-------- Original Message --------
Subject: geoguessr.com link
Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 06:38:43 -0700
From: Virginia R Hetrick PhD <[log in to unmask]>
To: Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship <[log in to unmask]>


Hello, map geeks and geographers -

If you haven't played the geoguessr.com link that Angie sent us,
PLEASE do so and prepare to be amazed unless you've literally
travelled to just about every country around the world.  It will
exercise every neuron in your brain that knows about places in the
world (culturally, geomorphologically, linguistically (I HATE traffic
signs not written out, i.e., ones that us symbology rather than the
local language).

For those of you who don't know about the Internet Scout
(scout.wisc.edu), I just sent them the link Angie sent us yesterday
with a recommendation to include it in an upcoming issue.  The Scout
comes out every Friday morning with about 20 links to useful (and
sometimes fun) online resources.  My email to the Scout follows my
signature block below.

Goodonya, Angie!

Enjoy.

virginia
-------------------------------------------------
Virginia R. Hetrick, here in sunny California
Email:  [log in to unmask]
"There is always hope."
My fave:  http://www.washington.edu/cambots/camera1_l.jpg
There's no place like:  34N 8' 25.40", 117W 58' 5.36"
if you can't be at:  48N 7' 4.54" 122W 45' 50.95"
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=====Copy of email sent to Internet Scout=====
Good Monday morning, folks -

I'm not a map librarian, but I subscribe to their list because a bunch
of my grad school friends are on it.  In their list yesterday, the
list manager pointed us the following:

www.geoguessr.com

Note that there's no "e" between the two esses and the "r".

So far I've tried it three times and it's pretty thorough in terms of
covering the world, i.e., it's not just about North America.  The main
suggestions I'd make are to do a 360°  scan around the original
location using what I call the pseudo arrows (the white arrowheads).
Also, changing your perspective when you see a significant structure
helps.  For example, noticing structures that are "peculiar" to
particular types of cultural phenomena helps a lot.  I saw an Eastern
Orthodox church with a cross on top and counted it as a moral victory
because, while I guessed it was in the area of Greece/Turkey, it
turned out to be Romania (which does have a significant Easter
Orthodox population).  As another example, before I learned about
doing the 360°, I didn't see the Sydney Harbor Bridge,  doh!

Another one I got was in the southwestern US (which I guessed
correctly) that had a characteristic curved iron pipe gate with the
ranch's name overhead.

By training, I'm a PhD geographer, and consider that I'm pretty
familiar with cultural distinctions around the world, but this was a
real challenge compared to the usual geography "games" intended to
give a fun way to learn about the world.

If they'd had a way to hook a short blurb into the game, especially
for the ones where the guessr doesn't even have his/her guess on the
same continent as the place originally presented, it may have a bit
more geographic learning involved.  But, that's probably not possible,
given the state of geographic ontologies.

But, still I think think teachers and librarians would be interested
in this site.

I hope you had a great weekend.

virginia