Language of Landscape Survey - prize draw

The Ordnance Survey Free Maps for 11 Year Olds are arriving in schools - you may already have had yours...

When you get the maps, you will also find a couple of (much sought after) hard copies of a publication called "The Language of Landscape"

The booklet is supported by a series of downloads from the NATURAL ENGLAND website.

I have created a SURVEY MONKEY SURVEY for those who have got their maps, and have also made use of the "Language of Landscape" to help students use the maps: whether inside or outside the classroom (or ideally both...)

Click Here to take survey

If you have used the maps and the book, please fill in the survey.

All completed questionnaires by 1st of December will be entered into a Prize Draw to win a copy of the KS3 Teachers Toolkit title: "Look at it this Way", a copy of the Geography Collective's "Journey Journal" and a few other geographical goodies....

Journey Journal

Spent some time yesterday with Dan Ellison pinging e-mails backwards and forwards with the rather wonderful designers at Can of Worms putting the final touches to the Journey Journal before it went off to the presses for the first print run of 3000 books.

Journey Journal is a rather wonderful book for upper secondary / lower secondary age pupils.

It is designed to be used when on a "journey" of some kind, perhaps as one of the millions of days which are taken as authorised absences every year, or maybe on a foreign exchange / activity / cultural trip.

It's a quirky and creative way of recording the visit, and encouraging young people to take notice of their surroundings.

Coming soon to an educational establishment near you.

Get in touch via the GEOGRAPHY COLLECTIVE website for more details of how to order....

Game without frontiers...

This game has had some great reviews, and also gone down well with my Twitter network...

Saw it at a very good price earlier while doing the weekend shop, so took the plunge, and my daughter and I have been playing it for most of today...

It's great fun, and lots of chance to do some lateral thinking...

Get scribbling...

McDonalds in France

Cultural globalisation is one theme which has been introduced into a

This BBC NEWS article has a useful discussion on the French relationship with McDonalds...

Up

My son can't wait to see the latest Pixar film: UP, which has been a long time coming.

The plot involves a balloon salesman who ties balloons to his house and sets off on a journey.

There is also a young companion called Russell who makes a lot of having a GPS device so that they will never be lost, although he then loses it...

Culture and Hazards

Over to King Edward VI 5 Ways school in SW Birmingham today. A cross-country trip with more amazing weather thanks to the current high pressure.

Took a tour through the southern suburbs of Birmingham thanks to my Garmin which came into its own here.

Thanks to Bob Lang and Paula Cooper for the invitation and for hosting us all so well, and giving me a guided tour of the department and the school.

The school is certainly a geographical "hub". It's a Humanities school with a 'Geography' specialism, a GA branch, and the centre of an RGS local network. The teaching staff include several Chartered Geographers, and the school also holds a GA Secondary Geography Quality Mark and is a Centre of Excellence.

Met up with Professor Iain Stewart from Plymouth University, and a PhD student of his: Kate Donovan, who were delivering a lecture on the theme of geological hazards and their cultural references.

Iain is an honorary Vice President of the GA, and also a Primary Geography Champion.

Image: thanks to Ian Dixson

Left to right: me, Bob Lang, Iain Stewart, Paula Cooper, Kate Donovan

The lecture was excellent, and drew a crowd of between 300 and 350 people to the school's hall. Also good to meet up with colleagues new and old and virtual....

I will be writing a separate report on the lecture with my notes, and also sharing Iain's slides, which he is keen to do...

An excellent evening...

Stuffed and Starved

Stuffed and Starved

Just read most of this yesterday on a train journey back from London, and it's a great book for those teaching about issues related to food.

The supporting website has a range of resources which would be useful for those wanting additional reference material, including useful related YouTube clips.

On the Amazon.co.uk website you can currently "Look inside" the book...

Also lots of mentions of the word geography, which is always a bonus :)

Social Inequality

Image by Alan Parkinson, and available under Creative Commons license

A conference for level 3 students of Geography, Humanities, Sociology and Health Studies.

Organised by Carl Lee, and took place at the University of Sheffield.

Danny Dorling and colleagues John Pritchard and Dan Vickers from SASI were present, and presented on the issue of Social Inequality, using images from WORLDMAPPER and talking about their work.

