Bought my wife “Dear Blue Peter”, which has some great letters which were sent to Blue Peter over the years. One letter, from Ellen aged 15 said “I am absolutely disgusted with your show set in Morocco... You state that most people earn per day what we in Britain would pay for a cup of coffee, then go on to bargain with one of the shop owners, The shopkeeper would, quite rightly, like the full price for the goods, but instead Mark offers just over half the price... Matt gives the shopkeeper a choice: either except the lower price or he will spend nothing in the shop. Haven’t any of the producers ever studied geography GCSE ??? Poverty-stricken countries are being taken advantages of by tourists who barter for goods they can easily afford to pay the full price for and the locals lose out.” Also thanks to the 466 visitors to GeographyPages on Christmas Day: I'm sure you had your reasons...
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Thanks to Simon Renshaw for telling me about the PIC LENS / COOL IRIS add on for POWERPOINT (as long as you have the 2007 version) Turns your slides into a 'picture wall' which you can browse through and select just as you can with FLICKR images. Here's a screenshot of my BEDFORD GIS presentation being viewed with the plug in.... Noel Jenkins has also done a demo of another cool tool which Geographers would find useful: RICH CHART , which can be embedded into GOOGLE EARTH placemarks, and produces a range of charts from fieldwork data or other sources. Some creative ideas for Christmas !
Image by Eric Schockmel under Wikimedia Commons New film from Danny Boyle: " SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE "... There's an associated feature in today's Observer , which looks at the area of Mumbai called Dharavi where the film was made... There are some very useful descriptions of some of the inhabitants of the area, which could form the basis for classroom activities, and help to build up a picture for students. A DHARAVI Audio slideshow too, which is an excellent resource.... Interesting detail on the financial surplus that Dharavi creates, which compares sharply with the huge debt that the UK has... Other movies with associations with being filmed in 'slums': City of God Incredible Hulk Michael Jackson's video for " They don't care about us "- filmed in Rocinha City of Men Favela Rising Line of Passage The Constant Gardener La Haine (?) - not quite slums... Have I missed any ? How do colleagues use these films ? How about FAVELA TOURISM ? Check t...
There were a series of events last year relating to the new Key Stage 3 , which helped teachers plan and then implement the new programme of study. National Subject leads David Rayner and Ruth Totterdell led a series of conferences, which ended up reaching around 900 geography teachers from Kent to Cumbria. Some additional funding has now been made available to put on a further 6 events, which are targeting 6 areas of the UK where the take-up of the original events was not as high. These one day events, which will be FREE, will take place as follows, all in 2009 of course.. . 30th of January at The Russell Hotel, Maidstone, Kent 9th of February at The Derbyshire Hotel, South Normanton, Derbyshire 12th of February at Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln 23rd of February at The Wessex Royale Hotel, Dorchester, Dorset 3rd of March at The Quality Hotel, St Albans, Hertfordshire 26th of March at The Radisson SAS Hotel, Durham The largest of these events has space for 35 teachers,...
Thanks to David Holmes for passing on details of a course which is being put on by the Field Studies Council in February, specifically for centres doing the Edexcel 'A' Level Specification. Innovative approaches to fieldwork within the NEW Edxecel specification In February 2009 FSC Slapton Ley is offering an exciting INSET opportunity for teachers following the new Edxecel A Level specifications. The two day course will provide an insight into how to use innovative approaches to fieldwork to deliver the new specification, along with how to make the best use of ICT materials. To find out more please download the course leaflet below or contact the centre directly on 01548 580466. Flyer pictured below: visit the EDEXCEL NING page for more details. If you're doing the spec, join the NING !!
