Fudgie the Hamster Heard the tale of Fudgie yesterday.
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GIS (ArcView) training Wednesday, November 19, 2008 November 19, 2008 is ESRI’s international GIS day. To mark this, three innovative geography departments are offering training in their school, suitable for teachers at any level of experience with GIS. You will have a chance to see how they use ArcGIS software with pupils and to receive hands on training with GIS. The day will run from 10am – 3.30pm and is free. To register for the event, please email the appropriate teacher. Hertfordshire Dr Peter O’Connor, Bishop’s Stortford College peter.o'connor@bishopsstortfordcollege.org Yorkshire Steve Dunn , The Grammar School at Leeds, sd@gsal.org.uk Herefordshire Jenny Barlow, Lady Hawkins School, Herefordshire jbarlow@lhs.hereford.sch.uk
SAGT 2008: the REPORT
On Friday night, after setting up the GA stand, had a meal at the very nice, and very French Le Petit Paris restaurant on Queensferry Road.
A windy night followed, and in the morning it rained on and off most of the day.
For the second year, the conference was held at Edinburgh Academy. First thing was to grab a coffee and man the GA stand with the other publications, and to start handing out over 150 free satellite image maps of the earth from space, and also have conversations with the 290 odd delegates. The maps were donated by the GeoSphere project .
At 9.40 the publishers’ awards, presented by John Vannet, were announced. In the Book category, the GA picked up both the awards that were available. A ‘Commended’ award went to ‘Caring for our World’ by Fran Martin and Paula Owens, and the WINNER in the book award went to the Teacher’s Toolkit. Margaret Roberts collected the awards.
It was then across to the Hall for Malcolm McDonald’s Presidential Ad
A day of travelling today to get ready for the SAGT Conference . Up early in York and checked inbox first. Some interesting continuing conversations relating to Singapore. YPG and KS4 ICT going live today, which is great news. The weather was very sunny, but also the wind picked up through the morning, and by mid afternoon it was pouring with rain with a succession of rainbows. First part was up the A19 to Thirsk, A1 through Scotch Corner, skirting Durham, and the first pause at a prominent man-made landmark, which I had to myself - can you tell which one ? Then it was onwards, and into Northumberland: a pause at Barter Books in Alnwick (love it) and tide in, so Holy Island cut off. Berwick on Tweed for lunch, then onwards across the Border, and pootling up the single carriageway sections. A quick trip down the coastal route to Dunbar for fuel and a photo opportunity. Within 20 minutes of this photo, the sky was pitch black, and it was pouring with rain through the outskirts of Edinbur
Just listening to Dan Ellison talk on US Public Radio from last night. You can download an mp3 of the talk, which I strongly recommend that you do. Dan starts by referring to Doreen Massey and her work on perceptions of urban spaces and also the representation of places. He started by walking across Salisbury and exploring its ecological footprint. He also talked about the issue of surveillance, and the issues with photography, and how he worked out the route for the walks based on inequality. Photograph taken every 8 paces, and then turned into stop-motion films. Also explored school geography, and how the media over-represents certain areas of cities. Online CPD.... I urge you to listen !
This post is for Blog Action Day on Poverty. I spent the day today in Norfolk, just a couple of hundred yards from my old place of work, at the Students 4 Global Action conference. This was hosted by the Park High School, and organised by NEAD . It was good to work with Sandy Betlem again. I ran 2 workshops exploring LOCAL CULTURAL DIVERSITY in the context of the local area. Below are a few of my slides, and the presentation will go up on Slideshare shortly. The material was a combination from the GA's Teachers' Toolkit: Jenny Brassington's BRITISH OR EUROPEAN and John Widdowson's MOVING STORIES, and explored the idea of IDENTITY... What was their identity ? What is Britain's identity ? What is Norfolk's identity ? There were some great, perceptive contributions from the students concerned, and there is a little more feedback to come when I get a moment. It was also a chance to use my FLIP video camera... I videoed some of the student work, and some of the Actio
Last week, I had a very useful chance to discuss the various aspects of the 2nd phase of the Action Plan for Geography with a range of people from Primary Headteachers to OFSTED / HMI. Some visitors to the blog may not be aware of the support that is available for all UK geography teachers through the Action Plan, which is a major additional level of support in addition to all the existing Geographical Association projects. Below are some of the slides that I used in my presentation on the Action Plan. If there's anything here that you would like more information on, please get in touch !
