The youngest students can construct a project on any of the five themes of geography: location, place, relationships, movement and regions. Students can report on the basics of direction; draw a map of a country and its climates; study how humans and animals adapt to certain places; or report on different ways to travel over mountains or across the sea.
By the mid-elementary level, students should have a working knowledge of the seven continents, four oceans and several of the countries in Europe or Asia. As a project, students can compare the sizes of the continents or oceans; contrast the climates of the northern and southern ends of a continent or country; or show, through illustration, the effects of deforestation or global warming on a particular country or culture.
Many high school students create two geography projects each year. At Bangor (Maine) High School, students take part in the National Geographic Geography Action! program. Themes change each year, but some teachers try to set a completion date to coincide with Geography Awareness Week. For an interactive project for high school students, have them focus on a topic specific to their state or region that directly affects their lives or futures. Students can contact their local environmental commissions and politicians to gain information on pollution at a local stream, for example, and how it is damaging the town's economy.
At the college level, many students have the opportunity to work side by side with government and private agencies developing geographical projects. For example, two California universities, Foothill College and San Jose State University, used student input and research to implement Web-mapping technology to junior and senior high schools. As a result, students at the colleges can build and maintain their own Web-based Geographic Information Systems. At Middlebury College in Vermont, several departments, including geography, are engaged in a cooperative effort which has developed a food mapping website. The idea, conceived by two former students, involves getting students to examine the food choices they make and how they affect the environment.