Learning Space

Phil Wood at Leicester University has created a very useful LEARNING SPACE online.
This is in association with his work with PGCE Geographers at the University.

A recent addition is a section of resources on Afghanistan, produced by the PGCE cohort.

Thanks to Max Rayner, who was one of the people involved in working on the Afghan Action resources for the tip-off to the site via his blog.

A great adventure about to start

...and you can sign up to follow it from the start on Twitter...

Last year, I followed people who were cycling through the North and South Americas, and walking around the coast of the UK, along with various other adventurers enjoying their time in Iceland, USA, South America and other parts of the globe.
Vicarious pleasure...

The next great adventure will be Sarah Outen's London2London: via the World

This will take Sarah from London to London. As Sarah says on her website:

Leaving from Tower Bridge, London in my kayak on April 1st 2011, I shall set out to row, cycle and kayak right around the world, finding stories as I go. Although I shall be travelling solo again, this is to be a shared adventure – bringing the expedition to classrooms, offices and homes right around the world.

I have a great team working with me to  plan routes and logistics, and to help me train for the different phases of this 2.5 year project which will  include cycling across Europe, Asia, America and Canada and rowing the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. It promises to be epic and exciting.

Follow Sarah on Twitter @SarahOuten

Just imagine - if you start following Sarah with your Year 7 geographers when she leaves on the 1st of April, you can bring her home as they start their Year 10 courses... and see a lot of the world in between...
Best wishes to Sarah. I'll try and highlight some of the geographical aspects of the journey, as I did with Mark Beaumont's round the world cycle adventure...

International Women's Day

8th March is International Women's Day

Census 2011

My form arrived today...

Will make a useful resource.
Why does it contain the questions that it does ?


What will be done with the information that is collected ?

Are you typical ?

I'm not....

The National Geographic has been exploring the world of the typical person.




The video ends with an important point, which relates directly to something I was working on this morning: that individual choices make a lot of difference when you multiply them by 7 billion !

Great review for the new Mission Explore books...

From explorer Benedict Allen...

“This young explorers’ kit is endlessly adventurous – a journey in itself. An utter delight – full of surprises and things to make you look at the world afresh."

The books will be published on the 1st of April

National Pie Week - making a Geography Pie...

It's British Pie Week. We have a "Pie Society" at the school where I taught, and visit locations around the SE (and further afield) in search of good pies...

If Geography was a pie what would its filling be made of ??

For more on the analogy of cooking and geography (curriculum making), you can revisit my article, that was contained in Tim Handley's PGCE guide.

So, to make my Geography pie I'm going to start by chopping one red onion finely...

Chop One Red Onion Finely


What are the other ingredients that I should add ??

The Great Storm of 1987 on BBC 6 o' clock News

One for those comparing past events with present ones...
As well as the way that news bulletins have changed

Wonders of the World

I asked my Twitter followers to suggest/nominate a natural and a man-made "Wonder of the World" that (importantly) they had seen themselves... and to add the hashtag #nqtgeog11

Here are the results:

Natural Wonders
Colca Canyon, Peru
Solheimajokull Glacier, Iceland
Here's a picture of me on that very glacier in 2010:

Jostedalsbreen, Norway
Cheddar Gorge
Tropical Rainforests
Yosemite Valley
The Cuillin Ridge, Skye
Here's one of my images of a section of the said ridge:

The Cenotes of the Chicxulub meteor impact in Mexico
Cwm Idwal
Landmannalaugar region of Iceland
Valle de Mai, Praslin, Seychelles - home of the Coco de Mer
Fingal's Cave
Bryce Canyon, Utah
The Alps
Grand Canyon

Man Made Wonders
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
Here are some pictures that I took when I visited....



Petra, Jordan (2 votes)
Great Wall of China
Serapeum, Temple of the Bulls near Cairo
The CERN Large Hadron Collider
Sydney Harbour Bridge (3 votes)
The London Sewers
The Emirates Stadium
Shah Mosque, Esfahan
St Pancras Station
Eden Project, Cornwall
Jamaa el Fna, Marrakech as the sun sets...
The Burj Khalifa - just been reading about the At the Top attraction and browsing pictures taken from the top - incredible...

