Geography and all that Jazz

Didn't get to Womad this year, but have just ordered my copy of 'The Imagined Village', which sounds like it would be just my thing and also has a link with Cultural Geography and 'Englishness'... The following text is taken from the REAL WORLD / WOMAD website. "Every age re-invents the past to its own fancy. When Edwardian song collector Cecil Sharp roamed England, he imagined the country’s history as a rural idyll, filled with flower meadows and genial shepherds, even though the songs he found were frequently about poverty, death and fornication with faeries. Later, when the rock generation embraced the folk tradition, it was precisely these sexual and supernatural elements that appealed to singers and players like Anne Briggs, Fairport Convention and Robert Plant. Albion became, as it was to William Blake, a land of mystery and wonder. Later, in the 1980s, with acts like Billy Bragg, The Levellers and The Pogues, folk became a defiant snub to an authoritari...

A day on the golf course in the long-awaited sun... Highlight was my par on the 5th... Golf and geography have a lot of connections...

Coast: Programme 7 The schedule for this series has been messed around a little, but at 8pm on BBC2 tomorrow you can catch this particular episode, which features my home coastline: There's a trip on Bean's seal boats too, with the same skipper as when I went on a couple of weeks ago. Also caught the repeat of Top Gear's Polar special last night and although I'm not usually into their 'laddish' humour I quite enjoyed this, especially when the survival expert with the pixellated face pushed Jeremy Clarkson into the water... And I want one of these too... Rebranding is something I'm preparing resources for at the moment: and a good current example is the Morrison's ad campaign - no more reasons ?

New series starts tonight at 9pm on BBC1 with the NW Highlands of Scotland. Also a supporting site .

A few things today.. First of all, and interesting (albeit historical) resource is a site to publicise Hadrian's Wall called PLAN YOUR INVASION . It has a Flash movie intro, and some embedded Google Maps to help visitors create a personalised plan of their route. Lots of information, and the Education section has information on how the area is managed. Second thing is that I've been reading my copy of the first issue of ' Archipelago ' - a new literary magazine which has a preoccupation with Landscape. Nice taster of the new Robert Macfarlane book which is out next month. Also a friend of mine: Rob Hindle, whose poetry I've mentioned before, won the Late Night Tales competition in the GUARDIAN . Nice one Rob! And another friend has some paintings in Salthouse 07: a local(ish) art event, described in the local paper the EDP as: "the bird-rife landscapes of Caroline Kent"

The Year of Food and Farming Starting in September 2007 Here are the objectives: To improve the understanding of young people, their parents and teachers, of the food chain and the role played by farming. To develop curriculum materials and projects on food and farming which can be used in schools both during and beyond the Year. To increase links between schools, farmers and food producers, which will be sustainable well beyond the Year. To raise awareness of the contribution food can make to a healthy lifestyle, and within this increase the understanding amongst young people of what constitutes a healthy and balanced diet. To raise awareness of the career opportunities in the food and farming industries. To increase understanding of the importance of the countryside and environmental issues related to food and farming. Sounds good ! Have r...

Surfing Genie Surfing is a fast growing sport in the UK. There are a range of surfing resources which have relevance to geographers. Surfing Genie has a range of useful resources for surfers, and also a searchable database of beaches, to encourage people to spend time in the UK rather than holidaying abroad. There is also a Surfing section as part of the new RGS-IBG resource: Your Climate, Your Life written by a friend of mine. Juicy Geography also has a very useful resource looking at the Surfing industry on the Gold Coast of Australia, using Google Earth. The Geography department of the University of California Santa Barbara even has a Geography of Surfing course...

Don't forget the postcards ! We've had a card from Mr. Ware already ! Picture copyright: S. Chomoco It was sent from Tanzania. Mr. Ware has been to Qatar and Kenya, en route to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and visiting the Masai for a week rebuilding a school, then off to Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Manyara... Beat that !

Surprises ! Another excellent Independent front cover, showing the scale of the flooding disaster in the South - remember just a month ago when we had the great flood... but that was in the North... There's also a great quote featuring James Lovelock. In April 1989 Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, gave her Cabinet a seminar on global warming at No 10 and one of the speakers was the scientist and green guru James Lovelock. A reporter asked him afterwards what would be the first signs of global warming. He replied: "Surprises." Asked to explain, he said: "The hurricane of October 1987 was a surprise, wasn't it? There'll be more." The floods of 2007 were a surprise as well, and if Dr Lovelock is right, there'll be more of them too. Welcome to the weather of the 21st century. Watch out for plenty more surprises ! Also, why is this place in the news ? Follow the link to the MAP .

Flooding Chaos worsens The news broadcasts are full of the flooding. The River Thames and Severn are threatening to burst their banks even more. The Independent had the best front cover as usual, and also lots of stories, including one suggesting that these were the worst in living memory. I would imagine that a lot of people are planning to use this in their teaching (and some areas haven't yet broken up for summer !)

