Mission Explore !!

GeoVation is a project supported by the Ordnance Survey.

The first year (presumably it will be repeated ?) of the project invited individuals, or teams of people to submit a proposal for a project which need financial support, and was based around the idea of mapping and social benefit.

There were 62 Ventures applying via the website and you can see details of them here.

We decided that Mission Explore, a project of the Geography Collective, of which I am a founder member, should apply for a slice of the funding with a project called MISSION : EXPLORE LONDON...

The project involves (possibly younger) members of the public carrying out geographical "missions" which are located within London. More information is available HERE.

There was a shortlisting process, and last week we heard that we had made the shortlist and would therefore be pitching for the prize...

So it was that last Tuesday we made it to the Royal Geographical Society (when I saw we, I don't include me in that, I was in Oxford at the time preparing to do a GA lecture on the 2007 floods)

Dan and the guys obviously did a great job, as we were successful in gaining the second prize. The winning GeoVation venture was MAXIMAP. They produce, as the name suggests, er... a big map...

We now have £7000 to take the ideas for the MISSION EXPLORE iPhone APP and project to the next stage. Plenty more to come on this blog over the next few months....

GA Study Tour to Poland

Fancy doing some personal cultural comparisons between the UK and a new EU country ?

The Geographical Association is organising a Study Tour to Poland for geography teachers in July - August 2010. The trip details are as follows:

Poles to Poles

28 July - 10 August 2010

The GA International Working Group will be leading a north to south journey through Poland from the Baltic to the Tatra Mountains, investigating the impact of EU membership on environment, economy and society.

The programme includes visits to Gdańsk, Toruń, Warsaw, Kraków, Oświęcim and the Tatra Mountains, providing a range of urban and rural environments full of contrasts.

Download: Full Itinerary

With Community Cohesion on every school's agenda and Polish children in our schools the length and breadth of the UK, this trip should be of interest to teachers of all phases, and, with the abundance of budget air services to Polish cities, within the budgets of most teachers.

Costs and Booking

Price: £825 (sharing twin). Single supplement: £295

The price includes all transport in Poland, accommodation (mostly in 3* hotels), breakfast and one main meal per day, plus entrance fees to main venues and geographical visit sites.

Please note that international flights are not included in the cost. Ryanair and Wizz Air operate flights to Gdańsk from Cork, Doncaster, Dublin, Glasgow, Liverpool, Luton and Standsted. Check their websites for further details.

Download: Booking Form

Bursary for new teachers

Two bursaries of up to £200 are available to new teachers within their first five years of teaching. Contact Adam Nichols for further information.

Fair Miles: Oxfam report...

A new report published by Oxfam and IIIED is now available from the Oxfam site.

It is available to purchase, or as a FREE PDF download. (link starts download of the resource)

The report is called FAIR MILES.

I have had a quick look and it is a useful document. Thanks to @primageographer for the tipoff to this resource, which will prove useful for preparation for my GA Conference 2010 workshop on this topic....

Here's a description, taken from the Oxfam website:

Today’s food is well travelled. A pack of green beans in a Northern supermarket may have journeyed 6000 miles, or 60. But while food miles loom large in our carbon-aware times, transporting it counts for less than you might think. And there is a far bigger picture. Food is more than a plateful of emissions.

It’s a social, political and economic issue that involves millions of small farmers in poor countries who export produce to the North. They have built lives and livelihoods around this trade. By buying what they grow, you’ve clocked up ‘fair miles’.

This pocketbook delves into the realities of the produce trade between Africa and the UK, examining both sides of the equation in search of a diet that is ethically, as well as nutritionally, balanced.

Moving to Mars... or is it Sheffield ?

Earlier today heard about this move on the theme of MIGRATION.

It's called MOVING TO MARS...

but the Mars in the title is actually Sheffield...

It was described as being a "very human" story of migration and its impacts.

The movie has a WEBSITE which contains a trailer and a very useful PRESS PACK which gives further details of the families who feature in the movie and what happened to them afterwards...

Looks like it would be a useful resource for exploring the issues surrounding migration and the cultural impacts of re-location / globalisation etc.

Mark Beaumont's Cycling the Americas

Picture by Ollie Bray (I think...): Mark is the one on the right... :)

Mark Beaumont speaking tour.... Starts in March 2010, so let's hope Mark is finished by then... :)

Mark's CYCLING THE AMERICAS blog is here for all the latest on his current challenge, which is going incredibly well. He has summited Denali and Aconcagua, and is now cycling the final leg down to the end of his pan-American adventure. There are some spectacular images and video on the blog.