The second session involved a discussion on tackling inquality.

Thanks to Carl for the invitation. Carl has added a range of the resources that were used at the event to the EDEXCEL 'A' LEVEL NING. It is also worth hunting out a copy of Carl's excellent book on Sheffield: "Home: a Personal Geography of Sheffield"

The SASI website features a range of very useful links for those interested in teaching and learning about social inequality.

Some notes that I took in the first part of the day will hopefully be added in due course...

Incantations

Wow..

Remember seeing this at the time, over 30 years ago...

Facebook Profile Template

Check out the great new resources from Tony Cassidy

The resources take the shape of a template to produce a FACEBOOK-style "profile"

The profile could be for a culture, company, musical or literature genre etc...

The template is here:

What if they had a Facebook profile?

View more presentations from TonyCassidy.

And followed shortly after by a TWITTER template, also produced by the inimitable Tony...

Twitter Starter Template

View more presentations from TonyCassidy.

Quality stuff...

UPDATE: Here is some fantastic work by Year 9 students from Seaford Head Community College, who used the idea in their Geography lessons with Miss Smith. I love these. Thanks for sharing. I'd love to see some other examples...

Facebook and Twitter Profiles

View more presentations from Liz Smith.

Latest Shift Happens update

Latest Shift Happens update



Because it fills 5 minutes of any CPD session...

Jonathan Meades on Sustainability

Have blogged about Jonathan Meades before, and his particular presentation style which I like...

Lunchtime today was spent in the company of the first in the series "Off-Kilter", made for BBC Scotland and was about Aberdeen. I liked the look of the area known as Fitty.
Towards the end, he moved on to Donald Trump and his controversial plans for a golf course in the sand dunes close to Aberdeen.

He called the planned development "New Trumpton on Sea" and talked about gated communities and their absentee residents.

He riffed on the idea of 'sustainability' and how every architect and development trumpeted its sustainable credentials.
New words like : "Sustain-abulous" and "Sustain-astic" !

Called it "architectural correctness"...

"It's a slogan of conformist unoriginality..."

"The very act of making a building is energy hungry and vastly wasteful even if the building is an eco-igloo of Fairtrade otter droppings, carbon-neutral Panda scraps, ethical vegan meat, organic yoghurt blocks, recycled slurry and and bio-degradable avocado face wipe...the only truly sustainable present is one in which we do not build..."

The show is available on iPLAYER.

Postcards of the Future

Thanks to Paul Cornish on SLN for the tip off to this great Flash movie of Postcards of the Future.
Click the image below to see the movie (SWF format)If you need a blank postcard template (they work well printed on card), you can borrow mine from here.

Postcard Template

View more presentations from GeoBlogs.

Great work by Patrick Blower at Live Draw - check it out here.

Two more relevant ones in the archive:
Geo Engineering saves the World, and Ecotown

New GA website now live....

The GA web team: Anne Greaves and Ben Major, have been working away for months with designers Ledgard Jepson on a new website for the Geographical Association, and it is now live, after several weeks of beta testing and tweaking. Visit the GA URL http://www.geography.org.uk to see the new site.

The site looks a lot brighter, clearer and easier to navigate, and uses more of the screen’s width. Thanks to a major effort on tagging the resources, it is also easier to find things using the ‘Search’ function if they are not immediately obvious from the home page, and a new ‘Resource Finder’ should help you find something appropriate to the key stage and topic that you are interested in quickly, or items written by a particular author.

A one page user guide to the new site and how it’s laid out can be downloaded by following the link (PDF download): http://www.geography.org.uk/download/GA_NewWebsiteGuide.pdf

Members can also bookmark their most useful sections of the website on their own personal homepage. Logging in to the site will provide members with details about their account, and allow access to the journals which you subscribe to.

There are plenty of new items in the shop, which are displayed in a scrolling window, which will also suggest items that might be of relevance to you if you login.

News is easier to find, and has all been updated.

If you are not already a GA member, this is a good time to join and take advantage of the many membership benefits.

The website is also home to all the resources supporting the GA’s manifesto for school geography “a different view”.

Download the latest GA MAGAZINE from the site now