Just watching Bruce Parry's 'Amazon', on gold mining and drinking a glass of Glenmorangie. Realised when looking at my dashboard while making some late-night blog posts to Living Geography that this is my 800th post on this blog. I started this back in 2006, just over 2 years ago. Hope you're finding it useful. As before, there will be a few posts to this blog each week, but more on the new ones...
Stephen Fry is following me... ...mind you, I'm also following him . I know, for example, that today, he set off for a trip to Africa, and that he spent this morning drinking coffee and packing. How do I know that ? Because we both use TWITTER : a 'micro-blogging' tool which allows users to post to the web from the twitter website, or from their mobile devices, and share their response to the most basic of questions: what are you doing now ? If you're already online, a quick TWEET is very easy to do. To get the most out of TWITTER , you might want to download a free HANDBOOK. Tom Barrett, an avid user, and someone who I met at TEACHMEET08 has posted on the VALUE OF USING TWITTER, and there are lots of similar blog posts. The COMMONCRAFT SHOW FOLK have produced this rather good YOU TUBE video: It's also FREE of course ("my favourite price") So what else could persuade you that this might be worth your valuable time ? Well, Barack Obama is on Twitter... an
Ollie Bray has just completed a series of 5 posts on the use of the iPhone in education. Plenty of exciting ideas here, and the applications that he mentions are all cheap ! Of course, you first of all need an iPhone and they aren't cheap... You can get them free on certain tariffs, but I don't have £500 a year to spend on my phone. Of course, they may well come down in price. Ollie will be doing some seminars at the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers conference in Edinburgh on the 25th of October, as will I . If you're coming along you'll also find me manning the GA stand in between times...
Blogging as Professional Development (Self Evaluation) If you've followed my various blogs you will know that I am convinced of the impact of these tools in professional development. Drew Buddie at the DIGITAL MAVERICKS blog posted about the role of blogs as a self evaluative tool, one of a whole range of excellent posts on the issue of the social web and education.
Just had an e-mail from Rick Cope, who teaches at a school near Bristol, but also writes software for the company GeoPacks . The COASTAL MANAGER resource is worth exploring. For the last couple of months, Rick has been making material available free of charge, and I have just downloaded his resources on the River Kent. Visit THE WEBSITE , and click the ORANGE Free Resources button and provide your details.. Nice work Rick, and thanks for sharing..
A slideshare presentation by my Primary colleague Wendy North. Designed for Primary teachers, but a lot of transferable ideas for KS3 too... Apart from anything else, it's a quality piece of work, and it has been shared. Two reasons to commend it to you... Geography&Food View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: global regional )
Since I started all this blogging and social networking thing, various people have questioned its value, and although I knew that it made a difference it was hard to 'quantify' that difference... A BECTa report into the value of these tools has now been published... Becta has published major new research into the use of Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, blogs and social networking, by children between the ages of 11-16, both in and out of the school environment. The reports found that young learners are prolific users of Web 2.0 technologies in their leisure time but that the use of Web 2.0 in the classroom was limited. However, schools and teachers who are innovating in this area have found benefits, such as: Web 2.0 helps to encourage student engagement and increase participation – particularly among quieter pupils, who can use it to work collaboratively online, without the anxiety of having to raise questions in front of peers in class – or by enablin
Back in June, at my interview for the GA post , I suggested that social networking tools could be used to supplement existing networks of geography teachers, and the role of GA branches. One platform which seemed to offer a range of features in one easy to use, attractive package was that offered by NINGS , which I used last year with my 'A' level students , and then for preparations for the new 'A' LEVEL specifications: my EDEXCEL NING now has over 300 members and there is some real quality geography being discussed. To my mind, if teachers are sharing their ideas in this forum, that's CPD ! The Geographical Assocation has now opened up the NING that we have been testing for a while to everyone ! If you find the Edexcel NING useful, I'm sure the same will be the case for the GA Ning http://geographical.ning.com Hope to see you on the members list soon. I have written a USERS GUIDE to take you through your first visit to the Ning. Look for it in the FORUM sec
Open Wide... Image under Creative Commons license by Flickr user ktpupp (actually taken while sitting in the dentist's chair...) Not the best start to my day: an early morning appointment at the dentist to mend a broken tooth, or an "amalgam restoration". Good news is that the rest are fine. Hurrah... Hands up all those who wince when they look at that picture (my hand is raised....) Any geographical potential in dentistry ?