Michael Gove opened the BETT show this year...
He had a few words for geographers in his speech:
"Technology can be integrated and embedded across the whole curriculum. In geography lessons, for example, pupils could access the specialised software and tools used by professional geographers, allowing them to tackle more challenging and interesting work..."
Which begs the question as to what these specialised software and tools are, and also to challenge the suggestion that there isn't "challenging and interesting work" going on already by geography teachers and students.
He had a few words for geographers in his speech:
"Technology can be integrated and embedded across the whole curriculum. In geography lessons, for example, pupils could access the specialised software and tools used by professional geographers, allowing them to tackle more challenging and interesting work..."
Which begs the question as to what these specialised software and tools are, and also to challenge the suggestion that there isn't "challenging and interesting work" going on already by geography teachers and students.
As I mentioned in the previous blog post, I spent 2 days at the BETT show this year.
This post will talk about some of the stalls that I visited which were of a geographical nature, and could perhaps offer some of the tools that were mentioned....
Ordnance Survey were at the stand, and were joined this year by colleagues from Edina and Digimap for Schools: a subscription-based service which allows all staff and students at a school to access maps at a number of scales for the whole of the UK.
I have been working on an education pack of materials for Digimap for Schools. This will be available shortly.
ESRI UK has also been at the show for many years. This time round they were giving away very useful books with maps and data that could be used with school students, and also demonstrating the latest tools that were added to the free ArcGIS Explorer Online tool.
I am continuing to run the ESRI / GA GIS courses at locations around the country. The next one will be in London on the 26th of January.
Stratalogica: produced by Herff Jones, who are based in Chicago.
I visited the stand near the end of Friday and had a good chat with Don. I'd been put in touch with Stratalogica by Eylan Ezekiel, and have been exploring the tool. My current writing commitments mean that I have not had as much time as I want to explore the mapping tool, that is built around the Google API. This has a great deal of potential, and I shall get back to it in a month or so, when my current book projects are finished for the time being.
It was good to hear from Don that he had been invited to present on the Google stand at BETT.
Thanks to Don for the chat on the stand, and also for the spare beer voucher at the Teachmeet, which I made good use of. Thanks also for the invitation to the BETT Awards dinner, which I was sadly unable to take up due to the timing.
You can request a 14 day free trial of Stratalogica....
The Twig folks had a great stand up next to the Gallery Bar, where the two halls meet. They were also showing a series of Digital content which had won them the "best secondary digital content". As it happens they have lots of new GEOGRAPHY content, and I wrote the teaching materials to support the films (and it was a bit of a project too !!)
I had a quick look at some of the larger stands too, but didn't see anything particularly new.
More on Teachmeet at BETT in the next blogpost...
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