Another Edublogger IQ Challenge: Geography Time

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:

My traveler IQ results

And see “related links” below for a few other challenges you can take!

Photo Credit: Stuart R Brown

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Written by Clay Burell

December 24th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Posted in lessons, meme, web2.0

Tagged with education, geography, meme, quiz, social studies, web2.0

20 Responses to 'Another Edublogger IQ Challenge: Geography Time'

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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

[Reply]

diane

24 Dec 07 at 1:16 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.)

[Reply]

Clay Burell

24 Dec 07 at 1:24 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.

[Reply]

diane

24 Dec 07 at 1:33 pm
I was playing this a few nights ago. It became absolutely obsessive - very hard to walk away from.

[Reply]

Ann O

24 Dec 07 at 2:28 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

[Reply]

Mark (rhymeswithpeace)

24 Dec 07 at 2:37 pm
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.

[Reply]

Roswellsgirl

25 Dec 07 at 2:34 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

[Reply]

diane

25 Dec 07 at 3:18 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.

[Reply]

Arthus Erea

25 Dec 07 at 5:03 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

[Reply]

Clay Burell

25 Dec 07 at 5:10 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 …

[Reply]

Scott Meech

25 Dec 07 at 5:24 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.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

25 Dec 07 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)

[Reply]

Arthus Erea

25 Dec 07 at 5:27 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?)

[Reply]

Clay Burell

25 Dec 07 at 8:31 am
@Clay ah, but I am a woefully untraveled genius. (Which goes with the freshmen card)

[Reply]

Arthus Erea

25 Dec 07 at 8:37 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?

[Reply]

Sue Waters

25 Dec 07 at 9:40 am
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.

[Reply]

Stephen Downes

25 Dec 07 at 12:13 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

[Reply]

Clay Burell

25 Dec 07 at 12:34 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.

[Reply]

Sue Waters

25 Dec 07 at 11:37 pm
[...] 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 [...]

Journeys: Old Knowledge

28 Dec 07 at 4:41 am
I am considered a disaster and that’s official.

[Reply]

Danielle

17 Mar 08 at 11:07 pm