Teaching cartography
BARBARA: Hi everyone, I'm Barbara Jordão and my partner is Carla Sena. We are from São Paulo, Brazil, and we are geographers. Today we are here to present our research teaching geography and cartography for a visually impaired: the Velcro globe dynamic. Our objective is discuss which contribution the geography and cartography can give forth the inclusion in basic education. It is because, as a characteristic of underdeveloped countries, recently Brazil has begun to highlight the special education. Also, the cartographic documents are part of teaching material in Brazilian elementary school, middle school and higher education. Due to its important for the understanding and construction of geographical, environment, cultural, social, and historical concepts of a location in the surface. So, we have two examples of, the adapted globes distributed in our country. These show a lot of problem to a low vision person and the detector perception. So it's difficult to use this material in the classroom. For these, we try to do a dynamic material. Our globe is composed by styrofoam sphere, covered with Velcro. The information can be added and removed according to the need. And for this construction, we took into account, the degree of raw material accessibility. Well, the globe was evaluated by almost 100 persons with the visual impairment, include special education, also in the common classroom. In this evaluation everyone say that geography class would improve with the material presented if some changes were made. And we made this change, the final product, is a globe with the blue background, yellow continents, parallels and meridians with different colours and textures, and it has a legend. In conclusion, the changes listed by the evaluators helped to produce a globe more attractive and effective for teaching. However, it's has become clear that, the more evaluations is carried, more modification will be required. With more student, we can be contributed to the inclusion in geography class. The cartographic and the geography are powerful in forming citizenship, especially when used in schools. Our references, thank for your attention. See you in the next time.