Geography and all that Jazz

Does this image mean anything to you ? If not, then you've probably never heard of MINECRAFT: a game that has millions of players worldwide and is finding its way into lots of schools too. My son LOVES Minecraft and has produced some amazing creations on the Pocket Edition that we have on the two tablets in the house. He and his sister play together in a creative world they have generated. When I upgrade my computer in the New Year, we will put the full version on, and really start to explore the Minecraft Universe. Recently, after a Twitter exchange with Claire Rafferty in Australia, I created a Google Doc and started to put together a summary document which could form the basis for Geography teachers to start to think about how they could use Minecraft in the Geography classroom... and also explore where it was being used in other parts of the curriculum, and also as an extra-curricular activity. I discovered Stephen Reid , who I'd quoted in the document was i...

Preparing some resources for the course on Geomedia in Salzburg that I am leading next week. You still have chance to get funding to join me for a repeat of the course in February 2013 , and the course is likely to run several times during 2013 - I'd love to see lots of you there... you can get your fees, accommodation and travel paid for. I'm going to be using several activities from two books which I edited, and were published in April this year. You really need to have a copy of these books in your departmental library. They have been selling well, and getting good feedback from users. You can order them from the GA shop - click to follow the link, and remember that GA members get a discount on purchases, and free P&P Multimedia made Easy by Paul Cornish GIS made Easy by Bob Lang

Don't forget to join me at 7pm tomorrow night for a VITAL CPD Teachshare to look back on the academic year, and ahead to the next one....

Over to a local school on Thursday this week for a network meeting organised by Rob Lodge . Rob has been organising these meetings for Norfolk teachers for many years, and they are always useful, so it was good to be able to go along and share some of my recent work, and also have a 20 minute journey to an event rather than one of three or four hours. There was plenty of interest in the meeting, some of which may form a separate blog post. It was good to meet colleagues new and old, and also have the chance to wish a happy retirement to John, who I've known for many years. There was some good sharing at the event, which had a range of activities.  Some of you may be thinking of organising a local network meeting at your school ? This could be themed around a particular issue, or perhaps based on the Teachmeet style of event with short inputs from everyone. This could be cheap twilight CPD, or a more organised city-wide event.  Over the last few years I've been fortunate to...

At the start of the year, I spent rather longer than anticipated putting together a book for Badger Publishing. It brought together some of the ideas I'd been working on for a while, along with a few more that were kindly  lent to me by colleagues (who are all acknowledged in the book, and will also be listed here once I have my hands on a physical copy of the book....) The book will be useful to those who are preparing students for external assessments, but I would say that a lot of the ideas are transferrable - they are basically good geography.... The book is now available to pre-order (it will be out in April) GCSE Grade Boosters: Geography Contents Introduction – what does a C grade geographer look like, and how can students raise their grade to a C and beyond. Memorable geography – a range of geography activities which can be re-versioned for other topics or particular pupils; includes thinking graphs, lucky lines, maps from memory, and ideas funnel to name ju...

I've been working with Jamie Buchanan Dunlop over the last few months, adding some new resources to the OCEANS DIGITAL EXPLORER website. The Digital Explorer empire is now expanding to CULTURAL matters , linking in with the idea of Citizenship and (as always) a link with real world exploration. Check out the new CULTURAL WEBSITE which has some superb resources. The FILMS and PHOTOS section looks like being an amazingly useful resource for exploring Citizenship issues.

For over a year now I've been getting regular e-mails from Rick Cope and Mark Hacklett at GeoPacks  - creators of the excellent COASTAL MANAGER  software - to tell me about the latest free resource that they've shared. If you want to catch up with the freebies that they've made available, there's now an excellent Resource CD which will get you right up to speed. It's available for £12 from GeoPacks. Follow the link to find out more. Make sure you SIGN UP to receive a regular free resource update too. Follow the link to FREE STUFF from the home page.

My next VITAL Teachshare will be on Wednesday the 16th of November (that's tomorrow if you're reading this today) at 7pm. It's on ways of customising Google Earth Placemarks... Click THIS LINK just before 7 to join me . You'll need to allow the download of the plug-in to handle the Elluminate session, which will then allow you to see and hear me, and to take part. Don't forget to check the KEYHOLE BULLETIN BOARD to get the full range of layers and files shared by  Google Earth users. Use the SEARCH function to unearth the goodness.... This will be my little contribution to WORLD GIS DAY , which is taking place tomorrow, as part of GEOGRAPHY AWARENESS WEEK. What are you doing for World GIS Day ?  Why not add a touch of GIS to your teaching tomorrow...

Earlier this year, I was involved in an exciting project with National Geographic Education in the USA as part of the Geography Collective . This led to my friend and colleague Daniel Raven Ellison spending a week at the National Council for Geographic Education  conference  in Portland, Oregon, and working with educators from across the USA. This project has been an exciting one to be involved with. It offers a range of activities which can be carried out in your neighbourhood, and earn points for completing them. Would be good for exploring local areas, local wildlife and ideas of community. These will be used across the USA for their Geography Awareness Week later in the year. You will need to have registered with TES Connect , which is free and takes a few moments. You can then DOWNLOAD THE BOOKLET as a 34 page, 13 Mb PDF and check it out. Please take a look and let me know what you think...

The flyers for the latest GA CPD events have been published on Scribd . I am leading two NQT Conferences in November 2011 NQT Conference: Making a difference in the classroom If you are going to be an NQT Geographer or you are going to have an NQT in your department, and you'd like to book a place , contact Lucy Oxley on 01142960088

Well, one perhaps as I doubt you'd come to both... These are the first of the GA CPD events that I shall be doing in the new academic year that have so far been scheduled, and thanks to Lucy for sending me the flyer... The events are NQT Conferences. Look out for a mailing coming into schools shortly , and also inserts in GA journals.... If you'd like to secure your place, or find out more information about the events, there are several different prices depending on the status of your GA membership. Call Lucy Oxley at the GA on 01142960088 for more information. I look forward to seeing some of you in November ! And I'll be mentioning this event once or twice between now and then....

