Thunks for free

A few hours left to get this book free on Kindle at Amazon or iTunes...

Oops....

Blitzed through half of this last night...
Some nice insights and quotes. The editorial 'hand' of Ian Gilbert is fairly obvious...
Plenty that I can use here...

Why do I need parents when I've got Google ?

...to paraphrase the title of Ian Gilbert's book...
(which is well worth reading by the way)

Some research from Birmingham Science City has suggested that students now look to Google first for the answers to questions they might have

The majority (54%) of six to 15 year olds admit Google is their first point of call when they have a question, with just 3% asking their teacher when they are in need of an answer. While nearly one in ten (9%) say they would never go to their teacher if they had a question, reveals new research from Birmingham Science City.

Parents also found themselves in second place to Google with just over one quarter (26%) of children saying they would ask their parents first if they had a query. In fact, more than one third (34%) of children do not think their parents could do their homework and more than one in ten (14%) do not think their parents are intelligent.

The research also revealed that a quarter of children do not know what an encyclopaedia is, with one in ten thinking it is something you cook with, travel on, use to catch a ball or to perform an operation.

Thanks to Ollie Bray for a tweet which led me to the report...

Ian Gilbert

Was invited by Dale Banham to go to Belstead House, Ipswich yesterday...

This came out of my visit to speak at the Suffolk Geography conference last year, and also 

The day was called 'Engaging Geography', and was led by Ian Gilbert from Independent Thinking.

Ian is also the author of THUNKS: http://www.thunks.co.uk/

He is also behind the idea of  '8 WAY THINKING'.

Check out the GA Conference resources page for Lecture Plus 8 by Steve Rawlinson which develops this idea in the context of fieldwork.

Also a few downloads from the Independent Thinking website are worth using, such as an excellent PDF which summarises 8 way thinking in the context of the Around Deeply project.

The whole point of the day was to explore strategies for getting the brain working and engaging pupils as a result...

This was a thoroughly enjoyable day with a good lunch as well.

Many thanks to Tom, Dale and others involved in organising the day.