New trends in teaching geography, when pupils can find a lot of geographic data on the Internet and use mobile phone navigation to find their way, are the topic of this year's Summer Geography School in Brno. Experts warn against the opinion that teaching geography is useless in view of the development of modern technologies. Czech experts agree that the development of technology increases the demands on pupils to be able to navigate in the data they receive. However, the form of geography needs to be adapted to this.
"What we need to teach young people is so-called cartographic skills, so that they learn to read maps and make better use of the huge amount of data and information contained in them, which we get thanks to modern technologies," said Vladimír Herber from the Geographical Institute of the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University, which has organised the Summer Geography School in Brno for 30 years. This year, the meeting of geography graduates and students with teachers and people from practice will take place from 23 to 25 August.
"When we started the Summer School in the 1990s, the question was how to fill in the missing information in geography textbooks that did not appear in the previous regime. This was followed by a period when teaching was expanded to include ecology and environmental education. Recently, there has been a fight to keep geography in the curriculum," Herber says. However, he says, the geography helps to know and understand the world in context. Moreover, working with maps develops thinking and imagination, teaches how to read visuals and graphs, and especially how to interpret data.
Teachers' approaches also need to change. "Teaching should not start with the instruction to put away mobile phones, but rather 'class has started, get out your mobile phones', so that students learn to use modern technology to its full potential," Herber stressed. Not only the geography curriculum in primary and secondary schools needs to be adapted, but also the teaching of future teachers. Linking the teaching of future teachers with practice is important. That is why experts from practice are invited to the Summer Geography School to present new ways of using applications in geography education.
The prestigious award, granted to the organizers from our Department of Geological Sciences on October 31, 2024, by the Czech Association of Geomorphologists, recognizes their contribution to promoting geoscience education in primary and secondary schools.
On October 15, 2024, Daniel Nývlt, head of the Czech Antarctic Research Programme based at the Department of Geography of SCI MUNI, received a state honour from the Republic of Chile for his role in the long-standing excellent cooperation between the Czechia and Chile in Antarctic research.