Hedgehog in the Fog Slightly geography related animation, which is one of my favourite films ! It's a 10 minute animation made by Russian Yuri Norstein, and uses a technique involving paper cutouts shot through layers of glass. When it's shown, it usually has dubbing into English, which spoils it a lot. Thanks to YouTube, there is a version with the original Russian dialogue. Hodgepig !! Enjoy...

My son is really into this track at the moment... It's catchy ! and has a (rather tenuous) geographical theme... Be warned - you'll be singing it all day !

Got landscapes on my mind at the moment due to a major project I'm trying to finish... Just seen a trailer for what looks like being a good series: 5 parts, each an hour long, and starting at 9pm next Sunday evening... Here is the description of the series: Griff Rhys Jones will be undertaking an arduous journey of the British Isles - from the far north of Scotland to Dartmoor in the south across the roughest mountain landscapes. He encounters sublime scenery, wildlife and dramatic shifts in the seasons. Along the way he meets crofters, poets, photographers, mountain rescue teams - from lords of the manor to the well-travelled postman. He will show us what it is like to live in the shad ows of the hills, and meet the people who go there with the aim of conquering their heights. Griff will also look at the historical tales of the British mountains - epic battles, early pioneers and geological marvels. For the viewer this will be visually sumptuous; for Griff Rhys...

Summer reading. One of the great things about the holiday is being able to read books for longer than 5 minutes. Finished off Tim Harford's "The Undercover Economist" this morning, and now a couple of hundred pages into Roger Deakin's excellent "Wildwood: a journey through trees"

Spent part of a wet afternoon making this.. Enjoy !

Thanks to Rob Chambers for pointing out the Soundsnap site. This features thousands of free sound and music files which would be very useful for embedding in various media creations.

Remember last year ? Here's the front page of 'The Independent' from the 19th of June 2006 to remind you...

Wet! Don't know about where you are, but it's flipping pouring it down in NW Norfolk today. Not that I'm complaining. I'm sat on the settee flipping between the Open Golf and the Tour de France, pottering away on my writing project, and drinking mug after mug of tea with some freshly baked flapjack. Last few days have been very productive in terms of identifying some interesting new web fodder. Let's start with Craig Robinson, who produced the FLIP FLOP FLYIN website, which has a unique style of representing characters from popular culture (more on Cultural Geography later) Later this year, Craig's style is being applied to an exploration of different countries in a new hardback book called ATLAS SCHMATLAS . This is already available on PLAY.COM for pre-order. Here's the front cover: and one of the maps - this one of Antarctica: an Extreme Environment studied by many Pilot GCSE groups. This follows an earlier mapping project looking at the songs of Bruce S...

School's Out ! Just back from final activities trip, and now have a few days of writing to look forward to ! BBC Radio 4 has a few interesting programmes worth checking out. First of all there is the TRAVELLERS TREE programme: an interactive program about travel. Just listening to programme about New York. The other one is LETTERS HOME (which should be available on Listen Again soon), which features letters home from a Zimbabwean student who became an asylum seeker. Useful for migration. Also been exploring an old find which I hadn't visited before: the STRANGE MAPS blog. This has links to some great maps and images. Particularly like the idea of Vlad Gerasimov's INVERTED WORLD at his blog. Latest wallpaper should appear below: Also some great images.

Was just reminded of Hocus Pocus by Focus. It's a long story... Used to listen to this in the 1970s...

A great Dutch campaign video to save the Amazon via my old favourite HOUTLUST . And an image from an Austrian fundraising campaign...

One day to go until summer... Had a pleasant day at the Maltings Snooker Club today... Tomorrow it's off to Duxford Imperial War Museum. You can download a useful Travel and Tourism PDF (40 odd pages of useful details) from THIS PAGE . And this is the 300th posting on this blog... I'll open a bottle of Fraoch to celebrate...

SNIPPY Thanks to Kate Russell for pointing out this little resource. SNIPPY can be downloaded by following the link. Click to 'download' and an icon like a pair of scissors will appear on your tool bar. The cursor will turn into a pen and you can then draw to 'cut out' a section of a web page or screen view. This is similar to functionality which has also been available for those using Smart Board software for some time, but means that those people who don't have these can now do some snappy snipping... Here's something I snipped earlier...

Got home today to find a booklet from a well known supermarket emblazoned with the words "Back to School - All you need to kit them out for the new term" I haven't even flipping broken up yet !

Thanks to 'mountainman' Dave from the SLN Forum for pointing out this BLOG on the developments that are taking place on the summit of Mt. Snowdon: a good one for tourism schemes, or those investigating the impact of people on 'wilderness' environments. A useful extra to the Cairngorms funicular debate.

An oldie but a goldie... Some of you may not have seen this site: the FIRETREE flood maps. Zoom in to your home area (especially if you live near the coast) and raise the sea level. I'm OK up to around 7m and then I need an inflatable dinghy...

