
Carol S. Holzberg, Ph.D., anthropologist and computer journalist, works as technology coordinator at three western Massachusetts schools.
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