IELTS, ESP, EAP and CALL

The U.S. Postal Service celebrates the beauty and diversity of America's landscapes as seen from above with the Earthscapes (Forever®) stamps.Offering an opportunity to see the world in a new way, the 15 stamps are issued in 3 rows of 5, showing 3...

 

These stamps are the perfect way to decorate your letters while showing your love for the Earth and geography. 

 

Tags: images, art, landscape. 

After featuring many very modern maps on Mapping London thus far, it was a pleasure to hear about the Grand Map of London, produced by a small bespoke mapping company...

 

The above image is a small extract of a Wellington's Travel Map of Central London.  This gorgeous map accurately represents modern London, but has been beautifully rendered in the cartographic styles of the 1800's with some 3D graphic elements as well.  Should you be interested in purchasing this 46 x 104 cm  piece of art, visit:

http://www.wellingtonstravel.com/p/store.html

Via Ana Valdés

If All of Earth's Water was put into Single Sphere, from the USGS Water Science School...

 

"This picture shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth. The blue sphere sitting on the United States, reaching from about Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, has a diameter of about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) , with a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant."

 

The sphere does not include the potential water that some scientists believe may be trapped in the mantle (and thus not accessible on the surface).  For more about water that is not on or near the surface, see: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0307_0307_waterworld.html

"A world map used by Erik Penser Bankaktiebolag to visualize economic markets. The map contains approximately 3,000 coins and every continent is built out of its countries’ currencies. Used in various medias during 2009."  If you look closely you will notice that the coins are from the region that they are cartographically representing.  To see more by this artist, visit: http://www.penser.se/

There are many amazing examples of artists who turn to cartography and geography for inspiration. Whether through the lens of a camera, paint, ...

 

This series of cartographically-inspired art works changes how we look at maps.  Some of these artists also make us think of places that are on the Earth as explicitly "mappable" features.  I think the Google Maps push-pin in the city center is my favorite.  Which do you prefer? 

 

Tags: art, mapping, place, cartography. 

Putting the art in cartography.  To see the artist's homepage, visit: http://www.clairebrewster.co.uk/ ;

The USGS is celebrating 40 years of the LANDSAT

Program by having a competition to select the top 5 "Earth as Art" images from the more than 120 scenes from their curated collection.  All readers can select 5 images on the USGS website and the poll closes on July 6, 2012 (The image above is from Coahuila, Mexico).

I'm a huge fan of Yann Arthus-Bertrand's artistic aerial photography.  This image of Rio de Janeiro and the favela is a striking one. I am also posting this to show the how easy the website justpaste.it is to use.  Students with no website creation training can produce sharable materials online.  Now this isn't the most professional outlet, but I envision some middle school or high school students producing a class project that can be transformed into something that reaches a bigger audience as it is shared with a broader community. 

 

Tags: remote sensing, images, art, worldwide, K12, edtech.