Learning from the Olympics

The Olympics clearly open up a range of teaching and learning opportunities. This article has highlighted three major human geographic and environmental themes on which the Games provide an interesting perspective: globalisation, urban regeneration and sustainable development. A number of issues for class debate have been identified, and there is potential for a role play exercise to explore vested interests and conflicts in the staging of such events (Figure 5). Teachers seeking further ideas and resources could consider cartographic and data handling activities based on Figure 1 and Tables 1-7. For research an project purposes, other articles on the Olympics are listed at the end of this article. In the period before, during and immediately after the Sydney Games, there will be a large amount of media coverage of sporting achievements and of the successes and failures of the Games as a whole as well as their costs and benefits. Students could be asked either to develop an Olympic log/scrapbook or to simply report on and/or debate newspaper articles and radio and television programmes.