Sheffield: no place like home

Sitting on my colleague's desk today at the GA was a copy of Carl Lee's intriguing new book, which I went out to get a copy of later that day. Called "Home: a personal geography of Sheffield"

Have also been invited along to a conference that Carl is organising in September on Inequality.

Article in the Sheffield Telegraph gives a flavour for the background

"I wanted to write a geography book for people who wouldn't normally read a geography book.

"I also wanted to try and get to the heart of why Sheffield was such a great place to live. I've thought the city is one of the best-kept secrets of Britain. I've had a go at exploring the ingredients that make up the city and contribute to it being such a great place to live.

"I hope that Sheffield can continue to be the radical city that shaped its creation, now more than ever we need to think about alternatives to the discredited status quo.

"Sheffield was one of the first industrial cities in the world, one of the first to de-industrialise, and hopefully the city which leads us into a greener, more equal and more sustainable future."

Another connection with the city came today when I was told that my old mate Pete Rawlinson is one of the directors of the new Sheffield Brewery. The names of the beers that they brew have plenty of geographical connections.

Brewing and distilling is an area that I have long meant to develop as the context for a teaching (or learning) resource - got a growing collection of materials now. Perhaps a trip to the brewery would be a good idea...

Ted Talks: 10 ways the world could end

Green Britain Day

10th July

Slightly dubious about link with energy company...

What will you do to save energy on Friday ?

One and other

Me on Crosby Beach, 2007

Antony Gormley is an artist whose work I have come across in numerous locations, from Crosby Beach to the O2 and even on a friend's wall (a long story).

His latest project ONE AND OTHER involves the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. The website has a live web feed of the activity.

Was considering applying to go on the plinth in October. There's still a chance to get an hour of Geography up there... Anyone else got a place ?

British Antarctic Survey

Over to the British Antarctic Survey on the outskirts of Cambridge today on a day when I had to run for cover several times due to thunderstorms.

Spent the day in the company of Peter Fretwell, who achieved some fame recently due to his work on tracking penguin movements and locations using their poo (or guano to use the technical term) and Paul Cooper.

We were trialling some new GIS resources which will be coming soon to a classroom near you.

We were using an open source GIS package which was new to me...

Thanks to Judith Mansell at the RGS for inviting me to get involved, and thanks to Chris, Paul, Eleanor and Sarah for their company on the day.

Fix my Street

A late addition to a presentation I'm doing later this week...

FIX MY STREET (part of the my Society group of websites)

This allows members of the public to explore their local area and to mark on things which they would like 'fixed'....

There are various comments attached to some of the requests, which include updates on whether the problem has been 'fixed' or not.

Worthwhile taking a look to get a feeling for what issues there are locally.

Could be adapted in some way - perhaps to add comments about issues on the school grounds ?

Why not switch it around so that the POSITIVE things are mapped rather than the things that need need fixing ?

Young People's Geographies

"Childhood has always been a disputed territory, its true geography quickly forgotten as we grow older, replaced by an adult-imagined universe." (Libby Brooks, 2006)

On Thursday of this week, a meeting took place at the GA's HQ in Solly Street to celebrate the work that has been done during the 3rd phase of the Young People's Geographies project.

To read more about the early stages of the project, visit my GEOGRAPHY PAGES page. My involvement in the project goes back to November 2006 when we had the first project meeting in Leicester.

The third phase involved teachers from schools in the 2 areas: Sheffield, and the North East.

Thanks to Jane Ferretti and Steve Watts: the link ITE tutors, and particularly to Mary Biddulph (the new editor of 'Teaching Geography') and Roger Firth from the University of Nottingham.

Thanks to all the teachers involved...

More details will emerge over the summer...

BLDG BLOG

Have been enjoying reading Geoff Manaugh's BLDG BLOG book this week.

A good review in The Guardian

Was invited by Jeff to the launch event at the Architecture Association HQ in London next week, but unfortunately can't make the date, as I will be at a couple of meetings in Sheffield that day, followed by more meetings the day after...

