Geography and all that Jazz

This blog started out with the idea of sharing some musical geographies... I've been working on preparations for a new 365 project blog : a post a day for a year and now its time to get more people involved if you have a few moments. I've completed several of these 365 projects before, including my GeoLibrary blog , Geography on/in Film and Fieldnotes from Iceland . My latest blog is going to be on the theme of music and its geographical connections in the broadest sense , including how it connects us to specific places or moments in time, captures landscapes and emotions or forms part of our cultural geography.  Most people have some personal connections to particular musical genres or musicians.   Few people go through life without music in it... we pick music for giving birth and saying goodbye for the final time; the 'first dance'; 'our song'... travelling music... music to get us to sleep or get us going in the morning. Music provides comfort, enjoyment ev...

This blog was mothballed years ago, but still gets regular visitors and another milestone passed. Thanks for reading.  Why not head over to LivingGeography or subscribe to the Substack... And while you're here... A request to cast a vote for Rayburn Tours in the Best School Tour Operator (Large) category of the UK School Travel Awards if you can please, particularly if you have travelled with them with your school.  I work for them as a Field Studies Tutor and we are all proud to work for this family firm which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. This would certainly add to the celebrations. The voting form can be accessed here. Thanks very much :)

Good to see people still coming across this blog, and finding it useful. Head over to LivingGeography for all my current bloggage.

I wonder whether anyone I know is heading to America to see this event... A good swathe of the country will be heading to areas along a long strip of land stretching across the country, where they will be able to see a total eclipse on August the 21st... It may well be the chance of a lifetime for many to see such an event. There's a fantastic ESRI StoryMap made by Mike Zeiler of ESRI below, which tells you all you need to know about eclipses, and this one in particular...

Thanks for reading...

Not quite the 2 million of Living Geography but thanks for continuing to read this blog. Although it's archived and has been for some years, there's still plenty here that will be new to some...

The details of the CPD courses being offered by the GA in the new academic year have been released, and are available for booking now. Visit the website for details of all the courses. I'm delighted to say that I will be leading the following days... at various venues around the country from the middle of November through to June 2014... Hope to see some of you at one of these events...

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.