Global Interactive Learning

Hi everyone! 

How well do you know geography?  That is the question I used to build Global Interactive Learning’s first website-to-be: Family Mappers.  A lot of people respond that they do not know it well enough.  Were any of you like me when you took your states and capitals test?  You memorized the information, but it all didn’t stay in your memory long enough.  Can you identify all the countries in South America or Africa if you were asked to?  With all the changes to Europe in the past decades, can you name the countries and their locations?

To those who don’t know me, here is my history:

My name is Leigh Goldie, and I am a teacher and a mother of two who has developed an online mapping system for children to map their lives geographically.  I want to make learning geography fun and engaging.  I currently have a patent pending.

Almost 4 years ago, when my daughter was two, I came up with the idea, as she was talking on the phone to her grandma who lives 2,000 miles away.  She wanted her to come over right now and I had to explain to her that she didn’t even live in the same state.  I showed her a map and she was able to make a personal connection to her grandma’s state.  It was my “Aha!” moment, as I had difficulty learning geography in school and my fifth grade students didn’t all grasp it as well as I expected either. 

I sat down and took everything I love, including photography, travel, family, memories, positive advertising, and educational objectives from every subject that kids won’t even realize are present, and turned all of those things into what I know will be an awesome, and worldwide interactive site. 

Tell me your experiences with learning geography.  It can be from when you were in school to now, or when you learned you were traveling for work to a country that you had absolutely no idea where it was located.  I look forward to hearing how geography has affected your life.