Mark's website is HERE.

He comes to King's Lynn on the 27th of March 2010

The other dates can be found here:

MARCH
Tues 16th DURHAM Gala Theatre 0191 3324041
Wed 17th CHESTERFIELD The Winding Wheel 01246 345 334
Thur 18th BOLTON Albert Halls 01204 334400
Fri 19th HALIFAX Victoria Theatre 01422 351158
Sat 20th MORECAMBE The Platform 01524 582803
Sun 21st HAYES Beck Theatre 020 8561 8371
Tues 23rd TUNBRIDGE WELLS Assembly Halls 01892 530613
Wed 24th SOUTHSEA The King’s Theatre 02392 828282
Thur 25th TAMWORTH Assembly Rooms 01827 709618
Sat 27th KINGS LYNN Arts Centre 01553 764864
Sun 28th LOWESTOFT Marina Theatre 01502 533200
Tues 30th BARNSTAPLE Queen’s Theatre 01271 324242
Wed 31st EASTBOURNE Congress Hall 01323 412000

APRIL
Tues 20th BUXTON Buxton Opera House 0845 127 2190
Wed 21st BARROW The Forum 01229 82 00 00
Thu 22nd MALVERN Malvern Theatres 01684 892277
Fri 23rd BRECON Theatr Brycheiniog 01874 611622
Sat 24th CARDIGAN Theatr Mwldan 01239 621200
Sun 25th LOUGHBOROUGH Town Hall 01509 231 914
Tues 27th MIDDLESBROUGH Middlesbrough Theatre 01642 81 51 81
Wed 28th WAKEFIELD Theatre Royal 01924 211 311
Fri 30th STIRLING Albert Halls 01786 473544

MAY
Sat 1st ABERDEEN The Lemon Tree 01224 641122
Sun 2nd INVERNESS Eden Court 01463 234234
Tues 4th SOUTH SHIELDS The Customs House 0191 454 1234
Wed 5th LEAMINGTON SPA Royal Spa Centre 01926 334418
Thu 6th EPSOM Epsom Playhouse 01372 742555
Fri 7th TELFORD The Place 01952 382 382
Sat 8th FELIXSTOWE Spa Pavilion 01394 282126
Sun 9th CAMBERLEY Camberley Theatre 01276 707 644
Tues 11th SKEGNESS Embassay Theatre 0845 674 0505
Wed 12th BURNLEY Burnley Mechanics Theatre 01282 664 400
Thur 13th RHYL Pavilion Theatre 01745 33 00 00
Fri 14th DERBY Assembly Rooms 01332 255800
Sat 15th STAFFORD The Gatehouse Theatre 01785 254653
Sun 16th RADLETT The Radlett Centre 01923 859291
Tue 18th HIGH WYCOMBE Wycombe Swan 01494 512 000
Wed 19th WESTON SUPER MARE The Playhouse 01934 645 544

Give GEOrgie a mission...

Georgie is a gorilla on a mission: a MISSION : EXPLORE LONDON mission...

Georgie is going to be in London this Saturday: the 16th of January and wants to carry out some special missions...

For more information see: GEORGIE NEEDS A MISSION on Mission Explore website...

Why not suggest a task for GEORGIE ??

You can send via TWITTER with the tag #GMission or #Gorillamission

If you add a comment here with a mission I'll make sure they get passed on too...

Environmental Game Competition

Web user Magazine Twitter feed led me to a firm which has announced a competition to design an Environmental Game.

The closing date is the 8th of February which doesn't give you much time...

The theme of the game has to include an ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE.

What's useful is that they have made available a couple of documents which can be downloaded in PDF form. They can be used to help design a game structure even after the deadline, and even if the game doesn't actually get made: a STORYBOARD sheet is useful.

This relates to an earlier post on the Nintendo DS IMAGINE TEACHER GAME...

This may be an intriguing context for learners to explore and map out an issue, as gaming is an important part of youth culture...

New GA RSS feed

A bit of an explanation perhaps needed...

GA = the Geographical Association : the subject association for geographers...

RSS = Really Simple Syndication (or other things, such as Rich Site Summary, or "I'm Ready for Some Stories"...)

Basically, if you sign up to the RSS feed from the main GA website, you will get a digest of any changes to the site sent direct to your RSS reader, which might be your Google homepage for example...

The new GA RSS feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/org/kOoa

Below is an excellent COMMONCRAFT explanation of how the process works....

Please update your RSS address if you were already subscribed...

