Another Edublogger IQ Challenge: Geography Time
Monday, 24 December 2007 Clay Burell 
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Here’s a fun Traveler’s IQ test for you. Timing counts! Report back here with a comment. Let’s get Diane Cordell and Steven Downes in the ring again – time to “flip another goat-sucker”!
My score, first time:
And see “related links” below for a few other challenges you can take!
Photo Credit: Stuart R Brown
- Edublogger IQ Contest: Preliminary Results, New Shout-out, and Philosophical Close
- Diane Flips the Goat-Sucker (and Stephen Takes a Fall)
- Hand-Held Libraries for God-Like Searches (a Geek Challenge)
- Calling Out the College Board and ETS: An Educators’ Campaign for 2008?
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Tags: education, geography, meme, quiz, social studies, web2.0 Print This Post
No. 1 — December 24th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I am APPALLING at this! I could find places I’ve been to, like England, Greece, Canada, but the rest of the world is a bit hazy.
I think I was reading poetry and daydreaming during Geography class.
Had my husband try it also. He is a whiz at this sort of thing, but has an unfortunate hate/hate relationship with technology (he kept complaining that my mouse wouldn’t go exactly where he was trying to point it. Sigh. Navy vet, you know the type.)
This little reindeer game was beyond me. I concede.
How about trivial pursuit?
diane
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No. 2 — December 24th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Hm. Online Scrabble, anyone? (Is there such a thing?)
Funny, Diane, I was thinking a minute ago about the fact that I didn’t learn geography in school (don’t even remember if I ever had map tests back then). I learned it instead via two forms of real-world project-based learning:
1. World travel – living and traveling in Europe for 4 years and Asia for 8 taught me these continents.
2. Teaching history – teaching IS project-based learning in the most real-world of ways, isn’t it? Our “project” is to keep our job. I never studied maps until I had to test students’ knowledge of them.
(I played Trivial Pursuit in New Zealand a few years ago. It was an Australian version. Amazing how culture-specific “knowledge” is, I learned. Most of the political questions concerned the Antipodes. I was clueless.)
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No. 3 — December 24th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Husband also hates Trivial Pursuit: he will answer geography and history questions without pausing for breath, but had a meltdown re. “what two flavors combine in mocha” and denied all knowledge of Jane Austen, fabrics, and poetry.
Keeps our marriage interesting.
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No. 4 — December 24th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I was playing this a few nights ago. It became absolutely obsessive – very hard to walk away from.
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No. 5 — December 24th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
My score for the travel quiz ends up being 124 (I did give it 2 goes though).
Trivial pursuit online would be good fun … scrabble is available online and is a great game (appears in facebook as scrabulous app.) The website would be http://www.scrabulous.com
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No. 6 — December 25th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Woot! I beat round 12. This game is right up my ally. I love geography. Teaching on 4 different continents probably helped. Was very addicting. Couldn’t get anyone else to play.
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No. 7 — December 25th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Roswellsgirl,
Good for you! Obviously, I need to get out and about more.
Applied for a passport renewal today, so maybe I can start to remedy the situation.
Clay,
Your Quotiki quote for today is sad and sobering:
“Beware how you take away hope from another human being.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes
There are soul-suckers everywhere.
“Of all the forces that make for a better world, none is so indispensable, none so powerful, as hope. Without hope men are only half alive. With hope they dream and think and work.” –Charles Sawyer
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No. 8 — December 25th, 2007 at 5:03 am
Heck, I only made it to level 6. (With 178,263 points)
I guess my Traveler’s IQ of 92 is well below my general IQ. Of course, I’ll leave the geography facts to Google. I’ll do the thinking.
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No. 9 — December 25th, 2007 at 5:10 am
Ah, Arthus Grasshopper (allusion to ’70s show you might be still too wet behind the ears to know),
I don’t buy your “geographic facts are unimportant compared to real thinking” implication.
Geopolitics, regional wars, and a million other things start with knowing where places are, what places surround them, the history of relations, the resources, etc etc.
That fact-base takes time to stew and congeal into a worldview and theoretical base.
The “thinking” not rooted in knowledge of the facts too often leads to the types of geopolitical “genius” of the Bush administration – which probably DID use Google to find out what Iraq’s neighbors were
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No. 10 — December 25th, 2007 at 5:24 am
@Artuhs and @cburrell Hey… George Bush wasn’t good with geography and naming the leaders of foreign countries… Look where that got us!
Ouch… had to push the political button on this Holiday …
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No. 11 — December 25th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Scott – my point exactly. Foundational knowledge of facts is a prerequisite for nuanced thinking – Bush and Co had no such knowledge, and the world is broken as a result. Shortcuts don’t work.
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No. 12 — December 25th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Ah… but I have the sense to Google something before I pretend to know about it.
(Honestly, how bad is 92 for geography of a Freshman – especially since I don’t care much about geography)
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No. 13 — December 25th, 2007 at 8:31 am
@Arthus, shame on you for playing the freshman card
You’re a genius, too, so I hold you to higher standards.
@Rosswellsgirl: you’re the queen so far! Give us a link to your blog? (And note that you, like me, attribute your geography IQ to travel and teaching, more than being taught to memorize?)
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No. 14 — December 25th, 2007 at 8:37 am
@Clay ah, but I am a woefully untraveled genius. (Which goes with the freshmen card)
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No. 15 — December 25th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Well it is well known before I did the Traveler IQ challenge that I really suck with geography. Source of great amusement to my hubby (even struggle with Australian capital cities!)
In my defense I am a scientist and many scientists struggle with areas like geography, language and history. So how about a science IQ challenge? Score = embarrassing – never get me to give you directions. Level = 3 IQ=80 want to play Trivial Pursuit?
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No. 16 — December 25th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
507255
Level 11
126 IQ
It was more of a mouse challenge for me than a knowledge challenge; I made 3 actual errors in 11 levels. I had a lot of trouble with the mouse and couldn’t see the map well enough to get much better than within 126 km of cities I knew very well.
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No. 17 — December 25th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I had the same problems, Stephen, and possibly worse, since I used the trackpad on my MacBook instead of a mouse.
I probably could have whooped you on a level playing field, but as things stand, you take the crown again
Yours in sour grapes,
Clay
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No. 18 — December 25th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Just thought I would let you know we played it tonight after our Christmas dinner with our friends. We all were incredibly bad at it but had lots of fun. Think they could hear us in the next neighborhood.
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No. 19 — December 28th, 2007 at 4:41 am
[...] series, “Kung Fu” There was an interesting exchange recently between technology guru and visionary Clay Burell and a young, articulate up-and-comer, Arthus regarding the value of content knowledge.After [...]
No. 20 — March 17th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I am considered a disaster and that’s official.
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