PC Geographies - a new resource launched at the GA eConference 2020

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For the last month on and off, I've been working on something around a thought that occurred to me when I saw some tweets a month ago, about the impact of Coronavirus on some of the topics that we have traditionally taught in Geography for many years. I started to throw all the links that I was coming across on my social media feeds into a document, and this has built to the current format, which runs to just over 50 pages long. It's not a unit for teaching about Coronavirus, as I'm not sure that would be a good idea for a while yet. It's more a range of ideas for what might feed into future curriculum planning.

It was prompted by Paul Ganderton and Helen Young in the first instance.

Paul can be followed on Twitter @ecogeog.

Helen is also known as Geography Geek of course.

I stopped adding elements to it, included a proper contents page and made it into version 1.0 yesterday, and it's available further down the blog post.

The link will be shared at the GA Teachmeet on Friday night to (apparently) over 500 teachers who've signed up to take part.

 A few other pieces came in since then though, and I wanted to mention them here - this is just 2 days worth of possible additional GEOGRAPHICALLY RELATED stories that may influence your curriculum making.

A piece by Madeleine Albright which returns to her previous points about Geography being particularly important.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/opinion/madeleine-albright-coronavirus.html

As I mention in the piece, the CBD may never recover from the coronavirus.
We've seen in the last day that several stores have gone into administration, including 'Oasis' and 'Warehouse'.

Amazon meanwhile is benefitting (although in France, they are not allowed to deliver anything other than essential items)
The High Street may not recover from this setback and we may end up with Amazon and similar online retailers growing their monopoly.

Working from home may become more common. People will have their online setups and learn new skills and perhaps realise that they are spending thousands of pounds on vehicles, fuel and season tickets for trains.
This may also lead to changes in the workforce as those who can afford to will perhaps take the decision not to return to work and take pensions slightly early - causing a shift in the demographics of the workforce (think of the tens of thousands of young people who now work for Tesco and other supermarkets...)

London's streets have emptied.

The Asian Development Bank has increased its work in this area as well. A friend works for them in Manila and sent the link.

We're also seeing the first results of the CityLab call for Lockdown Maps. Interesting ideas here.

And the Clean Clothes Campaign have published a report on Garment Worker exploitation in Japan.


Caiti Walter weighed in with a fine additional resource that she had produced:

Please do share this worksheet with your students - it accompanies the stellar @BBCSounds programme found here: https://t.co/ept5peyawK - @MASieghart explores the impact of Covid-19 on globalisation & the global economy with her guests #geographyteacher https://t.co/OwTM1KUlDU pic.twitter.com/MzalnpmdLU — Caiti Walter 🌍 (@EduCaiti) April 14, 2020

I'll be adding these in to version 2 of the document in due course.
The document can be downloaded from Scribd and viewed here.
Also available on Google Drive. Message me for the link.



And to finish, another story of change via David Alcock which provides some excellent data and visualisations.


 This is an RSA YouGov survey which suggests people don't want to go back 'to normal' and have seen some benefits of the lockdown.
Some key results:

51% say they have noticed cleaner air, and 27% more wildlife, since the lockdown began
Social bonds are stronger, with 40% feeling a stronger sense of local community and 39% more in touch with friends and family
42% say the outbreak has made them value food more, and one in ten have shared something like food or shopping with a neighbour for the first time
More than 19 million of us (38%) say they are cooking more from scratch and 17 million are throwing away less food (33%). 6%, or 3 million people, have tried a veg box scheme or ordered food from a local farm for the very first time
But although 9% feel fitter and 27% are getting more exercise, more people (36%) say they are getting less exercise than before.

A cross-disciplinary list of links and resources can be found here.

And remember that the bigger challenge is to come: the Climate crisis.

The age of stability is over.

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