Let the Games Begin - An Interactive Map of Issues Surrounding the Olympic Games

The 2016 Summer Olympic Games begin at the end of this week. The lead-up to the games has been full of new stories about physical, political, and economic conditions in Brazil. ESRI has published an interactive storymap about all of these issues. On Ready or Not, Let the Games Begin you can scroll through a story that features summaries of stories about construction of Olympic venues, issues regarding displacement of residents of Rio de Janiero, the zika virus, pollution, and security around the Olympic Games. At various points in the story you can click on maps to learn more about each issue.

Applications for Education
Back in 2008 I had students in my ninth grade world geography course write persuasive essays on the question of whether not the Olympic Games benefited the people who lived in the areas immediately surrounding the event venues. Ready or Not, Let the Games Begin provides students with background on the 2016 Olympic Games that they could use in making persuasive arguments about this year's Olympic Games.

H/T to Maps Mania. 

Why Are Olympic Records Always Broken? - And Other Olympics Resources

The 2016 Summer Olympic Games are just one week away now. From archery to rowing to track and field, over the course of the games many world and Olympic records will be broken. That raises the question, why are records almost always broken? ASAP Science tackled that question just before the 2014 Winter Olympics and the answers to the question also apply to summer events. The answers are explained in the video embedded below.


For more resources to help students learn about the Summer Olympic Games take a look at the CBC Kids Olympics page. There you will find games and word puzzles about a variety of sports including archery, soccer, swimming, and weight lifting.

Larry Ferlazzo has assembled a substantial list of resources for learning about the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Larry started that list nearly a year ago. His list includes resources for learning about the Paralympics.

Exploring the Olympics on Google Earth and Google Maps

If you've been watching the Olympic Games and wondering how you might incorporate them in your classroom, here are couple of resources to investigate.

The Google Earth Blog has published a short list of Google Earth tours based on the Olympic Games in London. The list includes a fly-over tour of the marathon route, Street View imagery of the Olympic Park, and 3D models of some of the Olympic venues.

Google's London 2012 page includes a Google Map showing the distribution of Olympic medals. Visitors can see the distribution of medals according to medal color and country.

Applications for Education
When I saw the Google Map of medal distribution I immediately thought of a simple geography lesson. Students can browse for medal winners in other countries then research those countries. To take it a step further, you might ask students to investigate why a country produces exceptional athletes in a given sport. For example, you might challenge students to find out why South Korea excels at archery.

Larry Ferlazzo has a large list of Olympic resources going, I encourage you to check out Larry's list. 

Faster, Higher, Stronger - History of Olympic Records

The Evolving Olympic Athlete is a set of interactive images depicting the changes in Olympic athletic records from 1896 to 2008. Visitors to the site can click through each image to see the decline in race times for running and swimming events. Visitors can also click through to see increases in distances for jumping and throwing events.

Applications for Education
The Evolving Olympic Athlete could be a nice little resource for prompting students to think about why race times have consistently decreased over time and throwing distances have increased.

I learned about The Evolving Olympic Athlete from Larry Ferlazzo who has a great list of resources for teaching and learning about the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

Video - The Difference Between England, Great Britain, and United Kingdom

As students watch the Olympic Games this year they might wonder, "what is the difference between England, Great Britain, and United Kingdom?" Or they might think that all three refer to the same thing. The following five minute video from CGP Grey explains what each name refers to and the differences between the three.


Applications for Education
When I taught a World Geography course one of the things that occasionally baffled and or annoyed my students was my insistence that they knew that United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England are not correct interchangeable terms.This video does a good job of explaining the historical origins as well as modern implications of the differences. My only complaint about the video is the narrator speaks very quickly. You might have to pause it or show it twice in your classroom.

Follow the Olympic Torch Relay

Image via Sureloc.com

The Olympic flame is flying to Cornwall today to begin the 8,000 mile relay around the UK before arriving at the Olympic Games later this summer. The relay begins tomorrow morning. You can see the plane and how the flame is transported in these images from the BBC. To keep track of the where the Olympic flame is on a given day, visit the Olympic Torch Relay Map on the London 2012 site.

The BBC also has a good map with pictures of all of the locations that Olympic Torch will pass through over the next seventy days. The BBC also has a nice gallery of past Olympic Torch designs accompanied by a bit of information each design, the host nation, and or that year's Olympic games.

For more resources about the 2012 Summer Olympic Games I recommend seeing the list that Larry Ferlazzo has started.

And if you're wondering about the picture above, it's of my long-time friend Butch Johnson who has competed in five Olympic Games and is currently in the running to make a sixth consecutive US Olympic Archery Team at the age of 56.