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Geoman’s Journal: A Tale of One Geography Teacher’s Trip to the Amazon

What do you get when you take a seasoned geography educator, send him on a multi-week adventure to the Amazon, and equip him with a blog to tell his story? Twenty-one days of inspired teaching moments and fascinating photographs!

We invite teachers and their students to follow along as Herb Thompson, better known to his colleagues and former students as “Geoman,” travels from Nassau, Bahamas, to the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil, to it’s terminus in Iquitos, Peru. Herb is a retired world geography teacher who has been a teaching consultant and co-coordinator for the National Geographic-supported Nevada Geographic Alliance for several decades.

Twenty-five years ago Herb embarked on a Semester at Sea adventure that changed his life and those of the many students who would benefit from his enlightened teachings about the world. Prior to his Semester at Sea experience Herb had traveled to one foreign country–Mexico–he has since visited 65.

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01/04/2012Leave a comment

Classroom Ideas

Meet Summer Intern Michelle Renn

Hey everyone!

My name is Michelle Renn and from now through August I’ll be interning at National Geographic and contributing to the My Wonderful World blog.

The fact is: I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe that we truly live in a wonderful world. All throughout my childhood I was fortunate to travel a lot with my family. We traveled domestically and internationally, often taking road trips across the country in the summers. We camped along the way, exploring National Parks, big cities, small towns– and everything in between. I learned from a young age that travel is about the journey, not just the destination. In retrospect, I entirely credit my parents with instilling in me a profound desire for exploration. Once I was exposed to a taste of new places, cultures, languages, and foods, the curiosity was unstoppable. I began to realize what a very large world we live in, and I became determined to experience as much of it as I could.

My love for exploration is likely what attracted me to Geography as a major in college. The breadth and depth of the discipline is miraculous, comprising everything from studies of humans and cultures, mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), environmental issues and systems, and physical attributes of the Earth. Geography is the exploration of people, cultures, the environment, and the intersections among them— it is an exploration of the planet we all share. I couldn’t stay away. 🙂