Interested in GIS in school but not sure where to start ? The folks at ESRI UK , with whom we've been working for the last year are putting on a range of FREE taster sessions over the next few weeks. They are taking place in a range of venues, and there are 2 options. 1. Face to face taster sessions Come along to one of our free GIS taster sessions and try out our GIS software, get some classroom ideas and find out what our GIS for Schools Programme has to offer. It only takes a minute to book a place. Just choose a location from the list below and click on the Book now link to register some brief details. The sessions will take place in: Birmingham King Edward VI Five Ways School , Scotland Lane, Bartley Green, Birmingham, B32 4BT Date              Wednesday 29 June 2011 Time              3:45pm - 6:00pm Location map   |   Bo...

The annual Young Geographer of the Year Award has been launched by the Royal Geographical Society in association with Geographical magazine. This year there has been a slight change of format for the awards which I think makes it a stronger opportunity, and will result in more "useful" and insightful responses... Geography surrounds us: on the world map on your classroom wall, in events on the news, or the changes taking place in your local area and further afield.  Geographers strive to better understand the connections between the world’s people, places and environments and the interactions taking place between them.  To help us understand our world we ask questions such as; Where is this place? Why is it like this? How is it connected with other places? How is this place changing? and Why are these changes taking place? We like to zoom between the local and the global scales and are fascinated with maps, not just to find out where places are but to als...

Another great collaborative Twitter project response... Yesterday, I asked colleagues who follow me to provide some descriptions of the British Seaside... Words that appear larger were mentioned more frequently by the word cloud generator. First of all a WORDLE - click the image below to be taken to the Wordle page... Here is a Tagxedo version of the Wordle... Click for biggery... Thanks for all the contributors. What words would you choose ?  How could you use this diagram as a resource in the classroom or for a homework task ?

One of the things that I am quietly 'obsessed' (ish) with is the Mass Observation project , which dates back to the 1930s I have a number of books which drew on the project: one by Simon Garfield, and several chunky ones by David Kynaston. I keep checking on the recruitment criteria , but sadly they never seem to want people my age in my geographical area. Elements of Mass Observation also creep into several other books that I own, and there are elements of cultural geography in the data patterns and other outcomes from the project. Now everyone has the chance to be a Mass Observation person for the day, and the day is the 12th of May , which is coming up. Details of how to participate are HERE You'll need to keep a diary on the day in electronic form, and include a disclaimer that it can be used in the archive... Write as much as you can about what you do, who you meet, what you talk about, what you eat and drink, what you buy or sell, what you are working on,...

A number of posts are appearing over at my LIVING GEOGRAPHY blog on the follow-up to the GA Conference 2011. There were some wonderful sessions.... but enough about me... Anne Greaves has started to post resources from the conference on the GA WEBSITE . Image by Bryan Ledgard Copyright Geographical Association

Get yourself to Amazon or a local bookshop and get/order copies of our two new books, published in association with Can of Worms press... They are out today, and would make a great gift for the child in your life, from 8 to 88 and beyond... Amazon link Amazon link The official 'launch' will be in London tomorrow - we've already used a catapult and a rocket to 'launch' our books, and at the weekend, we'll be using balloons... If you're going to be in London at the weekend, get involved...  (see this Time Out link) Don't just take my word for how these books are, check out these other reviews: Mission:Explore is bold, cool, exciting, innovative, geographic, educational…and just plain fun! Every curious kid, budding geographer, and responsible parent should have a copy!” – National Geographic“ Designed to be read, scribbled on, illustrated, smeared, scratched and sniffed, it may just be the most revolutionary geography-related book...

One of the things I'm proudest of in the last few years is my involvement with the Geography Collective , and our Mission:Explore books, iPhone app and other activities... We can now announce our latest project, thanks to the project leadership of Daniel Raven Ellison. We are very pleased to say that we will be delivering a major project for the Cultural Olympiad as part of the Discovering Places programme called  Discover Explore . Discovering Places is funded by a grant from Olympic Lottery Distributor (OLD) through the London Organising Committee of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG). It is delivered by The Heritage Alliance with the support of key partners.. one of which is us. We will be working closely with  The Workshop  to create something very beautiful and cool which will be launched this summer. “The project aims to inspire young people and their families to discover hidden, extraordinary and important historical sites and ...

Gathering ideas for a future project on iPhone applications that would support geographical learning... whether outside or inside the classroom... As well as the obvious MISSION EXPLORE app, there's also the RORY's STORYCUBES APP that I have poised and ready for business (although the actual dice are more tactile...) Image by Alan Parkinson - cubes by Creativity Hub ... If you have other thoughts on iPhone apps that you particularly USE (rather than just having on your phone for visual impact), please let me know or add a comment below...

My earlier blog post about the Christchurch memorial service was a reminder of the many connections that exist between the UK and New Zealand. My friend Simon Hathaway , who now lives in Wellington (which is a major improvement on Rotherham) sent me a pack of newspaper and magazine articles this week to add to the other resources that I have gathered to help teach about the resilience of a major city following an earthquake. I was interested to read the 'North and South New Zealander of the Year' piece, which awarded the Supreme Winner to the people of Christchurch... and that was following the earlier September 2010 quake... There was also a really useful piece from the Dominion Post by Chris Kalderimis on the most useful items to have in a home emergency survival kit, and lots of personal stories. The  #blog4nz campaign  is encouraging bloggers the world over to focus on New Zealand for a while, and this post is part of the effort. Although my work involves me in tran...