Cultural Geography Blog

As regular readers will know, I have been managing the OU's VITAL CPD portal since October 2011, and am due to carry on through until 2013. You can access an individual portal for just £10, which gives access to all the content, and associated support. A SPECIAL OFFER is now available, aimed at schools rather than individuals / departments. The more portals that are subscribed to, the bigger the saving... At a time when CPD budgets are under pressure, this is a good way of keeping up to date in a wide range of curriculum subjects... Your school can save a lot of money with bulk subscriptions. Why not pass details of this to your SLT or person in charge of staff development...

TeachIt have been in existence for some years producing resources for English teachers. They had a stand at the GA conference right next to the Mission:Explore stand. One of the projects that I have been involved with is the preparations for the launch of TEACH IT GEOGRAPHY. We have been sourcing, editing and approving hundreds of resources which subscribers to the site will be able to download. The idea is that most of them can be used immediately, as opposed to some of my other work which is aimed more at teachers producing their own resources. There is obviously a need for both methods of supporting teachers. What is nice about TeachIt is that the resources are all created and shared by practising teachers and educators, and come with supporting notes. There are also other features of the site, such as interactive tools for the classroom. If you'd like to submit some of your own resources , then get in touch and I'll put you in touch with Chris and Katie at TeachI...

The London Marathon is on Sunday. Watch out for the athletic stride of John Lyon , the GA's Programme Director, who is running the marathon for the charity MapAction. I've been involved with MapAction for some time and when they asked me at late notice to run the London Marathon on their behalf I must say I was deeply honoured. The work they do is so important in saving lives and minimising suffering in humanitarian emergencies. We often teach about disasters in geography and we mustn't forget that it is real people who are suffering - often in their thousands. Since 2002, MapAction’s highly-skilled volunteers have responded to 32 disasters worldwide, including earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, cyclones and conflict-related crises. As an immediate response, they help to get aid delivered quickly and effectively to those most in need, but as a long-term measure they also help to prepare vulnerable communities for the impact of disasters before they strike. So.. I'm ru...

Looking forward to the new Simon Armitage book on the Pennine Way...

Head over to LIVING GEOGRAPHY for all the latest from the GA Conference 12th-14th April 2012....

If you can get through the language that is characteristic of Will Self pieces, there are some important geographical messages coming out here in this piece in The Guardian. The recent URBAN EARTH : Degrees of London walk was another reminder of the power of walking as the participants walked into London from HeathrowAirport and other locations. Organised by Dan Raven Ellison of the Geography Collective, the people involved were asked to concentrate on particular things during the walk, as well as look at the city in unexpected ways. While you're walking round the city, you might also be interested in a nice guide called SIDE WALKS . It's one of two nice travel guides produced by Kate Pocrass: an artist living in San Francisco. Some of the ideas have a touch of our Mission:Explore about them. In fact one of the reviewers refers to some of the suggested activities as 'missions'. I liked the idea of eating food in a particular shape, or capturing snippets of con...

Apologies for the title which is even worse than usual... I like this idea very much. It's a set of maps which are based on the concerts that were given by U2. They are separated out by decade. This could be adapted for other bands. There are various databases online for different groups, such as the Concert Database . U2 Concert Mapping   is the post on e-Spatial. Which is another chance for me to mention how disappointed I was by the disappearance of  Gracenote Music Mapping.