Cultural Geography Blog

I enjoyed reading this post from the SOME LANDSCAPES blog , which is on my blog reading list... It mentions the descriptions of the landscape used in E Annie Proulx's classic 'The Shipping News'. If nothing else, it stirred me from my seat to find it on my bookshelves, and consider re-reading it. I read it when it first came out, which I now see was nearly 10 years ago !

Earlier this week, Paula Owens made me an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was asked if I wanted to become one of the GA's Primary Geography Champions. The Geography Champions network grew out of the work carried out for the Action Plan for Geography, and I was present at the first meeting of the champions, at the RGS-IBG as I set up the NING to support their work. There are some amazing colleagues who are Geography Champions, and I've enjoyed working with them on a range of projects over the years, as well as supporting the development of the NING. There are now over 1400 members of the Geography Champions NING. It has a search function which will allow you to find existing materials and resources. I've set up my group on the Ning, and have called it Mid-Norfolk and Surrounding Area. I'd like to make an offer to any Primary schools that are in the area within 30 miles of Litcham in Norfolk. Let me know if I can support the development of geography withi

James Bond is one of the great cultural phenomena of cinema... Out to see Skyfall : the latest Bond movie a few weekends ago. Here are 007 ideas  (do you see what I did there ?) for teaching about James Bond and Geography .... 1. There's an  Atlantic Cities  post which introduces the map of Bond locations. The James Bond map - research some of the locations here - add the Skyfall locations Could you add the locations from the latest movie here, or work out where those are on a map ? 2. There's been a great deal of James Bond merchandising , such as Coca Cola.. You may also have noticed that Q uses a Sony Vaio.... I presume Sony paid for that particular 'product placement'.... (either that or Q can't afford an Apple Mac....) Can you come up with James Bond / geography products that could have been placed in the movie, or some geographical merchandise ? Perhaps some 'I've been to Skyfall' postcards... 3. The James Bond promotiona

In 1987, I went to Birmingham to see Peter Gabriel tour his album ' So' . It was a fairly awesome concert, with good company. I'd qualified as a teacher and was about to start applying for jobs... a few weeks later I was in the classroom.... Over the years I've seen PG quite a few more times.... Fast forward twenty five years and Peter Gabriel has just released the dates of his 'Back to Front' tour, where he will return to 'So'.... ...and I'll be sat in the front block of seats in the brand new Hydro in Glasgow, which hasn't even been built yet (let's hope it's finished on time...) It'll be a great prelude to the SAGT Conference in Perth 2 days later...

The Geography Collective is one of the most creative groups in geography education today, and every time I learn more about its work, I get more excited about it. Daniel Edelson , Vice President for Education, National Geographic Society

The nominations are now open for the 2012 Edublogs awards. The closing date for nominations is the 26th of November, so you only have a week to vote.... There's some great geography blogs out there.... ahem.... :)

Part of the resources that have been created for the National Geographic Education's materials for Geography Awareness Week. Proud that the Geography Collective are once again involved in creating some of the resources that are being used around the United States. We've created a range of materials that are being used by tens of thousands of students. Click this link to download a PDF of GeoBug stickers.... Logo was created by our very own Tom Morgan-Jones

Over the last few months, we've been working hard to put together a deal which will connect The Geography Collective , creators of Mission:Explore with Discover the World , the leading school travel company to destinations such as Iceland. We're going to be writing missions which will be available for students and teachers who book a tour with Discover the World... The first place that we've visited is one of the great places in the world: ICELAND. I'm working with geography teacher John Sayers, and our editor and illustrator Helen and Tom, along with other Geography Collective colleagues, to put together a booklet which will available to all those schools that book a trip with Discover the World. It will contain missions, and ideas for linking the experience of visiting Iceland and completing the missions with the curriculum, and exam specifications. We've created a whole load of missions which we're now editing down and preparing to be released in

One of the companies that I'm currently working with is ESRI UK. It's good to see more cross-overs with projects as Mission Explore is featured in ESRI's Fall newsletter, with a nice article written by Daniel Edelson of the National Geographic Education team. Some nice quotes: There are a small number of people out there, however, who summon up very different images when they think about geography learning. Maybe they never experienced traditional geography education, or maybe they experienced it and have completely rejected it as a model for learning. They envision activities that feel both relevant and enjoyable. These are the people we need to find and listen to, because they don't think about improving geography education by incrementally improving traditional approaches. They think about completely new approaches to geography teaching and learning. One place where you can find people like that is in the Geography Collective, a group of innovative thinkers

Published on 12th of November Available to buy on Amazon... ‘The Ice Man is a great cross-curricular text for science, geography and history. The book is an excellent length and packed full of interesting info.’ Fiona Dyson, Southfields Academy

What are you going to get up to ? Find out more about the day here. Don't forget to use the hashtag #guerrillageographyday