150 years of fish and chips

Image by Alan Parkinson

Fish and chips are a cultural icon of the UK, and have mentioned them several times on this blog.

The Independent today has 150 facts about them to celebrate 150 years of fish and chips.

Pat Metheny

A very brief taster...

Got tickets for the Barbican in February...

Very excited to see how this turns out...

Story of the Noughties

While snowed into my Travelodge yesterday, I caught the second half of this programme and apart from Will Self with a beard, it also featured Danny Dorling talking about the age distribution of the UK, and a whole host of other interesting geographical changes that have happened in the first decade of the century.

Quite a lot on demographics, but also a lot on CULTURAL change in the UK

It's available on iPlayer at the moment, and is worth watching.

Advisory: contains some distressing scenes

Football and culture

Image under Creative Commons license by Flickr user dr_John2005

Football and geography are, of course, connected...

Geography of Sport units frequently explore the locations of stadia, impact of the sport on globalisation, industry and the environment, and also the benefits and issues surrounding global or international sporting events such as the World Cup 2010.

Football is also a crucial part of popular culture in many countries of the world, inspiring passion and also a lot of violence in some cities.

This is, of course, just a chance to mention a little football result that happened yesterday...

Marching on together....

Keep an eye out for some resources for the World Cup 2010 on the Geographical Association's website (and on this blog)

iPhone - the first 72 hours...

Image by Alan Parkinson

For those who haven't heard (or are even remotely interested) I finally decided just after Christmas that what I really needed in my life was an iPhone. I opted for a 16Gb 3GS version in glossy white.

There are many reasons why I finally succumbed to the ever-so-shiny phone.

One of my thoughts was that I had seen geography colleagues using it in interesting ways in the classroom, and outside the classroom (the latter perhaps more than the former) and needed to investigate these by actually using them... and then reporting on them...

There were already some useful posts on the use of iPhones which have been building up over the last year or so since the 3G version of the phone was introduced.

Teachers using iPhones

Noel Jenkins posted an interesting thought on his DIGITAL GEOGRAPHY blog giving his thoughts - he hadn't got an iPhone at the time, but has now.

He has put it to good use with his QR CODE FIELDWORK work: WELLINGTON STORIES.

Had the pleasure of seeing Noel present this work down in Somerset at the end of last year.

Ollie Bray had already posted a series of posts on iPhone in education, originally posted back in 2009

Post 1 of 5 had information on an app called MIND MAKER: a mind mapping app

Post 2 of 5 had a post on TRACK ME app, which uses the GPS capability of the iPhone

Post 3 of 5 on iGLOW (which had a useful tip for adding a new ICON on a screen)

Post 3.5 of 5 on a SEISMOMETER app (which I downloaded)

Post 4 of 5 had information on Geography Fieldwork apps

Post 5 of 5 had information on an app called EARTHSCAPE

I also asked my PLN via Twitter, and got some recommendations. for apps.

Some of the websites which I use regularly also have iPhone apps, so I checked those out as well: FLICKR is my photo sharing APP of choice, and I also downloaded COOL IRIS for viewing them. Also the ANIMOTO app for watching videos I've produced, such as the movie for "a different view", and also Rain Today.

Image by Alan Parkinson

I also started a new iPHONE GEOGRAPHY GROUP on the GA Ning.

Here's the first page of the APPS I have so far. Got a 2nd page underway...

There are also some excellent features as part of the phone itself:

CAMERA and VIDEO CAMERA - obviously useful for story telling and fieldwork...

COMPASS - map orientation etc.

NOTES - no more clipboards

MAPS (using the built-in GPS) - endless potential here...

iTUNES and the iPOD settings for music and video and podcasts (including educational podcasts)

CLOCK: choose the WORLD CLOCK and add a range of cities that you are studying (quicker than the ones up on the wall...)

Also came across George Burgess's GCSE GEOGRAPHY revision app: GEOREV.

Might also check out the CLINOMETER, the GPS Cardinal, the RULER PHONE app, a Swiss Climate Change walk app, GEOTagging, We can take you there etc.

Got the BUMP app too - if you meet up, then feel free to BUMP me... Might get a chance at BETT in a couple of weeks time...

OK, so my iPhone adventure is underway...

Please let me know what your favourite 'educational'/geographical apps are...

Will be posting more on how I use my iPhone in geographical education during 2010

There are plenty of 'cultural' apps too of course...

New Imagined Village

Great "sense of place" and connection with music, the past, tradition, rural landscapes and handmade music...

New Imagined Village album to kick off 2010 in style: EMPIRE and LOVE