The strange and addictive global geography game
Years ago I used to teach my ”Introduction to International Studies” class online with a custom-built geography quiz. Students had to learn a list of approximately 60 countries, as well as some basic geographical features. Although this sounds quite simple to build, in practice the instructional designer that I worked with found it really hard to keep the system functioning.
Fast forward a decade, and there a plethora of such platforms freely available. But the most fun way to learn global geography is probably Globle. Much like Wordle, there is only a single game to play a day. In this case, you need to learn the identify of a mystery country. You start by guessing a country for which you know the location. The first information that you will get is how close this country’s border is to the mystery country. And then you keep guessing successive countries. You can see a ranking of your countries by how close they are to your target country. This may sound a little complicated, but after you’ve played it a couple of times it’s second nature. And if it sounds too easy, in my experience it’s not at all.
This is a really fun tool- enjoy!
Shawn Smallman, 2022