Hopton - missing sands

Image from the book 'Boring Postcards', as featured in the GeoLibrary.

Hopton is a resort near Lowestoft.

Over the winter, the fearsome and relentless Easterly winds which we had on the east coast have scoured and stripped away the sand from some beaches in the area.
However, some people suggest that there is another reason for the disappearing sands.

This could become a new alternative to the classic Mappleton case study, and the tale of Sue Earle...

I'm heading over there in the next few weeks to see what the impact of the weather has been
It's a reminder that the coast is an area that undergoes constant change: from the small changes with every tide, to the longer term changes, and the impact of humans.

Save Hopton Beach - has a Twitter feed, where they tweet a range of information relating to the fight to save the beach.

Download the document (PDF) from the Save Hopton Beach website.

Walk to School Week - Digimap for Schools idea...

It's Walk to School week. My kids always walk to school because we're fortunate enough to live very close to their schools.
Some people drive their children to school even though they live a short distance away. They may have very good reasons for doing that of course.... or they may not...
Fewer children are walking to school than used to, for a number of reasons. And some of them aren't pleased when they are challenged.
I used to walk to school, back in the day. Here's a map of my route to school, back in the 1970s and 80s...
Purple goes to my Primary
Red goes to my Secondary

Paula Owens has made a resource to investigate the route to school for Digimap for Schools.
Click here to download as a PDF
It's part of a suite of resources.
Paula created the Primary resources and I wrote the Secondary ones.

Map made with Digimap for Schools service
Image copyright:


Ordnance Survey © Crown Copyright and Database Right 2013. An Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service. 

Oklahoma City Tornado

Still perhaps a little raw to be teaching about this in detail, but some amazing images and stories coming out of the area affected by this huge storm. Thankfully, the original estimated casualty figures have been reduced....
The fact that at least one school was affected by the storm adds to the tragedy...

An authoritative BBC PAGE here has a range of resources, and currently a live feed of the news from the area....

Update

Also an astonishing set of before and after images of the suburb of Moore HERE via the Guardian.

Just exploring some GIS data for Tornadoes from the US Weather service / NOAA

There's also this HISTRO timeline.... showing '10 deadliest tornadoes'...

New series of 'Town' starts tonight...

BBC2 - 9pm
I'm especially looking forward to the one on Huddersfield, where I lived for three years while doing my geography degree - back in the 80s....

A global support network

Thanks to Jon Wolton for the reminder of TWEEPSMAP.
Since the last time I used this, my network of followers on Twitter has grown to over 2300 real people..
Here's my map and global network....

There are followers from all continents, which is good to see.
Around 40% of my followers are from outside the UK, which is also interesting...
There's also an analysis here.
Get your own by going to Tweepsmap - don't forget to change your settings back once you've finished too...

Analysis of GeoBlogs's Twitter followers

UK	61.07%
USA	16.42%
Australia	3.27%
Canada	2.89%
España	1.57%
France	1.32%
Ireland	1.19%
Brazil	1.07%
New Zealand	0.88%
Germany	0.82%
India	0.63%
Switzerland	0.57%
Italy	0.57%
Netherlands	0.5%
Egypt	0.38%
Philippines	0.31%
Mexico	0.31%
Austria	0.25%
China	0.25%
Singapore	0.25%
Denmark	0.25%
Indonesia	0.25%
Hong Kong	0.19%
Peru	0.19%
Pakistan	0.19%
South Korea	0.19%
Russia	0.19%
Portugal	0.19%
UAE	0.19%
Colombia	0.19%
Sweden	0.19%
Ecuador	0.19%
Belgium	0.19%
Norway	0.19%
Poland	0.13%
South Africa	0.13%
Argentina	0.13%
Nigeria	0.13%
Morocco	0.13%
Serbia	0.13%
Malaysia	0.13%
Vietnam	0.13%
Korea	0.13%
Greece	0.13%
Seychelles	0.13%
Uruguay	0.13%
Turkey	0.13%
Finland	0.06%
Costa Rica	0.06%
Angola	0.06%
Ukraine	0.06%
Rwanda	0.06%
Thailand	0.06%
Guyana	0.06%
Venezuela	0.06%
Hungary	0.06%
Bolivia	0.06%
Chile	0.06%
Afghanistan	0.06%
Malta	0.06%
Iceland	0.06%
Japan	0.06%
Romania	0.06%
Taiwan	0.06%

Guessing 0.06% is 1 person....

Welcome to Newtok

A place which is at the front line of climate change.
The village is being affected by thawing permafrost, which in turn is creating real problems for the village, and the local coastline....

An excellent Guardian interactive feature 

CPD in Eden...

Not the Garden of Eden... the Eden Project.
For schools that are close to the venue, this sounds like an excellent option for a geography field trip.
A workshop on Rural Rebranding followed by free time at the Eden Project.

Follow the links and you'll find plenty of other courses too, including some for other subjects and age-groups.

Thanks to Jon Wolton for the tipoff...

