Primary Geography article

I have an article in the most recent issue of Primary Geography journal.


Steve Rawlinson asked me to write about digital connections, and ideas from my current school.


Thanks to colleagues including Martin Bramley and Richard Whymark for their thoughts, which were included in the final piece.
It can be downloaded by subscribers, and physical copies are on their way too.


You can add a subscription to your membership easily too.

New NING mobile interface

Back in June 2007, I started the Edexcel 'A' level NING - the first subject specific support network using what was then a new platform in the UK.
I also started a range of other NINGs and other geography colleagues filled in the gaps to provide support for most specifications. I also added this social media support to the Geographical Association when I joined them in 2008.
The Edexcel NING is creeping towards a membership of 4000 - a remarkable figure...

A new MOBILE INTERFACE has now been added, so that the NINGs are easier to read on mobile devices. I set up the Edexcel 'A' level NING interface earlier today.

Preparing for the Future: BETT Presentation

Dan Sutch of Futurelab presented the session below at BETT09.

PreparingfortheFutureBett09

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: bett09 bett)

The particularly important sections for me are slides 23 to 27 which look at teacher CPD and networking.

Well worth reviewing and also visiting the sites that are mentioned in the presentation. Thanks to Dan for sharing.

NINGS: help with getting them unblocked....

We are aware that some schools are having a problem with having NING sites blocked, which means that networking is having to be done in the teachers' own time.
For that reason, we have produced a letter which can be downloaded from the main GA network site.
This can be used when approaching those responsible for local authority filtering policies to encourage them to remove the block on school use. Please also tell us of success stories where you have been able to change the policy, so that we can highlight this to other teachers.
Here is the text of the letter, which is available as a PDF from the link above....

Information re: Geographical Association and Geography Champion NING Network sites

The Geographical Association exists to “further the teaching and learning of geography”. One important aspect of this work is encouraging teachers to form networks: whether local or regional, and to engage with national opportunities. This represents one aspect of CPD, and encourages the development of a community of practice.

As part of the Action Plan for Geography, a government funded initiative which has invested in school geography and spawned a wide range of projects, the Geographical Association has created a number of online networks to offer an additional level of support for geography teachers.

We have created a new online “virtual professional network”, which makes use of a web platform called a NING. This is also used by some people for what is known as “social networking”. In many local authorities, these sites are categorised as being in the BLOCKED category along with blogs, e-Bay, Forums and gaming sites.

We would like you to unblock these sites for use by teachers in schools which are involved with the Geographical Association networks. This is not a blanket relaxing of the filtering which obviously has its purpose, but hopefully a recognition that these sites are not ‘chat rooms’ for teachers, but form an important part of their professional development and provide mutual support at a time of major curriculum change.

The networking sites that have been created have the following URLs:

http://geographical.ning.com – the Geographical Association’s network

http://geographychampions.ning.com – the Primary Geography Champions’ network

http://geographynqt.ning.com – the network for NQTs and PGCE Geographers

We would be grateful if you would consider making these sites available to schools that contact you with this request. If you would like any further information, please feel free to contact Alan Parkinson at the GA by phone: 01142960088 or e-mail: aparkinson@geography.org.uk

Signed

Professor David Lambert

Chief Executive, Geographical Association

Teachers should be able to use the NINGS for professional networking and CPD.

"The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers."
Michael Barber