Designing an animal

This is a technique that is developed as part of the growth of 'thinking skills' and is contained in the books of David Leat et al.

COOL EARTH has a range of useful content.

A recent Competition winner had their design illustrated by the artist who drew the FLANIMAL cartoons for Ricky Gervais.

New Royal Mail stamps

Tubular Bells appears on the new Royal Mail stamps, which feature classic album covers... and Coldplay...

Otter Farm: a "climate change" farm

This week, my online food unit for the Teacher Learning Academy was taking its final shape...

One final addition that I put in at the last minute was reference to OTTER FARM.

I came across it via an excellent blog called Fennel and Fern.

OTTER FARM, which is located by the River Otter in East Devon is described as the UK's first "climate change farm"...

The farmer: Mark Diacono bought the land and has slowly built a farm which grows some crops that will be unfamiliar to many.

One particularly impressive aspect of the blog is the gallery of images that Mark has taken over the last few years, which give a sense for how the farm has developed.

Planet of the Apps

OK, so as I may have mentioned I've got an iPhone

(reminds me of 'The Young Ones' where they say "YES, WE'VE GOT A VIDEO"... that ages me...

Been doing some shopping for apps, and have also started work on a resource that lists some suggested resources that geography teachers would find useful. Will hopefully make that available over the weekend...

One app that I tried out was EVERYTRAIL.

This APP is FREE, but costs £2.39 to upgrade to an AD-FREE version.

I went on a fristy-frosty walk, and when I got to the furthest extent, turned on Everytrail to track my way home...

Winter walk

Map your trip with EveryTrail

Seemed to work quite well...

Power to the People

A huge power plan in Scotland has been approved. This involves building a 137 mile long power line called the Beauly-Denny line.

Upside

Renewable energy will be harnessed, which will mean less pollution generated...

Here's the downside...

To get the energy to where it is needed, a row of giant pylons will be constructed through some of the most dramatic landscapes of Scotland.

This could be a useful case study for environmental management of energy supply / resource extraction...

There are also news stories relating to plans for further OFFSHORE wind farms too...

Also a useful additional context for purchasers of "Look at it this Way"...

The Story of the Noughties

While snowed into my Travelodge yesterday, I caught the second half of this programme and apart from Will Self with a beard, it also featured Danny Dorling talking about the age distribution of the UK, and a whole host of other interesting geographical changes that have happened in the first decade of the century.

It's available on iPlayer at the moment, and is worth watching.

Advisory: contains some distressing scenes

UPDATE: tonight's programme looks like being very useful: on the issue of globalisation: more details HERE

Had been all set to go to Meadowhall to catch a movie. Checked the website before going over, and saw this...

VLEs in the Snow...

Some discussion on my Tweetdeck feed today on the role of VLEs during this weather in enabling students to carry on learning.

Mr. Mitchell's blog had a good example of how he had used a site called COVER IT LIVE, to get students together to investigate the effects of the bad weather.

Are there any examples out there of geography-related VLE content being used to keep 'lessons' going ?

New iPhone Geography group on the GA Ning

A new group has been added to the GA Ning for those teachers who own, or are interested in the possible educational uses, of iPhones and similar devices.

I could have widened the name of the group, but the particular combination of features and the functionality of the iPhone make it particularly suited to the sort of exciting exploratory work that a few teachers are already doing.

See my earlier blog post for more on how some teachers are using this device.

I have made some good use of my iPhone over the last few days. Was certainly helpful as the snow descended, and I found myself in a hotel...

Keep an eye out for a resource I'm putting together for those teachers using iPhones...

Let me know if you are using a particular app and finding it helpful...

Latest GA Magazine now available...

The Spring 2010 GA Magazine is now available to download from the GA website by GA members - what do you mean you aren't a member ? JOIN NOW !

Some great content in this issue...

Top Gear Adventures

Thanks to Mark Ollis for sharing a resource based around the Top Gear S. American adventure.

Bolivia Top Gear

View more presentations from Mark OLLIS.

Also David Rogers identified a Top Gear DVD resource that might be helpful. This is currently available on Waterstones.com for only £7.99 which is a bargain price.

National Curriculum Levels Consultation

You have a month to have your say on National Curriculum Subject Levels at a DCSF e-Consultation...

Make sure you have your say....

Geographical perspectives on the recent bad weather....

Image by Alan Parkinson

Or, how to add topicality by focussing on the current snowfalls and extreme weather...

This is obviously the story of the moment for many people (although it's important to remember that not everyone is having the snow - I seem to have had nothing else since the 16th of December) It's the longest cold snap for almost 30 years (since 1981) and will certainly be the most severe weather that students will have seen for their whole life... (although as a child of the 60's I can remember worse...)