My own choice is probably
Natural: Prekestolen or Pulpit Rock in Rogaland, Norway, which I visited in 1984 and have never forgotten...
I had a dodgy camera at the time, so didn't get any decent pictures. Here's one from TrekEarth, which is used with thanks to Kris Verhoeven

Man-made: The Blue Lagoon 

Here's one of my images:

Which amazing places do you 'visit' with your students ?

Not just Geography - blogs

It was great to meet the NQT group at the first of our GA NQT events last week, down in London.

One of them, Becky Pook, has taken the plunge into blogging at Not Just Geography

Reflective teacher blogs are a really valuable source of support for other colleagues, and also for the authors. I always found it helpful to write about what I'm doing, and I still do...

As I was drafting this post, another new colleague posted about his blog: check out Max Rayner's PGCE progress here.

If you know another blog that I've missed out, please let me know...

Urban News for a Sunday morning...

There were 3 or 4 "urban-related" tweets in my overnight feed that I caught up with earlier 'today' while having my breakfast...
Part of my daily routine now is to look at what has happened while I slept, and e-mail any interesting tweets to my e-mail account, so that I have a record of the links, and can follow them up when I have a moment...

This weekend, there has been an urban theme to many of the updates. Several of them were from the excellent @urbanphoto_blog stream... You need to follow them if you don't already.

One led me to the Twisted Sifter blog, from which I got this remarkable image, which apparently shows the suburbs of Mexico City marching into the distance, irrespective of topography.

The images were from Pablo Lopez Luz

I haven't explored the site further, but it seems to have a range of interesting images and other content.
The second site, which was equally arresting is a description of the development of a new (or perhaps not so new it seems) 'city' stretching out into the Caspian Sea from Baku, and called Oily Rocks.

The Liquid Infrastructure blog has the story and more amazing pictures of this complex structure.

Next was the news of a fire in the Garib Nagar slum in Mumbai. One of the houses affected was the home of an actress who featured in the film "Slumdog Millionaire". Of course there were thousands of other people affected too...
This was followed up by another newspaper article on the slums of Mumbai, and plans to bulldoze Dharavi. One to extend into the idea of local politics and ownership of land...

This was followed by a tip-off from Bob Digby to an article on the increased threat that coastal settlements in the UK are likely to face
A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation relates to the idea of Social Justice, and looks at the impact on disadvantaged UK coastal communities.
Click HERE to download the report as a 1.4 Mb PDF file

The possible impacts on East Anglia (as featured in the report) are summarised below...

•  Weakening and collapse of cliffs due to desiccation as a result of higher summer temperatures and lower precipitation; also cliff destabilisation as a result of decreasing vegetation cover.
•  Weakening and collapse of cliffs due to increased precipitation in winter, which causes more water to penetrate into desiccated cracks.
•  Higher rates of coastal erosion from higher sea levels, more frequent storm surges and weakened cliffs.
•  High erosion will cause enhanced rates of longshore drift which may pose threats to the major ports of Great Yarmouth, Felixstowe and Harwich.

And finally, was an article by Rick Poynor on the book "Edgelands", which I am reading via Kindle app at the moment, along with some images of these peripheral areas.

So basically, Twitter - thanks to the Flipbook app - has replaced the need for me to buy a Sunday newspaper...

Joe Kerski video...

A new (to me) video put together by Joe Kerski, who is the President of the National Council for Geographic Education for 2011...



Hoping to make some more connections with NCGE during 2011...

Pylons...

There are plans for more pylons in East Anglia to connect proposed power stations to the National Grid to improve infrastructure.

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has been opposing these developments in some areas of Norfolk.
My local paper has some more on this issue...
It costs 10 times as much to place cables underground as it does to put it over ground.

Check the plans and have your say here.

