Geography and all that Jazz

For all future geographical information, please visit Living Geography. Thanks for reading for all these years :)

Over on LivingGeography - another chapter about to start...

40 years ago today , an LP was released which 'broke the rules'... Tubular Bells was the work of teenage Mike Oldfield . He was backed by Richard Branson, who decided to create a record company called 'Virgin Records' so that he could release the album. Mike played all the instruments, and multi-tracked them. He created a continuous piece of music, rather than a lot of singles. I first heard Tubular Bells when I was aged 10 or 11. My uncle Steven had a copy, and played it all the time when I went round to my nana's house. I loved it so much that I bought my own copy. I have probably played this album well over a thousand times in my life. I have seen it performed live several times, and was also present at the world premiere of the 3rd version of the album - getting very wet on Horse Guards Parade. Oldfield has also recorded other albums which together have formed the soundtrack to my life for the past 40 years. Ommadawn is my 'train journey' albu...

Here's a mention for a new Geography game called  LOCATESTREET  This is a 'variation' on GeoGuessr, with various points being offered for guidance, although the Elevation option doesn't offer that much help... You can choose to play on a Global basis, or other scales. You are presented with 4 options of location to choose from , and if you pick the correct option you can earn bonus points for clicking on the actual location on a map... The site takes you to some fairly out of the way places... I seemed to end up on rural roads, and in cul-de-sacs on industrial estates quite often. Hardcore players should choose the GLOBAL option... and discover that South America looks a lot like Australia in places... Choose the COUNTRY option, and explore a range of countries from a list, which includes the UK. This offers potential for a CITY based search for example. There are also some US based Thematic search options. The game is addictive. Had to stop myself pla...

I'm preparing my contributions to the Geographical Association Conference today. The conference will be held at the University of Derby , which is my favourite of the three venues. It runs from the 4th to the 6th of April. The first day of the conference doesn't involve any of the usual workshops. I will be heading over to the Association at Work session to grab a bite to eat, and chat to Ian Cook (who features in this month's 'Geographical' magazine coincidentally) to talk about a Follow the Things project I'm doing between now and the end of June. Later that afternoon, it's the public lecture from Ellen MacArthur , followed by the GA Awards. I know that something I worked on has won an award, and there may be a few more in the offing too... Then it's the wine reception, followed by a few drinks with esteemed geographer colleagues... Friday is the main day of the conference, with sessions from early in the morning to late in the evening. My ...

For the last few months we've been working with the amazing folks at the John Muir Trust to put together a booklet of missions which marries the Mission:Explore style of missions to the aims of the trust, which are to encourage young people to experience the landscape, and care for wild places. John Muir was the father figure of nature conservation, and quotes from him have been included to connect the missions with some of the ideas that he had over a century ago. The resource is part of the celebrations for the Year of Natural Scotland, 2013 You can get to see the missions on this GRAPHICLY page.  It will be available in other locations shortly, and I'll add the links to those as they emerge. Here's a slide that I've used in many of my presentations... Get out and about this Easter... and don't forget to take the opportunity to Mission:Explore...

Happy New Year everyone - after 10 days away, I'm now f irmly back in the room.... Join me on the 8th of January at 7pm for a VITAL CPD Teachshare , the first of the new year... New Year New Geography It's a chance to look ahead to what you have planned, and what might happen in the world of Geography. I'll be previewing 13 of the things that I'm planning to get up to in 2013, and some opportunities for everyone to get involved... 1. Why not start a 365 project (if you're reading this before the first few weeks of the year are over you have chance to catch up... I'll talk about my 365 projects past and future... This year, I'm going to carry on Blipping , and also do a literacy blog at GeoLibrary 2013 I'm also going to be opening the archives (see previous blog post on that ) and have also created some new Pinterest boards to hold those images. 2. Blogging I'm going to be hopefully breaking through the 5000 post bar...

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...