One of the benefits brought to us by digital technology is the potential to supplement traditional learning practices with visual representations. This is very advantageous for visual learners who struggle to memorize data or who have to physically see things firsthand in order to remember them. One subject that benefits from the advances in visual education mediums is geography. As the study of Earth and Earth science, there is a great deal of imagery that is lost when simply reading a book. Below are five apps that can act as perfect supplements to your geography class!
Google Earth
Google Earth is available on iOS, Android, PC, and Mac OS X devices and lets you zoom in on all parts of world. Google Earth can serve all of your needs for viewing different locations if you’re looking for present-day images. Some ideas for use in the classroom include viewing historical locations or getting a first-hand glimpse on animal habitats or environmental phenomena like hurricanes and intense weather patterns.
Ansel & Clair’s Adventures in Africa
This app for iOS provides a rich and engaging experience for younger students. Framed as an adventure game, Ansel & Clair’s Adventures in Africa teaches students about geography, history, and science, as the two characters explore the expanses of Africa.
GeoMaster Plus
This app, available for iOS, Android, and Windows devices provides students with a fast-paced game designed to reinforce knowledge of locations of various historical landmarks, cities, terrain features, and more across the globe. The app works by giving students the name of a location or landmark and asks the student to place an X on that location of a world map. These quizzes are timed, incentivizing a quicker response from students, which pushes them to memorize locations.
EarthViewer
EarthViewer is a free app for the iPad, which provides a rich geographic history of the Earth. The most unique quality about this app is that it lets students look back at the billions of years of geographic history of the earth, allowing them to learn about continental shift and visit different landmarks at different points in history—this app can be useful for many different Earth science classes for this reason alone.
Countries of the World
Countries of the World is a free Android tablet app designed to provide students with a robust list of functions that make it an awesome study buddy. It comes equipped with a study mode and a quiz mode. Studying can be organized into different locations, allowing students to study one country at a time. Another strength of this app is that it allows students to look up specific information with its Lookup function.
To learn about more geography apps, click here.