And don't forget you can also join the Pylon Appreciation Society

The Education Show

I'll be over at the NEC in Birmingham on the 17th of March, for the opening day of The Education Show
Will be with my colleague Ruth Totterdell manning the GA stand and also having a good look around.

We'll be on Stand P30A in the Hall, and the GA will be there for the whole show...

Come along and say hello if you're going...

One pity is that I'll miss seeing Dan Raven Ellison and Ollie Bray, who are doing seminars on the 18th...

NQT Conference: London

Spent Thursday working with twenty talented NQT colleagues from the South East and a few places slightly further North on what makes an effective geography teacher. There was a huge mix of experiences, and school contexts.

Many thanks for all the wonderful contributions that were made on the day. I hope you felt you had plenty of time to chat with other delegates both before the day, at lunchtime - I'd never heard of that fish they served us before, so presume it was a more sustainable species - and during the sessions. A reminder that if there is anything you would like to share that has grown out of the day please let me know, or add it to the NINGs in the NQT group. Let me know if you're not sure how to do that...

"Professional generosity" would be an appropriate phrase for one important aspect of these days. We will be 'carrying on the conversation' in Coventry next week with more colleagues.

A reminder that there are various places where you can obtain further information from the day, which include the blogs in the blog-roll further down the right hand side of the page, and I'd be happy to see what comes out of your further developments...

Earth Hour

Earth Hour is coming up...

It's on the 26th of March at 8.30 pm....

You need to turn the lights out for an hour.. and do something in the dark...

Caged play...

New video from Dan Ellison to support the Love Outdoor Play campaign and the work of Mission : Explore

Exercise Watermark

Have blogged about this major exercise several times. It's underway, and there are lots of local events...

There's an exercise locally on the 8th of March at 10am in King's Lynn, where they are going to be testing the flood defences, and closing various gates.
If I get the chance I'll go along and take some photos.

Download a guide for your home here.

New laptop...

After nearly two months without a laptop I finally got one sorted on Thursday en route home from the NQT conference that I will blog about shortly...
It's an HP ProBook 4525s, which has a reasonable spec, Windows 7 Professional, Office 2010, good graphics and screen, and a DVD burner with LightScribe, gestures on the touch-pad, various useful ports and face recognition login...
Most important of all though, it looks like it was made from a 1970s sideboard :)

Coming soon to a CPD session near you :)

Thanet Earth

Blogged a while back about THANET EARTH
This is a huge project in Kent which has now opened, and is providing various salad crops to the UK market and beyond.
The latest news can be read on the website, or by signing up to follow the twitter feed @thanetearth


I'd quite like to have a look around as I'm sure there's potential to make use of it as a great educational resource, but I understand that there are no visitors allowed. There are talks offered in the local area, which have apparently proved very popular...

Would be good to have a comparison with the Spanish areas where greenhouses cover the landscape, in Almeria.

Coincidentally, the folks from @NTUGeography: Nottingham Trent University's School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Science are in Spain at the moment, and have been sending updates and Twitpics from their travel.

They spent today in Almeria looking at a range of landscapes, including the greenhouses or invernadaros of the area around the Campo de Nijar, and the Campo de Dalias.

Dream School 2

Thanks to Bob Digby for the tip-off to this article in today's Guardian...

Some excellent points made about the wisdom of recruiting people who aren't teachers, and the old assumptions that people have about teaching... As one comment on the TES article about the show reminded me:

Remind yourself of what Conservative MP Nick Gibb, the 'schools minister', said within days of taking office: "I would rather have......graduate from Oxbridge without a PGCE teaching in a school than a.........graduate from one of the rubbish universities with a PGCE."

Teaching requires huge amounts of energy. I was amused to hear the story of historian David Starkey, who went the route of discipline and ended up verbally abusing the students.
It's a TV show, so we need to remember the editing and choice of what is shown in the programme(s) but it's perhaps more evidence that qualified teachers need ongoing support and CPD to help them become even more effective teachers... Developing strategies to deal with the endless scenarios one faces in the average teaching day takes time...