Will content myself with reading BLDG BLOG instead. I suggest you do too....

WIRED UK

Another website worth investigating is one to support the UK version of WIRED magazine.

One particularly interesting recent article referred to the methods that retail and other companies used to gather data about consumers. These include billboards which have cameras with facial recognition software.

Also led me via a circuitous route to the blog of Jim Rossignol, who I've mentioned before.

Rossignol uses an appropriate quote by J.G Ballard (who I also blogged about recently...)

“My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker.”

J.G Ballard

Your favourite beach ?

Today's Independent has a magazine with a feature "The 50 Best British Beaches"...

Interestingly (although they are not necessarily in order...) Hunstanton beach in Norfolk, just 4 miles from where I live, is included as No. 1

Which is your favourite beach ?

Tour de France

My favourite sporting event, as I have blogged about earlier on several occasions...

Thanks to Keir Clarke from Google Maps Mania once again for a tip off about a live tracker being posted by UBILABS.

Vive le tour !

"You could define us solely as a motorway race rather than an island race."

Motorway service stations are "a microcosm of Britishness..."

Will Self

Enjoying reading Joe Moran's "On Roads".

Plenty of TRANSPORT RELATED LINKS on GeographyPages...

Wordle one year on...

Was reading a random page of the seminal GEOGRAPHY PAGES earlier for a completely unrelated reason and discovered that it was a year ago that I first discovered WORDLE.

Here's a celebratory WORDLE of the text of the Michael Chabon article I blogged about earlier.

Thanks to Jonathan Feinberg for his creation.

Cheap GIS solutions

Advance notice of a session on "cheap GIS solutions" that I will be facilitating at 4pm next Tuesday at the Brinsworth Training Centre, opposite CENT near the MAGNA centre....

The event is being organised by the GA Rotherham Branch.

I will be talking about the use of cheap GIS solutions: particularly the use of Google Earth, which could be used in a progressive way to map data and connect it to a location.

I will mention a range of projects, including Noel Jenkins' impressive Wellington Stories project.

Michael Palin and Ben Saunders

Earlier this year, Michael Palin was introduced as the new President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

There's an interesting article in the Independent newspaper today, which can be read by clicking the link.

A few interesting quotes on what Michael thinks about geography can be found in the article.

"For some reason, geography is not seen as a popular subject in school. It's seen as very unglamorous. Yet when I was at school, I can remember geography offering me the chance to get out and go on field trips and go on walks, and I loved maps, I loved atlases, I loved learning about other countries and places where things were different from our own – and that's all covered by geography."

Good to hear the interest in 'the Boss' too....

Ben Saunders is an Honorary Vice President of the Geographical Association.

Ben Saunders from Ben Saunders on Vimeo.

Follow Ben on Twitter @polarben is his account

A recent tweet by Ben lead me to "The Wilderness of Childhood" by Michael Chabon: an article from the NY Review of Books...

This contains an interesting exploration of the importance of place and exploration in children's lives: a theme that was also picked up in the Michael Palin interview.

All of this fits in completely with many of the projects that are currently underway at the Geographical Association, investigating local area using mapping, GIS and technology. These are certainly "interesting times" for geography.

To finish, a quote from the Michael Chabon article:

"Childhood is a branch of cartography"

David Rogers - star of stage and screen

David Rogers has had film crews in his classroom for the last 2 weeks running...

Last week it was the BBC, filming a lesson looking at the BBC Box. This work is now available to view here....

Today, it was Teachers' TV and a lesson continuing the theme of interdependence and globalisation, but this time with an added bit of piracy, which involved a bit of preparation and interaction using Twitter 'live' - quite a bold idea with cameras in the room. More to come on this later....

Nice work Mr. Rogers !

Islay 2020

Just uploaded a number of images to my Flickr photostream of the outcomes of our group discussion at the evening "unconference" discussions which formed part of the Islay 2020 education event last month.

These were recorded on one of Dan Ellison's 'Thinking Space' maps...