It's Christmastime.... Walk into any city centre shop and the usual Christmas music is playing on repeat... A superb idea was added to the SLN Geography Forum earlier today by Andrew Boardman . It's to take the lyrics of Band Aid : Do they know it's Christmas ? , and to reappraise them, and assess their accuracy to what 'Africa' is actually like... Will there really be "no snow in Africa this Christmas" ? or "no water flowing" ? The original single was released in 1984, with another version Band Aid 20 in 2004: 20 years on. Were the lyrics of the remake any better ? The original video can be seen here, thanks to YouTube.... The World Development Movement have already criticised the lyrics (some years ago now) for their portrayal of African communities, and the apparent 'reasons' for poverty. This is a nice way in to the portrayal of places in the media, and how the choice of images can influence opinion: something that OSOCIO is always...
Discovered a new word today: to stravaig , which is Scottish vernacular for "to wander aimlessly".... I recommend a little stravaiging now and again... Perhaps in life, perhaps of a weekend, perhaps online... There are plenty of image sets on Flickr relating to the idea of Stravaiging... Check out this excellent image from Flickr user WORLD OF JAN (under Creative Commons) It shows the lower slopes of Sgurr Dearg on the Isle of Skye, which I climbed a few years BC (before children), when I used to do a lot more climbing in the Scottish Highlands... Spectacular landscapes...
Three new Flash interactives have now been added to 2 of the KS3 units on the GEOGRAPHY TEACHING TODAY website. There are 3 in total. The first is one which looks at FLOOD TYPES The second is called PREPARING FOR FLOODING : mouse over the objects in the house for some details on how to reduce the flood damage. My favourite is the 3rd one, which is in the TEENAGE CONSUMERS activity. Which decade did these objects become popular... Would fit nicely with my old Pilot GCSE CULTURAL OBJECTS lesson.... - in fact, just had a quick browse through some of the 600 odd posts on that Pilot GCSE blog and there's some cracking stuff there ! I'm sure a lot of it would be relevant to the new OCR 'A' : something for the holiday will be to go through and extract the relevant posts and make a list....
An excellent audio-visual SLIDESHOW of a High Street, part of an excellent resource (try the tabs) on the BBC Magazine page. Living Geography is happening on your High Street right now. Why not go down there and come back with a photostory: no more than 5 images, capture your High Street, before it disappears .... I've set up a FLICKR GROUP called " The Disappearing High Street " , and kick started it with a few images from HUNSTANTON. Add your pictures...
The Britglyph Project Received an e-mail from Lawrence about the BRITGLYPH project. · Guerrilla art is old news and the Turner Prize means nothing to the man on the street · A new project is creating a unique piece of ‘ user generated art ’ that anyone across Britain can contribute to · Using the gizmo we all have, a phone, the ‘Britglyph’ project records pictures taken at locations across the UK, forming an image on the map · A digital dot-to-dot in simple terms · There are 63 locations around the country that will make up the Britglyph The project website is live. It's a modern take on the idea of geoglyphs, such as the Cerne Abbas giant. Check out the website for more details...
"You're lost without geography" the classroom display label says.... Today I deliberately went left instead of right after dropping the kids off at school. The title of this post is also a good book by Rebecca Solnit. One newspaper report on this book includes the following interesting quote: NOT long ago in the Adirondacks on the summit of Mount Marcy, New York's highest mountain, a wilderne ss ranger was taken aback when a hiker whipped out a cellular phone to call his office more than 300 miles away in Manhattan and report: "I'm not feeling well. I can't make it in t o work today." Is it possible to get lost with today's available technology ? It was a very frosty morning today, so I took my camera with me on the school run, and decided to take a different route home than the one I use 99% of the time. I took some pictures on the way home, and a few are added below: more for you to use on my FLICKR page. Try it today - take a different rou...
Outstanding in your field(work) The title of a session I'm leading for the Sheffield GA Branch at Meadowhead School, Sheffield tomorrow night. As part of the 'research' I've been browsing some hilarious YouTube videos made by students on their fieldtrips. Quite liked this one, particularly the end-credits, where all the students quite rightly refer to themselves as ' GEOGRAPHERS '.
It's a Travelodge night...