Sketch-a-Map

A nice mapping tool produced by / for the ESRI Education community , which offers a range of base maps, and tools to draw on top of the base map to create a personal map. I liked the text tool, which allows labels to be placed by clicking on the map.

 The finished map can then be saved or printed.
Another option for map creation.

Try it out

Your Dream School ?

I didn't watch Jamie Oliver's 'Dream School' earlier in the week, I already have high blood pressure... (only joking)
Back in 2005, the Monster Raving Loony Party produced their "Manicfesto"...
It included the following statement....


"In the interests of fair education policy, under a loony government all children will automatically be given full marks in their exams.

Bright pupils will be provided with dimmer switches to prevent them distracting the rest of the class. 
SAT’s tests will be abolished and replaced by Gordon Ramsey style cookery lessons and Rolf Harris art classes."


So that last plan at least has come to pass...

Transport is cool..

Thanks to @geoparadigm for the tip-off to a rather lovely data visualisation.
The data comes from the French city of Rennes.

un lundi à Rennes from isokron on Vimeo.

Posted on the ISOKRON blog

Beautiful stuff for a sunny Friday afternoon !

AA Gill on Norfolk residents...

Have had a range of posts on the way that people view places...

This story emerged yesterday in the local papers, and related to my old "local" (in as much as I had one) in Snettisham, where I lived for 11 years.
One of the village pubs: the Rose and Crown was visited by critic A.A Gill, and he didn't enjoy the experience very much.
He also had some robust words to say about people from Norfolk, which hasn't gone down well with the village residents.
He referred to Norfolk as "the hernia on the end of England", and Norfolk people as "weird, web-footed, dribbling, six-fingered, sister sh******"

He also called the landscape "flat, fertile damp and dank"

Sun columnist Kelvin Mackenzie also apparently  had a go at another nearby restaurant at Norfolk Lavender, saying that it should be avoided under all circumstances "even starvation"

Palma time-lapse

Via @urbantick

Not a new video, but a nice one with cool music...
24 hours in the life of a city..
What do 24 hours in the life of your town or city look like / sound like ?

Palma de Mallorca's Bay, a 24 hour Timelapse from Franklin Tello on Vimeo.

Rise up Christchurch

You can follow the stories and recovery of Christchurch by following / 'liking' the Facebook page: RISE UP CHRISTCHURCH, as over 90 000 have already done...

Just in the last few hours there has been a range of stories and other useful materials.
Plenty of opportunity to collect real stories. Students with Facebook accounts (and of an age when that is appropriate) might be asked to keep an eye on the progress here over the next few months and collect examples of mid to long-term impacts of the earthquake and the community response and resilience. This would then fit nicely into a framework such as the one that was produced by Jo Blackmore, which formed part of the delegate pack at yesterday's NQT event.

Rise up Christchurch !

New GA Entry Level Membership

You now have an extra opportunity to support the work of the Geographical Association through our new Entry Level Membership

The GA's new Entry Level Membership has been designed to offer a taster of the benefits provided by full GA membership. It's also an ideal top-up for geography teachers in schools with an existing GA Group Membership.

For just £15 a year Entry Level Membership will give you:

Print and online copies of GA Magazine three times a year - browse a free sample issue on the GA website.
Members-only teaching resources.
Discount vouchers from a great range of third-party suppliers including Thermos, Paramo and National Geographic.
A personal homepage on the GA website.
A fantastic photo gallery.
Evidence of your commitment to your profession.
Membership of your professional community.

Join online, download a membership form or call 0114 296 0088.

Looking for more membership benefits to support your professional development?

Then have a look at the GA's range of other membership options, starting from £29.50 a year, which provide all of the above plus:

One or more of the GA's journals in print and online three time a year. View free sample journals on the GA's website.
Discounts in the GA Shop.
Discounts on GA CPD events and Annual Conference.

Join online, download a membership form or call 0114 296 0088.  

Views of the World

London Calling is the latest in an excellent series of posts on the Views of the World blog.
It describes some mapping and other analysis of data which has been carried out using data on London. This would be particularly valuable for teachers in London, or who use the London area as a focus for teaching and learning.

