Geography and all that Jazz

Got fed up with the rubbishy print quality from my printer, so treated myself to a new Kodak printer/scanner/copier today which can do Bluetooth wireless printing and does photo quality copies, has XD, SD and CF card slots which match my digital camera, and also has a nice screen interface... Impressed so far. Good value inks too. Only 7p to print a photo at lab quality... Also the easiest peripheral I've set up for a while...

FlickrVision Why not try this if you have a moment to spare

SAGT 2007 Picture by Val Vannet Just back from 2 days in Edinburgh for the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers ' conference. I was presenting an adapted version of the Royal Geographical Society presentation I blogged about HERE . Arrived by train, and up to my nice hotel , for which I got a good deal with "LastMinute.com". Very mild after the chill of Paris. Wandered over to the academy through the Royal Mile and down the cobbles. The conference was held at Edinburgh Academy. A good venue. Picture by Flickr User Dave Fitch John Vannet was setting up the Publishers. GA, RGS and GGiP amongst them. Also met up with "the boys from the OS" again and others... Then had a rather nice caprese Pizza and a bottle of Peroni with friends. Also down to Princes St. to have a bit of a shop and met up with Rob Chambers , who was also presenting a session. He had been due to present at 2006's conference too, but fell ill on a trip to Kenya and was unable to attend...

Disneyland 1 Disney movies are one of the most familiar cultural references ever. People around the world recognise the characters and the music. Just back from Disneyland Paris , where I took hundreds of images of the place. Going to work this up into a tourism unit at some point... In the meantime, "here are a few of my favourite things..." (I mean, images...)

Image by Flickr user Tim Caynes, under Creative Commons UEA Day Over to University of East Anglia today to talk about developing a new KS3 Curriculum, and using some ICT tools to unlock creativity but avoid the pitfalls of "butterfly geography". Had a good day - nice lunch too - thanks Mr. Gee... If you were there on the day and want any further details, please add a comment below... Best of luck with your training !

New issue of GA Magazine out today Features a first look at the tool kit series and some very useful articles plus 'Webwatch', which is a bit out of date. World of Experience website was not available when I looked for it last month. Also rather more than 70 presentations in Slideshare group. GA Members can download from website. Also features an "Early Bird" booking form for GA Conference 2008. Good to see that Andrew Simms will be doing a session... Big fan of NEF as regular readers of blog will know.

Coastal Fieldwork Day Well, what a busy day followed by an even busier evening of CD burning, photo uploading, website updating, NING additions, Animoto movies, batch resizing, FLICKR uploading etc. all so that the images and data can be available tomorrow and for half term when students will be working on their write ups for their exams... Below are a few sample images of the day. For more, check out the full glory of the 100+ images on the new FLICKR SET... Also below are some images sent to me by Jon Wolton of my recent RGS-IBG day. The presentations from the day, including a cut down version of mine are now available on the RGS website ON THIS PAGE. The stage ready for the second half - I'm sat at the end of the second row of seats, behind the bloke standing next to the lectern, who was the Chair for the day. The mighty Simon Oakes is stood in the doorway ! Stuart Downward in action... Me and Simon O watching carefully in the background... Imagine my slides in full glory on tha...

Ratatouille Just back from a family trip to see latest Disney Pixar animation in local cinema. Superb film ! Get to see it - loved the first view of Paris across the rooftops....

If you have the chance to get to the RGS on Saturday 20th of October , there is what sounds like a fascinating day. INTERDEPENDENCE DAY In a host of talks, workshops, music, film, art and games, Interdependence Day will explore what it means to live in an interdependent world. For anyone who cares about the earth and the people we share it with. The new and extraordinary challenges that lie before us at the start of the twenty-first century - creeping globalisation, climate change, seemingly unstoppable and impossible to fully comprehend - can appear beyond the control of any one person. Finding ways to take a fresh approach to the defining questions of our time are the inspiration for Interdependence Day 2007. Speakers : Mark Lynas , author of High Tide: the truth about our climate crisis , Anuradha Vittachi , co-founder of the Oneworld Network, Andrew Simms , policy director of nef and author of Tescopoly: How one shop came out on top and why it matte...

400 Posts... Just noticed earlier that this is the 400th post on this weblog - cause for celebration. Earlier today, end of postal strike brought a backlog of Amazon parcels, including this box set: It's a rather nice pair of books on the 2 polar regions: anthologies of writing. Some familiar pieces: Nansen, Cherry Garrard, Barry Lopez, Franklin, Peary, Wilson, Shackleton, Scott, Mawson, Jenny Diski and Sara Wheeler (I have a big Polar section on my bookshelves) but also some unfamiliar - had never made the HP Lovecraft connection before, and also an excellent piece by Elizabeth Kolbert (one of the editors) on melting permafrost in Shishmaref, Alaska . Led me to do some searching and found some useful FLICKR sets (like the $14.00 potatoes picture - shows the extra expense of living in such remote locations) Turns out that this place is one of the more extreme examples that are being used for the impacts of Global Warming. Check out THIS BBC NEWS article from 2004, this NOAA arti...

