Geography and all that Jazz

Dan Raven Ellison and his fellow walkers, are preparing for this Saturday's walk across BRISTOL. Check out the URBAN EARTH NING for more details - it's not too late to sign up. Don't forget that there will also be a walk as part of next April's GA Conference.

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 !

Football: the global game Came across the GLOBAL GAME website / BLOG which looks at the sport of football and features a range of articles, images and statistics. Worth exploring for those looking at the GEOGRAPHY OF SPORT. If you are using SPORT as a context for teaching some geographical concepts, check out the Geographical Association's new PLANET SPORT website. En route back from Devon, met up with Dan Ellison, and had a sneak preview of his Mexico City Urban Earth walk, which he had recently completed. The day after I spoke to him he flew to India: fuelled by red wine and pepperoni pizza... URBAN EARTH has taken up a lot of Dan's summer. He has now completed his walk across Mumbai. Check out a sample walk, which maps out Salisbury's ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT by watching the YouTube clip below...

Prepare for a biggie... This is a catch up from a prolonged absence from the world of all things web based. Had a very nice week down in Devon dodging the showers. I am currently downloading over 300 high quality digital images, and my wife took another 400. Look on FLICKR tomorrow, and will also be Animoto-ing some of them. Also enjoying listening to the WALL-E soundtrack at the moment... On my return spent the rest of the afternoon (and now started into the evening) catching up with a heaving inbox, and various programmes I needed to download on iPlayer (the TV in the holiday home only had 4 channels - can you imagine that ?) There were lots of interesting news items that occured while I was away.... First of all, well done to all KES Geographers for their A2 results . 100% pass rate and some very pleasing individual performances. Particularly well done to Chris. Below is the front of the Lynn News, which has a very pleasing headline, which of course refers to KES... ...

Head over to URBAN EARTH for an update on Dan's MEXICAN adventures. Some trailer images, which look marvellous, and some blog postings which give some sense of the scale of the city. Adventurous, thought-provoking and brave geography. Hats off to you Dan ! And here's one of him with his hat off looking sexy...

A hot day today, and out for a nice lunchtime pint. Also watching the Tour de France , as the riders climb the Alpe d'Huez , and doing a spot of geographical pottering. Up to Sheffield yesterday to set up my new desk at the GA, transfer a range of resources across, and do a very interesting day's work relating to the Secondary Geography Quality Mark. Thanks to all involved. For those interested in applying for the Secondary Geography Quality Mark , follow the link. Dan Raven Ellison is off on his travels shortly as part of his URBAN EARTH project. He is walking across Mexico City, Mumbai and London, and has already completed a footprint video based in Salisbury. Check out the URBAN EARTH blog by clicking the image or the link to see what Dan gets up to next.

One of the blogs that I regularly read is Russell Davies' and related projects. Russell is behind an event called INTERESTING which I have posted about before. This year, Geography Collective colleague Dan Raven Ellison was one of the speakers. Read about Dan's URBAN EARTH session, which got a GOOD REVIEW . Check out the website. Good luck for Mexico City, London and Mumbai Dan !

Urban Earth Adventures A great little movie which shows the difference between the physical footprint of Salisbury (the land it occupies) and the ecological footprint that it requires...