Image: Alan Parkinson

New Australian Geography Curriculum launched...

We may still be waiting for our new Geography curriculum to be released, but the new Australian geography curriculum has just been released.

ACARA has been working on this for several years, and I've been following the developments.

Here are the AIMS of the new curriculum.

The Foundation - Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Geography aims to ensure that students develop:

• a sense of wonder, curiosity and respect about places, people, cultures and environments throughout the world
• a deep geographical knowledge of their own locality, Australia, the Asia region and the world
• the ability to think geographically, using geographical concepts
• the capacity to be competent, critical and creative users of geographical inquiry methods and skills
• as informed, responsible and active citizens who can contribute to the development of an environmentally and economically sustainable, and socially just world.

Go to the site and explore the supporting documentation.

Good to see enquiry at the heart of things.

Check out the SCOPE AND SEQUENCE document too. (Available as a PDF)

Thought for the Day

"Geography is about curiosity, exploration, and discovery. It gives you the power to see places in new ways, search for your own answers, challenge things as they are, and make sense of the world."

Daniel Raven-Ellison

GeoGuessr - some ideas for using it...

A mention for a little variation on a site which I like a little more to be honest, called Mapcrunch.

It's become very popular in lots of places over the last week.

GeoGuessr is a 'game' which takes you to 5 'random' places and challenges you to identify where you are.
A map is provided so that you can add a pin at an appropriate place. This action in itself requires a little geographical knowledge...
There is a score provided for how close you are to the actual location.

There's a chance element involved of course, and there are perhaps more clues available in urban areas than there are in rural areas. These involve signs on buses and other vehicles.
For example, one image I was presented with was the Eden project, so I got within 2 kilometres of the actual location - another looked like Australia but was in fact in S. America so I was several thousand kilometres out...
Since the image is a StreetView image, you can also head off in a direction of your choice to look for clues, or you might decide that is cheating and not allow it...

Remember that Streetview doesn't cover the whole globe either, so if a picture looks like it might be in Africa, then it's probably South Africa or Botswana.
This map shows the current coverage.

This Slate article was closer to my thinking about the use of the site - as students use the site, they should be developing ideas for a guide for how to do well on GeoGuessr. These could be put together using an appropriate package (or a paper and pen)

There could be league tables for how well people do perhaps, or set group challenges. Perhaps a 'GeoGuessr' of the week ?
You could also provide options for support that could be used each game (in the vein of 'Who wants to be a Millionaire')
These could include:

• A Google Search
• 1 minute to explore beyond the area shown on the original photo
• The chance to add an extra 1000 points to the final score if the guess proves to be in the wrong continent...

Any other ideas for 'jokers' ?

There could also be a rubric for assessing the clues that are provided in an image...

e.g. Urban or Rural, Weather conditions, presence of snow, upland landscape or lowland, coastal or inland, presence of a distinguishing feature such as a large building, flags, language / typography / alphabet used in signage, advertising billboards, company names on vehicles or stores

More often than not it's a 'feel' that you get - is it European or not ? is the vegetation tropical in appearance ? 

Any other thoughts for using with pupils ?

Update
Thanks to Roo Stenning for lead to this XKCD cartoon

Update 2 - 21st May

Thanks to @MrGeographer for pointing out LOCATESTREET which shows random streets....
It turns out that it uses some of the suggestions - great minds think alike !
There are points for moving away from the location, and it will also tell you other information, but you pay for them by deducting points from your guess...
Also options for narrowing down the area from which the photos were taken...

A great little site too...

Medal-winning

One of the interesting things that happened during the EuroGeo conference (see previous posts) was that I was awarded a medal from the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education.

One was presented to all those involved in a project, funded by the Association of American Geographers, which I shall blog more about in the future.

On the back, it says that it is presented 'for meritorious service in support of geographic education'.

Thanks to Dick Boehm, who presented the medals on the first day of the conference. Very proud to be welcomed to the community in that way...

Bruges - Day 3 - Part 2

The EuroGeo conference in 2013 ended with a keynote from Sirpa Tani, of the University of Helsinki.

Learning (in) environments
Linking tradition and future

She shared her work relating to her research, and the experiences which informed her practice.
Dwelling with the City is a project which connects with ideas like Young People's Geographies and Mission:Explore. 

Sirpa's earlier work linked with the work of Liz Taylor, looking at how urban environments were represented, and work on parkour (see the parkour image in 'A Different View'), as well as images of 'hanging out' (see the YPG work of Jonathan Morris). She then focussed on the idea of learning environments with some work on school design, and wider issues. An interesting session.

After the conference, it was back to the cafeteria for a final lunch, and to say bye to various friends and colleagues who were leaving that day.
Then I had a few hours to explore the city in changeable weather - from pouring rain to bright sunshine in a few hours - like being at home.

That evening was a meal for our I-USE group, and also the board of EuroGeo - there was some crossover between the group members.
We went to the Zwart Huis restaurant, which had an excellent atmosphere. Good food and beer. A nice way to end the conference.

