Current Event Connection, Main

11 Things We Learned This Week

This week, we learned …

… climate change skeptics are more likely to behave in eco-friendly ways than those who are highly concerned about the issue. Yikes. Read of the week!

People who expressed the greatest concern about the environment “were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions.”
Illustration by Tom Zeller, Jr., National Geographic

Get some ideas for going green yourself.

 

 

… how to design the most successful educational computer game of all time.

Click above to play old-school Oregon Trail!!! Illustration courtesy MECC

Follow the Oregon Trail with our successful educational map.

 

 

… Phoenicia never existed.

A conspiracy of cartographers?
Map by Yom, courtesy Wikimedia. CC-BY-SA-3.0

Learn more about these enigmatic “First Rulers of the Mediterranean.”

 

 

… how to count birds.

Illustration by Karl Martens, National Geographic

Can we count you in during the Year of the Bird?

 

 

… we wish we could tune into this new series “like Sesame Street, but in Inuktitut.”

Photograph courtesy Rita Claire Mike-Murphy

Where can you find Inuktitut speakers?

 

 

… Egypt has lost the Nile.

Map by Agnes Stienne

How is Ethiopia’s dam-building impacting Egypt?

 

 

… a wind farm in rural Jordan is distributing electric and social power.

In southern Jordan, our correspondent found a rural area that felt neglected by the government and had been the site of sustained protests not many years ago. Today it is the site of a commercial wind farm, an innovative marriage of emerging green power technology with a hopeful start to curing social inequities.
Photograph by Joe McNally, National Geographic

Use our activity to hold your own debate among wind-energy stakeholders.

 

 

… the Milky Way has been invaded.

One of the fastest-moving stars in our galaxy is a refugee from the Large Magellanic Cloud, bottom right.
Photograph by ESA/Gaia/DPAC

Where is the invasion taking place?

 

 

… an Antarctic island is finally rat-free.

Rats were an invasive species that decimated South Georgia’s native and migratory bird populations. No more!
Photograph by Maria Stenzel, National Geographic

What does a Nat Geo expert think of South Georgia Island?

 

 

… a water filter inspired by Alan Turing passed its first test.

Photographs courtesy Zhe Tan, Shengfu Chen, Xinsheng Peng, Lin Zhang, Congjie Gao. “Polyamide membranes with nanoscale Turing structures for water purification” Science, Vol. 360, Issue 6388, pp. 518-521 DOI: 10.1126/science.aar6308

How is one educator helping guide students to a better understanding about water quality, water filters, and water access?

 

 

… globalization has not reduced inequality.

In 2016, 47% of national income was received by the wealthiest 10% of Americans. Graph by World Inequality Lab

What is globalization?

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