About Globetracker's Mission, 2024-2025 Edition
Globetracker 2024-2025 Mission will kick off on September 29, 2024. Please read all about this unique opportunity and come back after September 29th to participate with your students.
Globetracker's Mission, an episodic story in blog-style format, takes students in grades 2-6 on a journey around the world to learn standards-based geography, landforms, and map skills in an engaging, interactive context.
In each weekly episode, Geo and Meri, fictitious brother and sister techno-savvy teens, share new posts, ideal for a whiteboard or individual devices, about their travels on a secret mission to find Dewey, the truth-sniffing dog. Each episode includes annotated vocabulary terms and interactive maps for practicing map skills or answering think-aloud questions the teens pose as they use today's tools: text messaging, cell phones, and blog posting. Readers vote after each post, telling Geo and Meri what to do next.
The first Globetracker's Mission took place during the 2007-2008 school year and garnered positive responses from teachers and many requests that we continue the mission and offer different versions in alternating years. This school year's mission will preview during September, then run from October 2024 through the end of April 2025. Review activities will be available around mid-mission and remain online through the end of June 2025.
This year, Geo and Meri's travels will cover seven continents, following reader votes to determine the next step each week. Over the course of seven months, classes using Globetracker's Mission "visit" all seven continents and experience them through the thoughts and "snapshots" of Geo and Meri. We invite you to read and participate in their blog by voting weekly.
Classrooms can follow along using Google Map files or Google Earth kmz files. Teacher materials include extensive ideas for implementing Globetracker's Mission as an engaging alternative to "old world" geography textbooks and worksheets. The carefully scaffolded content revisits and builds upon the standards-based concepts throughout the Mission. Teaching materials include review activities in both printable and interactive formats and open-ended review and reflection questions for students to extend their understanding of geography.
- Classes with access to X (formerly Twitter) can also "follow" Geo and Meri's posts @SFLGlobetracker. If you know how to post a message using X, your class can even send them a question. Of course, Geo and Meri MAY be too busy to respond (Shhh. Don't tell little sister Pandora about this, or she will torment Geo and Meri with posts). If you are a teacher, click here to learn more about how you and your class can join the “Mission,” what students will learn, and the standards Geo and Meri will address along the way.
If you are a teacher, click here to learn more about ways you and your class can join in the “Mission,” what students will learn, and standards Geo and Meri will address along the way.
If you are a parent who would like to know more about ways you can participate in the “Mission” at home, click here.
Click here to read the current episode.
Globetracker’s Mission is produced by TeachersFirst, a free, ad-free service of The Source for Learning, a non-profit educational technologies company.
To learn more about TeachersFirst's “mission,” click here.