Thought for the Day

Just preparing for an NQT conference in London tomorrow, and packing a rather large box with resources and other materials for the event.
Came across this quote by Paul Theroux, which I suppose is a challenge to colleagues, as well as a tempting possibility...

"Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing."

I entered the ballot for the RGS-IBG lecture to see Paul Theroux talking about his lifetime of travel later in the year. I remember reading his books around 30 years ago when I travelled by train between home and Huddersfield when doing my degree... Fingers crossed...

Thanks to Fraser Speirs for the tip-off that led me to the quote

Do you have issues ??

Geography curricula tend to focus on 'issues' from time to time, to allow students to demonstrate a range of geographical skills.
They range in scale from local to global, but there is usually a local issue (or more than one) that schools will focus on. This may also relate to particular curriculum topics as well.

What's your local issue(s)
Locally, there has been something that has been attracting a lot of media coverage... The plan was to build an incinerator to burn waste and generate energy. This would reduce the amount going to landfill...
Whenever I go to the GA office in Sheffield, one of the major landmarks at the end of the Parkway is the Veolia incinerator...


As a result of campaigning, a referendum was held amongst people in King's Lynn and West Norfolk to see whether the incinerator project should go ahead.

It was announced yesterday that there was overwhelming support to cancel the incinerator project, and this news is available to read on the BBC NEWS site


What happens next ?
That's the futures element of geography coming in... waste will still be produced every day, so what do we do with it ?

Carl Lee's message from Bangalore

I'm a huge fan of Carl Lee's work, and his video series with Danny Dorling.

The latest addition to the series is a great short film that Carl made when visiting Bangalore recently...

Hungry for more..

Spent some time yesterday thinking about a session I'm doing at the GA Conference on food, particularly on LAND GRABS.
There's also a range of other food links that I've come across in the last few days, and of course food has continued to be in the headlines.

The WEFEEDBACK website has a calculator which will tell you how many children your food choice could potentially feed.

The cost of one Pizza Express Margherita pizza would also feed 20 children...

There's also a range of additional food related stories, including the suggestion that food inflation is faster in the UK than in other EU countries....

Also great news earlier today when I got in touch with John McLaverty of OXFAM UK who is going to be the meat to my two veg (or something like that...) at the GA conference. He's fresh back from a month in Sierra Leone, which we might persuade him to talk about, and also had news of a great new project which Oxfam are launching later in the year on the theme of food.


Come along to our workshop at the GA conference on the 15th of April, and you'll see the latest food related ideas for curriculum and pedagogy... It's going to be tasty...

Cornish pasties... PGI

A story in the paper yesterday about the plans to apply a Protected Geographical Indication status to the great Cornish pasty.

This is the first in what will turn into a series of posts on things that NQT Geographers could usefully be doing to expand their range of available resources and strategies. For all the posts you'll need to head over to one of my other blogs at SUPPORTING GEOGRAPHY TEACHERS....

The first one is to start using Flickr (or some other online photo storage utility such as PICASA WEB ALBUMS.

A free Flickr account can store 200 photos (there are some upload limits) - you can, of course, create more than one free account as long as you have more than one e-mail address...
A PRO account costs about £15 a year, and is well worth it for the fact that you can then upload unlimited photos to storage. My account now has over 5000 images which have been added over a number of years.

There is a useful Flickr app for iPhone and iPad which can be used to upload/view images.
Images can also be attached to e-mails which are sent to a free Googlemail account, but each set of photos would need to be attached to an appropriately named e-mail to allow for searching. This is another free option though.

One advantage of taking photos and storing them is that they might be useful a long time later.
This post features two photos that I took about 4 years ago...

Geographies of food...

One for St David's Day

Thanks to my colleague Paula Owens for sending through a nice link to some useful Welsh resources.
They are from the Design Commission for Wales

I particularly like the My Square Mile resource which fits well with the idea of 'My Place', local fieldwork and explorations of place (click the link to download a PDF)