It was good to see the impact that I'd had through my involvement in quite a few of these projects. Search on the blog using the names of any of these projects and you'll see any relevant posts about them.
GeoCapabilities - worked on the website, and teaching materials for almost two years, working with the Institute of Education, and also presenting at events in Europe as well as attending project meetings, and developing social media input
I-USE - helped to develop this project, and worked on it for over a year before I returned to teaching, and Ian Palot / John Lyon took over on behalf of the GA - involved in presentations at GA Conference, and project meetings around Europe, plus working on educational materials and developing social media input
Making Geography Happen was led by Ruth Totterdell, and took place during my time working at the GA. I helped with some of the meetings, filming participants and other inputs as the website developed
E-Scape - this was an innovative pilot for a method of assessing coursework using the 'comparative pairs' technique which has now been picked up by No More Marking and Daisy Christodoulou, but we were doing this back in 2007, along with Goldsmith's College.
Living Geography - with a focus on my home town of Rotherham, I was involved in meetings with the participants, in fact one of my very first acts as a GA member was to meet with Dean Hughes of RIDO, which helped local businesses to develop. This was a steep learning curve for me. I even developed a workaround to do drag and drop exercises in Google Earth which I still haven't seen anywhere else... It may also have inspired the name of this blog...
Young People's Geographies - this was an important project for me, and I spent 5 years involved with it. It was where I was introduced to some key people who would inform my practice and enrich my geographical understanding. At the first project meeting, as a teacher, I met Dan Raven Ellison, and also Ian Cook of Follow the Things (before that had been developed), and was also pushed by Mary Biddulph and Roger Firth to reevaluate what I was teaching. We had sessions from Gill Valentine and other influential geographers.
As a GA employee, I also had copies of the raw recordings that were made of the sessions, particularly the final meeting, and there is footage of me explaining our school project, with the students taking the lead rather than me which was good to see.
I took over the Solly St. liaison and organised several whole day gatherings of the teachers in the next phase of the project, and also met with the project evaluator Ruth Davidson, who was supportive but probing in her assessment of the project's impacts.
The Action Plan for Geography - 2006-11
I will always be proud to have been a member of the APG team for three years. I got the chance to work with some fine people at both Solly St. and the RGS-IBG. The legacy of the APG continues, with our work on 'a different view' and the other projects it funded....
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