Coleman McCormick

Archive of posts with tag 'Human Geography'

Weekend Reading: Mastery Learning, Burundi’s Capital, and SRTM

December 29, 2018 • #

🎓 Mastery Learning and Creative Tasks

Khan Academy’s Andy Matuschak on tasks that require “depth of knowledge” versus those that have higher “transfer demand.” Both can be considered “difficult” in a sense, but teaching techniques to build knowledge need different approaches:

One big implication of mastery learning is that students should have as much opportunity to practice a skill as they’d like. Unlike a class that moves at a fixed pace, a struggling student should always be able to revisit prerequisites, read an alternative explanation, and try some new challenges. These systems usually consider a student to have finally “mastered” a skill when they can consistently answer related problems over an extended period of time.

🇧🇮 Burundi Moving its Capital

It’s not every day you see the map changing:

Burundi is moving its capital from the shores of Lake Tanganyika and deep into the nation’s central highlands.

Authorities announced they would change the political capital from Bujumbura to Gitega, which is located over 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the east.

đź›° SRTM Tile Grabber

This is an awesome tool from Derek Watkins. It makes downloading SRTM data dead simple.

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Local Knowledge

July 29, 2011 • #

Here are the slides from my talk at the first ever Ignite Tampa Bay. It was a blast to watch all the great talks from such a varied set of interests and passions. Great turnout, too — we drew a sellout crowd out to watch.

As difficult as it is to prepare for Ignite (20 slides, 15 seconds each, autoadvancing), I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve essentially done zero public speaking, so it’s nerve-wracking for me to stand up in front of 100+ people and talk at all — but it’s something I’ve always wanted to get better at, so I just jumped in. Now that it’s all over, I’m glad I did. So when the videos are edited and live, I’ll post that, too.

Thanks to all the organizers and presenters for a smashing first Ignite!

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Man vs. Nature

May 7, 2010 • #

Man vs. Nature

The front lines.

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