Category Archives: spatial thinking

visualizing science, spatially

Posted on February 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Our capacity to understand and know through representations of information yields deep opportunities, like Maps of Science and these scientific visualizations profiled in Wired Magazine.

It’s thinking with space.

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Posted in education, spatial thinking

origami and spatial thinking

Posted on February 20, 2011 | 1 comment

Origami involves spatial thinking along all stages.  Imagine being the one generating the original set of instructions for a design.

MIT has a whole paper folding club (?).  Paper folders make good engineers.

Origami can also involve curves, and some people choose origami as their livelihood.   (links from GreatMap).

Origami – one spatial way to make your brain work well.  Here is a list of other spatial activities, and not only for children.

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Posted in education, games, spatial thinking

Part 2, Julio Rivera on geography and spatial thinking at Carthage College

Posted on February 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here’s the 2nd part of NITLE’s podcast interview with Julio Rivera, the geographer at Carthage College who’s now their provost. Well worth a listen for his thoughts on spatial learning.

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Posted in geography, GIS, higher education, spatial thinking

Building Stonehenge, ala Ikea

Posted on February 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

Ikea’s iconic instructions, applied to construction long ago.  First page is hilarious, second loses its clever edge.

Assembly diagrams like these are classic examples of thinking in space.

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Posted in humor, spatial thinking

angry Tetris god

Posted on February 5, 2011 | Leave a comment


I’m intrigued and amused by the legacy of Tetris, in so many ways. It’s caught the attention of numerous scientists who study cross-entropy, artificial intelligence, and norm-based social learning. I love it for its connections to spatial abilities, as talked about here, and here, and here. Its ability to focus your mind may even help with post-traumatic stress disorder. And we even have insight into those games that end so poorly.

Tetris – the magical game.

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Posted in games, spatial thinking

Geographical Thinking and GIS at Lib Arts Colleges

Posted on November 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

NITLE has just posted part 1 of its interview with Julio Rivera from Carthage College. I first met Julio several years ago when we coordinated a presentation/workshop on GIS at a Council on Undergraduate Research meeting; he’s very involved with and supportive of CUR.

In this podcast he reflects on what it means to “think like a geographer” and mentions observing patterns and finding connections in space and place. He started Carthage’s GIS program in 1997 (same year I started Alfred University’s) and comments on the paucity of GIS at lib arts colleges back then. Right, so few lib arts colleges have geography departments (though some that did were in fact already going great things with GIS, like at Middlebury). It was really in the late 1990s and early 2000’s that GIS exploded into other departments at lib arts (env studies, geology, etc.).

I liked how he linked his own growing up in a mix of urban/suburban areas as motivation to research residential choices, and left him with a lifelong value of kids “roaming.” Long live the free range child.

We need more geographers to become administrators!

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Posted in geography, higher education, spatial thinking

Reg Golledge on Spatial Thinking, circa 2003

Posted on October 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

Came across this Jan 2003 posting by Reg Golledge on Thinking Spatially in an old Directions Media page. He was really the first person who ever inspired me to think about this “across” everything else.

I never knew him but I sure do like his ideas.

RIP, Reg.

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Posted in spatial thinking

GIS Education Research

Posted on July 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

Research in GIS Education
Research about GIS in Education
Education about GIS Research
Research on Education using GIS

Care about any of these? Join our Google Group.

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Posted in GIS, higher education, spatial thinking

Next Stop: Leicester, England

Posted on August 16, 2009 | Leave a comment

Leicester, Leicester, rhymes with Chester. I’m in England for the first of a 3-week Fellowship awarded by SPLINT. (Next two weeks will be in May 2010.) The 8-hr time difference between here and California complicated yesterday but now things seeming slowly more sensical in my mind. I’m staying at the home of one of the faculty members in the geography department, Pete Fisher, a man whose name I have known for many years and whose books I have on my shelves, but I didn’t even connect the dots when I sat in his kitchen yesterday!

Oh well.

Off for some breakfast and to explore the city a bit.

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Posted in geography, spatial thinking