Start by watching this film which shows how schoolboys coped with the snow in 1900 (with thanks to the Yorkshire Film Archive)

The Independent also compared this winter with past winters. There have certainly been some dramatic winters in the past.

Plenty of images on the #uksnow FLICKR POOL, which was started with the Feb 2009 snow but is now being added to with the current conditions.

OK, now think about the economic, social and environmental consequences of the extreme weather on a range of activities.

How extreme is the weather ?

Put in your current location and see how it compares to the locations of STAR WARS (with thanks to Ollie Bray for the reminder of the site)

Could have a suitable enquiry:

Were winters worse when Mr. Parkinson was a lad ?

A useful article in Thursday's Guardian written by Charlie English, who wrote "The Snow Tourist": a Brief History of Snow.

There were also record audiences for evening local news programmes apparently as people tuned in to find out the latest news for how they might be affected.

Of course, for many teachers there are no students to teach as schools were closed...

Update

An excellent Guardian Blog which has updates through the day on relevant stories, along with video clips...

Urban Tweet Day

A reminder about Urban Tweet Day which takes place this Saturday...

Get out into an Urban area, and tweet all about it... (and don't forget the #hashtag)

URBAN TWEET DAY is a side project of URBAN EARTH.

TWEET DAY is about tweeting what you see, hear, smell and sense in and around your urban world. Find something (un)interesting? Share it with us...

The idea is to record our perspective on our urban lives and habitat through an online stream of tweets that describe urban events and experiences as they happen.

By the end of the urban day we will have created a collaborative narrative - a descriptive portrait of urban life..

To take part all you need is:
1. The ability to Tweet (www.twitter.com)
2. To be in an urban area on Saturday 9th January 2010
3. To include #utday in each of your related tweets

We'll then be able to search the tweets to reveal our story.

Please do spread the word around, the more of us the better.. and leading up to the day, add the URBAN TWEET DAY Twibbon to your Twitter profile picture. If you don't already, you can follow us on Twitter here.

Calendar boys...

Image by Alan Parkinson

It's that time of year when last year's calendar gets taken down...

I always used to use them as display materials in my classroom, or as potential classroom resources e.g. the coastal scenery above could have some questions and tasks added, or the images could be geo-located and used for narrative stimulus.

Here are my 2 calendars from last year: mmmm... whisky... and my new Munro calendar.

What educational use do you make of your old calendars ?

2010: Themes for the year...

Image under Creative Commons license by Flickr user dr_John2005

Football and geography are, of course, connected...

Geography of Sport units frequently explore the locations of stadia, impact of the sport on globalisation, industry and the environment, and also the benefits and issues surrounding global or international sporting events such as the World Cup 2010.

Football is also a crucial part of popular culture in many countries of the world, inspiring passion and also a lot of violence in some cities.

This is, of course, just a chance to mention a little football result that happened yesterday...

Marching on together....

Keep an eye out for some resources for the World Cup 2010 on the Geographical Association's website (and on this blog)

What are the other "geographical themes" of 2010 likely to be ?

#movemeon

This has been a very successful collaborative effort started by Doug Belshaw.

The idea was to tweet a piece of advice, or a tip or suggestion for improving practice. These had (of course) to be 140 characters or less, which of course resulted in pithy suggestions...

These were then collated into one place.

The resulting book can be purchased, or downloaded as a FREE PDF

New Home for Mission Explore...

MISSION : EXPLORE has a new home...

Come and take a look...

World's tallest building...

The Burj Dubai opens today: incredible images from the top of the building, but it's not really complete, as a lot of the interior is apparently unfinished...

Plenty of information available on this Architecture guide.

The development is part of the dramatic reshaping of Dubai which has been linked with global financial insecurity in recent months, and has been mentioned earlier in this blog, particularly with regards to a Charlie Brooker piece.

Some useful images and further information in the Chicago Tribune's CITYSCAPES 'blog' by Blair Kamin.

Ice, ice baby...

And so the freezing conditions continue, and today is "Black Monday" when millions return to work.

It's back to work for me too, but fortunately I will be working from home today, so not had to brave the icy roads outside. Just defrosted a couple of cars and moved mine for the first time in nearly 3 weeks...

There is more snow forecast for later in the week, and reports in some Scottish papers that councils are now running out of grit.

Be careful out there...

iPhone - the first 72 hours...

Image by Alan Parkinson

For those who haven't heard (or are even remotely interested) I finally decided just after Christmas that what I really needed in my life was an iPhone. I opted for a 16Gb 3GS version in glossy white.

