Cultural Geography Blog

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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.

A very brief taster... Got tickets for the Barbican in February... Very excited to see how this turns out...

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

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)

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 pleasur...