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  • VerySpatial Presented 2022 AAG Media Achievement Award

VerySpatial Presented 2022 AAG Media Achievement Award

December 20, 2021 1:00 PM | Marvin Davis (Administrator)

Link: 2022 AAG Honors

VerySpatial has received the 2022 Media Achievement Award from the American Association of Geographers as part of its 2022 honors. Here is the blurb from the AAG website:

"The 2022 AAG Media Achievement Award goes to VerySpatial and its four co-founders and hosts: Jesse Rouse (Instructor, Department of Geology and Geography, UNC Pembroke), Sue Bergeron (Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Geography, Coastal Carolina University), Frank LaFone (Senior Internet Applications Programmer, WV GIS Technical Center) and Barbara MacLennan (Assistant Professor, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Fairmont State University). VerySpatial is an internationally known, award-winning podcast that has provided outstanding geographic content and teaching methods to geography enthusiasts and educators around the world for 15 years. VerySpatial was founded the same year as YouTube and before the first iPhone appeared, demonstrating the co-founders’ innovation in media achievement. Since then, the hosts have regularly produced topical podcasts appreciated by a loyal and dedicated worldwide following.

VerySpatial seeks to point out how Geography and geospatial technologies filter into our digital and daily lives. The content is a mix of academic issues, current commercial and industrial advances in Geospatial technologies, and contemporary events. This combination has been important in bringing together material from published academic works in the context of recent events and trends. In doing so, the podcast monitors the pulse of geographical events and geospatial advances and maintains a sense of excitement and enthusiasm for geography. The content has ranged from political geography, spatial statistics, spatial privacy, virtual reality, interviews with world-renowned geographers, and hundreds of other topics over the course of 500 hours of material spanning over 650 episodes. The website receives approximately 180,000 page views, 75,000 visits, and 14,500 new visitors per month from around the world.

VerySpatial has been recognized for its contributions to geographic education: ESRI awarded the podcast a Special Achievement in GIS award in 2007; National Geographic listed VerySpatial in their top education blogs for four years in a row; and iTunes rated the podcast in the top 5% of all K–12 podcasts. In 2020, the AAG Guide to GeoWeek Activities contained suggestions for participating in Geography Awareness Week including listening to VerySpatial. The AAG Media Achievement Award not only adds to this list of honors bestowed upon VerySpatial, but also demonstrates the gratefulness that the field of geography has for this group of people for dedicating the last fifteen years to making geography exciting and accessible to thousands of people around the world every week."

Congrats to all at VerySpatial.com for their efforts, particularly current WVAGP Board member Frank Lafone and President Barbara MacLennan!


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