One day to go until the end of term. Just doing various 'end of term' type things... Just booked my Decemberists tickets for October - have missed them everytime they've toured. But not this time...

St. Swithin's Day today According to weather lore, if the weather is wet today, it'll be like that for the next 40 days... Update: it poured it down for about an hour earlier...

This DVD comes out in a week or so. We have the first 2 series in the department. Last night they repeated an episode rather than showing the next in the series - not sure why... One episode is called King's Lynn to Felixtowe, so will look forward to that - should be a useful trip along Norfolk coast.

New GEOGRAPHY Key Stage 3 Programme of Study Head over to the QCA to download a copy ... Also some good ideas and templates for powerpoints at PRESENTATION HELPER site.

More pictures from SLN's weekend have now been put up by Andrew Stacey at his marvellous site. Here's one of Blakeney Point with a threatening sky:

Saving our Landscape ? This week has seen a few interesting developments... On Monday, Bill Bryson became the new president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. He gave a speech which was reported in the Guardian and can now be read on the CPRE's website. Bill Bryson's speech This had a lot of useful Geography in it: particularly the idea about the UK landscape and the threats that it faces. Later in the week, there was an interesting letter from Peter Dunn published in the Guardian which gave an alternative view of CPRE's policies, referring to Prunella Scales, who starred in a series of Tesco ads, but was also a former president. A good section in the middle of the letter would make a great discussion starter: "I've never met a farmer who doesn't loathe supermarkets for what they are doing to the farming community, yet the CPRE saw no conflict of interests in her appointment. Likewise it remains coy about the annexation of rural housing by wealthy towns...

Just a quick mention of a great YouTube video, which was brought to my attention by Justin Maguire on SLN. Great for development issues / geograpy of music / consumption style lessons.

Good to see that we feature in the school day of the future. From the front page of today's INDEPENDENT . The Historians were also perplexed about THIS

2 interesting snippets in the TES today: The first was on the back of the magazine. Dan Raven Ellison and David Rayner are doing a session at the TES Education 2007 event on Saturday the 29th of September. It's from 2pm-3pm and is called ' Geography Rocks Glastonbury ', referring to the 3 days that the GGiP campaign set up a stand in the Green Futures field at this year's festival. You can book your place for FREE by clicking HERE The second was news of a new Climate Change site (yes, yet another one ! ) This is called OPERATION CLIMATE CONTROL , and is based around a climate game. Haven't had a play yet, but will try to later...

Big Huge Labs The website is HERE , or click the banner... This is just to big up one of my favourite sites, which offers the chance to manipulate FLICKR images, or those stored elsewhere... Since I started using it in about 2005, it has expanded. My favourite tools are: BADGE MAKER MOTIVATOR TOOL FILM POSTER MAKER FRAME MAKER MAGAZINE COVER MAKER HOCKNEYIZER Something I found on the blog is the list of the Top 100 Web apps as voted for by CNet viewers. Check out the most popular Web 2.0 tools.

ARTWORK EARTH Just revisiting an earlier idea which was also taken up by Noel at Juicy Geography. This was originally developed by Icelander S. Fjalar. Here's one I made just now... Some student examples hopefully coming soon...

Ken supports the Give Geography its Place Campaign... Any other notable figures prepared to stand up for Geography ?!

Live Earth, Live Geography It was a busy wekend of music in London (and also Sport of course...) At Wembley Stadium one of Al Gore's LIVE EARTH concerts took place. There were also concerts in lots of other venues around the world. Image by Danny O' Callaghan Venues were: London New York Shanghai Sydney Rio de Janeiro Tokyo Johannesburg Hamburg There was also a special broadcast from the Rothera scientific base on Antarctica. The band was called Nunatak (a very geographical name... look up what the word means...) Keeping the GGiP campaign going was Danny O Callaghan. He had hundreds of Live Earth, Live Geography badges to hand out, and also some publicity hands... Below are some of the images that Danny took on the day... Share the Geo-love ! The long hand of the law... Morning ladies... Fancy a badge ? Setting up camp near the front of the crowd... Outside the new Wembley The hand was visible at the start of the concert, during the set by Genesis. Genesis were playing la...

Another one of those World Clock type things, but seems to be going down well with Geographers... Created by Poodwaddle.com

A very busy weekend. Seems like a long time since Friday morning... Since then : Been to Leicester for final Young People's Geographies meeting - some great outcomes from the project, which will hopefully be continuing - good wrapping up by David Lambert of the work done by the 7 schools Out to Norfolk for a great weekend of Geography networking - see the image above as a taster (taken by my wife in Burnham Market) and the ones below taken by me... Also other busy things: Start of Tour de France - I hope Mr. Douglass got me some good pictures ! Wimbledon Finals / British Grand Prix Also today it was down to London for a GA meeting and some writing on the way back on the train until my laptop battery died... Thank goodness there's only 8 days of school remaining...