There are many reasons why I finally succumbed to the ever-so-shiny phone.

One of my thoughts was that I had seen geography colleagues using it in interesting ways in the classroom, and outside the classroom (the latter perhaps more than the former) and needed to investigate these by actually using them... and then reporting on them...

There were already some useful posts on the use of iPhones which have been building up over the last year or so since the 3G version of the phone was introduced.

Teachers using iPhones

Noel Jenkins posted an interesting thought on his DIGITAL GEOGRAPHY blog giving his thoughts - he hadn't got an iPhone at the time, but has now.

He has put it to good use with his QR CODE FIELDWORK work: WELLINGTON STORIES.

Had the pleasure of seeing Noel present this work down in Somerset at the end of last year.

Ollie Bray had already posted a series of posts on iPhone in education, originally posted back in 2009

Post 1 of 5 had information on an app called MIND MAKER: a mind mapping app

Post 2 of 5 had a post on TRACK ME app, which uses the GPS capability of the iPhone

Post 3 of 5 on iGLOW (which had a useful tip for adding a new ICON on a screen)

Post 3.5 of 5 on a SEISMOMETER app (which I downloaded)

Post 4 of 5 had information on Geography Fieldwork apps

Post 5 of 5 had information on an app called EARTHSCAPE

I also asked my PLN via Twitter, and got some recommendations. for apps.

Some of the websites which I use regularly also have iPhone apps, so I checked those out as well: FLICKR is my photo sharing APP of choice, and I also downloaded COOL IRIS for viewing them. Also the ANIMOTO app for watching videos I've produced, such as the movie for "a different view", and also Rain Today.

Image by Alan Parkinson

I also started a new iPHONE GEOGRAPHY GROUP on the GA Ning.

Here's the first page of the APPS I have so far. Got a 2nd page underway...

There are also some excellent features as part of the phone itself:

CAMERA and VIDEO CAMERA - obviously useful for story telling and fieldwork...

COMPASS - map orientation etc.

NOTES - no more clipboards

MAPS (using the built-in GPS) - endless potential here...

iTUNES and the iPOD settings for music and video and podcasts (including educational podcasts)

CLOCK: choose the WORLD CLOCK and add a range of cities that you are studying (quicker than the ones up on the wall...)

Also came across George Burgess's GCSE GEOGRAPHY revision app: GEOREV.

Might also check out the CLINOMETER, the GPS Cardinal, the RULER PHONE app, a Swiss Climate Change walk app, GEOTagging, We can take you there etc.

Got the BUMP app too - if you meet up, then feel free to BUMP me... Might get a chance at BETT in a couple of weeks time...

OK, so my iPhone adventure is underway...

Please let me know what your favourite 'educational'/geographical apps are...

Will be posting more on how I use my iPhone in geographical education during 2010

Norfolk...

Nelson's County Animoto (in preparation for an event later in the year)

Thanks for the Flickr users who contributed Creative Commons licensed images for the movie...

Users include:

Saxonfenken

Sally Parkinson

Broads Marshman

Cameron Self

Gabriel Heley

i_gallagher

Daveyboyhill

Leo Reynolds

Nick Garrod

Stewie D

Tim Caynes

the majority are my images...

Your help is needed to add some more 'texture' to the session.

I would really appreciate some additions to the following:

a) Please add as a comment, or TWEET me at @GeoBlogs the first 5 words that come into your head when you think of 'NORFOLK'

b) If you know Norfolk well, what is your favourite place in Norfolk and why...

Want to explore ideas of the concept of place and place(s)

Please let me know if I've missed you off the photo credits above and I'll add you... think I got them all correct...

Will it rain today ?

I have been very impressed by the accuracy and usefulness of the RAIN TODAY website over the last month as the snow showers have come and gone, and then come back again...

Also an iPhone app....

On New Years Day...

Image by Alan Parkinson

...took an icy trip over to Titchwell RSPB reserve for a New Years Day walk. Lots of birders out starting their lists for 2010... My son and I were just out for a quick stroll... The lakes near the Fen Hide were frozen... First trip out of the year...

A million pages...

Happy New Year to all those who visit this little blog...

Did my annual check of the statistics for GEOGRAPHYPAGES, which is now entering its 10th year online, and in 2009 it served almost exactly ONE MILLION page views, and well over 500 000 visitors...

See you all in 2010...

Animoto

Had a renewal reminder about my ANIMOTO account today.

This gave me a little nudge to check the figures for the ANIMOTO for the GA Manifesto "a different view", which has now been available for 8 months. It's had over 2000 views, which is encouraging...