Today is Blog Action Day Theme is "the Environment" Add a comment to the blog post which is on the theme of the ENVIRONMENT Could be one of these formats, or one of your own choice... a) What most worries you about the environment: local, national or global ? b) Which environmental story has had most impact on you in the last year ? c) What steps do you take to reduce your impact on the environment ? d) Which environmental themes do you think should form part of the Geography or Citizenship or General Studies course ? e) Tell us about an environmental story you have been involved in.... Or one of your choice. Click the COMMENT button and write your comment - don't forget to include your name... You will be one of over 12 million people involved in this Blog Action Day....

20 years ago, we had wind... A mighty wind... It was the Great Storm , the tail end of Hurricane Floyd, which roared across the SW and SE of England. I was in Yorkshire at the time and wasn't really affected that much... Michael Fish mentioned that a lady had rung in and asked about the hurricane, and ended up looking a little foolish. This was apparently not the case though ? Read this interesting BBC story. There are some interesting stories about the night on the BBC website: HERE and HERE (with video clip) We will offer the chance to go back in time in lessons this week... WIKIPEDIA article St. Vincent college has some good links relating to the storm, and some satellite images. MET OFFICE page on the storm. 55 images of the damage done in KENT : Sevenoaks was a major casualty too... Dan, Dan the Weatherman has some information too Watch out for an ITV special on Tuesday night... Also some clips on YouTube

Image by Flickr User Innes Keighren My Big Day at the RGS AS / A2 Study Day Event was chaired by Andy Yarrow, Headteacher of Hornsey School for Girls. The first part of the day was presented by Helen Young, who used to present the weather for the BBC Weather Centre and also worked for the Met Office in Exeter. She talked through some of the ‘myths of climate change’ and explained some of the natural and forced (?) variability of climate over the last 400 000 years and the accuracy of computer models today compared with earlier models. She was followed by Simon Oakes, a principal examiner for Edexcel , who delivered a high octane run through of impacts of globalisation using Armenian heavy metal and contemporary examples to produce a different angle on the well-worn topic which will form part of all new A level specifications. A session on applying for Geography at university followed, with Dr. Alastair Owens from Queen Mary University. Meanwhile I was enjoying the hospitali...

Keeping Geography Dynamic Just about to head off to Norfolk Geography conference, and wanted to add a link to a presentation produced by my SPC colleague David Rogers for the Hampshire Heads of Geography Conference. Some great ideas for keeping Geography dynamic...

Don't forget next Monday October 15th - posting needed on the Environment .... My form group will be participating in this...

Need some cool jazz to accompany your marking stints ? Check out Manu Katche's new CD... Great Trygve Seim sax and Mathias Eick trumpet, as well as Manu's drumming

RGS-IBG Study Day Thursday of next week is another conference - this time for AS/A2 students at the RGS, and I will be speaking in the afternoon in the Ondaatje theatre, which is also the venue for Michael Palin just 3 days earlier. See the rather nice picture of the theatre below taken by Flickr user I will be speaking on using the Internet for Study Skills Above are some of the slides from the presentation, an edited version of which is available on Slideshare. See some of you there !!

Norfolk Geography Conference 2008 This will be held on Tuesday the 9th of October at Gressenhall Museum of Rural Life, Norfolk, as pictured above by Flickr user Tim Caynes, and below by Flickr user Steve K. The main speaker will be Alan Kinder , co-chair of the GA's Secondary Phase Committee, who will be looking at the new KS3 Curriculum, and also Self Evaluation of Departments using the Secondary Geography Quality Mark. I will be involved in 2 sessions. The first is " Recent Developments in ICT " which I will be running, although I didn't realise this until recently - I'd actually booked this session myself as I was quite keen to see what I'd been missing... I will highlight some new ideas for using ICT, and places to get resources, and also mention some of the work that I am doing with the CfBT et al as a Regional Subject Adviser for the new Secondary Curriculum. Delegates doing this session will receive a free GEOGRAPHYPAGES pen (of course...) and also a...

My son is getting very excited about seeing this... In France, there's apparently a craze for owning a pet rat since the release of the film, in a repeat of the craze for clown fish following the release of "Finding Nemo": another Pixar film...