Cultural Geography Blog

The new Australian Curriculum document for Geography was launched in the last few weeks. The support site for the introduction of the new curriculum has now gone live too. It's called GEOG SPACE. There's quite an influence from some familiar UK names here, such as this diagram on the 'Child as Geographer' from the work of Simon Catling. © 2013 Education Services Australia Ltd, except where indicated otherwise. You may copy, distribute and adapt this material free of charge for non-commercial educational purposes, provided you retain all copyright notices and acknowledgements. There are also influences in the SUPPORT UNITS from a range of UK geographers including Fran Martin, Paula Owens, Stephen Scoffham and Liz Taylor. The SU PPORT UNIT section , in fact, would make excellent reading for geographers around the globe. It's a really useful synthesis of key thinking around concepts, fieldwork, geographical enquiry, ICT and related areas of geogr

40 years ago today , an LP was released which 'broke the rules'... Tubular Bells was the work of teenage Mike Oldfield . He was backed by Richard Branson, who decided to create a record company called 'Virgin Records' so that he could release the album. Mike played all the instruments, and multi-tracked them. He created a continuous piece of music, rather than a lot of singles. I first heard Tubular Bells when I was aged 10 or 11. My uncle Steven had a copy, and played it all the time when I went round to my nana's house. I loved it so much that I bought my own copy. I have probably played this album well over a thousand times in my life. I have seen it performed live several times, and was also present at the world premiere of the 3rd version of the album - getting very wet on Horse Guards Parade. Oldfield has also recorded other albums which together have formed the soundtrack to my life for the past 40 years. Ommadawn is my 'train journey' albu

After GeoGuessr, here comes  LOCATESTREET  This is a variation on GeoGuessr, with various points being offered for guidance, although the Elevation option doesn't offer that much help... You can choose to play on a Global basis, or other scales. You are presented with 4 options of location to choose from , and if you pick the correct option you can earn bonus points for clicking on the actual location on a map... The site takes you to some fairly out of the way places... I seemed to end up on rural roads, and in cul-de-sacs on industrial estates quite often. Hardcore players should choose the GLOBAL option... and discover that South America looks a lot like Australia in places... Choose the COUNTRY option, and explore a range of countries from a list, which includes the UK. This offers potential for a CITY based search for example. There are also some US based Thematic search options. The game is addictive. Had to stop myself playing on it last night.... If yo

If you have some free time this summer, you could follow in the footsteps of Robert MacFarlane, who has featured in this blog many times... Visit the Wayfarer website for more details and to enter the competition.... We’re looking for someone who doesn’t mind getting their boots dirty, can string a sentence or two together and can get creative about how they share their journey with the world. You should already know your way around social networks and be able to produce short videos on your own. The winner will become our Wayfarer and will get paid to travel around the UK throughout July and August (so please only enter if you’ll be available all summer). You’ll visit some of the Old Ways paths, but, even better, you’ll strike out on your own and make some new discoveries, on or off the beaten path. You will then report back on your adventures through blog posts, photos, videos and tweets.

For the last week or so, and for the next few weeks as well on and off, I'm going to be spending some time working to develop materials for the rather splendid  Follow the Things website.   The website is created in the form of a 'shopping experience', but follows the stories behind the products which sit on the 'shelves'. It explores themes related to trade justice , which are of course very raw and topical at the moment, with the rising death toll from the incident at Rana Plaza in Savar, near Dhaka. We're working on a range of materials which will help you to engage with the website, as well as creating your own materials and stories. At the same time, there are some changes coming to the website, which will include a brand new area for teachers and students. We'll also be creating: - Reading lists of books that are linked to this theme, such as Kelsey Timmerman 's 'Where am I wearing' and 'Where am I eating' and explorations

Professor David Lambert - my old boss....

There are now 600 posts on CULTCHA. Thanks for reading / visiting / sharing....

A modern classic...

A good interview with Dan Raven Ellison from Mission:Explore on Voice America.com: an American talk radio show. Part of an April Explorers series. Go to the Voice America website to hear the show. You can also download the mp3 to listen to on the go.... which would be appropriate. Here's the trail information: National Geographic Explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison is a geography teacher, but not in the traditional sense.  Forget memorizing borders and rivers from maps- Daniel’s approach, sometimes called “guerrilla geography,” is all about getting out into the world, exploring anything and everything, and getting kids excited about non-textbook geography. He devises creative explorations, such as walking across the largest cities on Earth, taking photographs every eight steps to reframe how we think of them. Deeply committed to inspiring young people get off the computer and explore their surroundings, Daniel co-founded Mission:Explore to encourage children to embark on qu