Keeping up the tradition of moving around the country in my ales, I'm starting tonight with a bottle of Barnsley Gold from the Acorn Brewery , which is rather delicious.
Earlier tonight, it was over to Sheffield University to see Doreen Massey's lecture as part of the Centenary series of Sheffield University's Geography Department. I was planning to send some Twitter messages and blog as well, but there was no mobile signal (drat) so below are the notes that I made during the lecture, which explored issues surrounding our concept of ' place '. They may make some sense to some of you - I'll do something more with them at some point.
Doreen Massey Beyond critical: it is possible to make a difference Voices of places: meanings of place – places as victims of globalisation – social fora: ‘fighting back’ ? Place can be divisive – requires a boundary: an ‘inside’ & an ‘outside’ – parochialism, and ‘othering’ Identity ...
Just spent a considerable amount of time sorting out some images for a forthcoming document, and was interested in Noel Jenkins' current DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION , where all the images were taken by Noel. Why not go along and vote for your favourite. While you're at it, check out some of Noel's other excellent, and very geographical images HERE. Jurassic Shipwreck: image by Noel Jenkins
BBC Scotland has carried on producing quality geography resources despite the dearth of BBC 'England' resources: their Rivers series springs to mind straight away (a programme which had Val Vannet and David Rayner involved as consultants) My Twitter network has just come up with the goods again, with a new BBC Scotland website called CHINA STORIES . It includes 8 short videos (about 10 minutes long), each with a different focus. The stories include: Xiao Di: the single child Jiang Feng Dui: the farmer Dr. Hao: the traditional doctor Director Feng: the community leader Liu Hong Liang: the factory worker This would be a great resource for a range of key stages. I heard of the resource via a new TWITTER follower. The DID YOU KNOW / AKA " Shift Happens " presentation is one I hope not to have to sit through again, but makes the point about our need to connect with CHINA. Here are all the details from Claire McCallum's LEARNING BLOG . The China Stories website incl...
If you are going to be attending the BETT show at Olympia, there is a SEMINAR being delivered by Judith Mansell, Education Officer at the Royal Geographical Society. It's on the 16th of January, and starts at 3.45 pm Here are the details: Seminar Details The geography national curriculum at KS3 and subject criteria for A Level and GCSE now state that students should use new technologies including geographical information systems (GIS) to obtain, present and analyse data. The national curriculum and A Level were first taught from September 2008 so this seminar is timely. It will demonstrate to practitioners the innovative ways in which freely available online resources can easily be used to enhance the curriculum and provide relevant learning experiences and skills for 21st century. The seminar uses the GIS features of Google Earth to show how the application can enhance the three stages of fieldwork; preparation before the visit, during the visit and in the follow up analysis. Th...
Urban Earth - visit website for bigger versions... One of the most creative geographers I've had the pleasure of working with over the last few years is Daniel Raven Ellison. Earlier this year, he visited London, Mexico City and Mumbai and walked across them, taking an image very 8 paces to create these compelling movies for URBAN EARTH . Below is the MUMBAI film.... A Newcastle Urban Earth event is planned for the 25th of January 2009 - more details later. Thanks for the mention in the end-credits too Dan... Unless if was a different Alan P...
Just putting this resource together at the weekend. Has anyone else spotted any trends in the Credit Crunch that have been reported in the media relating to geography : these could relate to employment, consumer products, lifestyle changes, population change or other aspects... Add comments below, particularly if there is an article which accompanies it, and provides some additional detail...
In a meeting yesterday, and my colleague Wendy made a very interesting comment that when it came to CPD sessions, it was important that teachers brought some of their work with them: that she wanted teachers to " SHOW ME, DON'T TELL ME ". This fits in nicely with the idea of 'Teachmeet' style or participatory CPD.... Reminded me of a track from Rush's "PRESTO" album - check the bass solo half way through... and that led me to another Rush classic... 30 years ago ! Still remember listening to it about then for the first time... OK, rock music break over.... back to the geography...