101 ways to teach locational knowledge...

Is the eventual aim of this resource, started by Paul Sturtivant...

Head over there and contribute a few ideas - that's how these things work...
Click the red + button and add a slide
If everyone who viewed the thread on SLN had added just one idea there'd be over 101 by now...

33 years and 1 day ago...

I normally remember this anniversary, but forgot yesterday....
Still a suitable case study for volcanic eruptions ?
If not, how would/could you use resources like this.
Perhaps for ecosystems rather than volcanic activity ?

Eurovision 2013

Eurovision at the weekend - the semi-finals have been taking place over the last few days.
I like the map butterflies which have been used this year as the motif.

Tony Cassidy created a classic Eurovision resource which (with a little updating that you could do yourself) would still be a good activity.
Find out the winners from the last few years to add to the mapping exercise.

Here is my favourite... er... song...
I'm really drawn to this... er... song....

An exciting opportunity...

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.

Rice

A very interesting art installation.

It visualises the world's population and some key events using piles of rice.
Check it out...

New books from the GA coming later in the year...

The new GA Magazine features news of two books which are coming from the GA later in the year.

The first involves me.
I've written a book with the prolific and much-used author John Widdowson on Fieldwork through Enquiry.
We've explored 10 contexts for fieldwork: 5 for Urban, and 5 for Rural.
There are ideas for apps, and plenty of customisable sheets, use of Google Drive etc.

The design is looking great, thanks to Bryan Ledgard as always.

The second book that is mentioned is an updated version of the influential book by Margaret Roberts: 'Learning through Enquiry'.

I spent yesterday afternoon at a seminar at the Institute of Education in London where Margaret was speaking. I'll be blogging my thoughts in the near future...

I'm really looking forward to seeing and using this book...

GeoResource website

Check out the GeoResource website - new to me... Some content particularly for Scottish colleagues preparing to teach National 5 Geography, but plenty of animations and other content for other colleagues.

Free Digimap for Schools Webinar

Coming up in June is a chance to take part in a free webinar which will tell you about the OS Digimap for Schools service.
Remember that there is a full set of resources ready for those using the service, which I wrote at the end of last year.

Details below from the Digimap Blog

This will be the first of many that we aim to run.  The purpose of the webinar is mainly for schools already subscribed looking for hints and tips on how to use Digimap for Schools.  However the webinar is open to anyone interested in hearing more and seeing a demonstration of the service.

There will be an opportunity to ask questions either by text chat or by talking if you have a microphone.

Sign up HERE

Jamie Buchanan Dunlop WOW talk...

Well worth spending 7 minutes listening to and watching.... nice work from Jamie...

GA Summer journals...

The Summer 2013 issues of the GA's journals are now appearing on the website, and the print edition just appeared in my letter box.

Just been browsing the latest GA magazine, which has some excellent articles, and a conference report. A good Webwatch feature too, along with a mention of Mission:Explore Summer Camp, and the forthcoming book that I wrote with John Widdowson.
(See forthcoming blog posts for more on those projects)

Also a reminder that my Webwatch feature for the Autumn 2013 issue will need to be completed soon... Better get cracking on that...

Bruges - Day 3 - Part 1

The 3rd day of EUROGEO started with the 5th session, which meant that we were involved.

It was a damp day in Bruges, and we wandered over wet cobbles as the town came to life again, and generally got damp on the way. There was an introductory session for the I-USE project, which I am involved with, on behalf of the Geographical Association.

Karsten Duus led the session on our behalf, with input from all the partners.

The website http://www.i-use.eu  has been launched now, and although there is not a large amount of information at present - the site will grow through the life of the project.

We talked through the introduction to the project, the development of the website, and our plans over the life of the project.

There was an existing website, called WORLDSTAT which started it all off...
The project develops that forward, with a range of tools and other elements, some of which I shall be writing.

One of the people who came to the presentation was involved in the Dutch EduGIS website. This is well worth a look too.

We have a new FACEBOOK group, which you are welcome to join.
There's also a TWITTER feed to follow.
& finally I have an I USE STATS in EDUCATION BLOG (of course)

Rotherham: Portas, shops, promotion and Digimap for Schools...

Rotherham is my home town, although it's a few years since I've been back.... the last time I nearly got stuck in the snow...
It has undergone quite a lot of changes over the last few decades. It was visited by Jamie Oliver, in 2008 who tried to improve the diet in the town and famously led to mums passing food through the school fence in Rawmarsh.

The BBC revisited 4 years on in this article


Mary Portas carried out a review of High Streets, which I mentioned in the resources I created, and as a result of this Rotherham now has a new grant to try to improve the nature of the shops that are found in the town centre. It has been awarded several hundred thousand pounds to encourage new shops to the town.


Last year, I produced a resource for Digimap for the Schools which focussed on Rotherham and shopping as part of a larger set of resources for the digital OS map streaming serviced. Download the resource and 'visit Rotherham' using maps and Google Earth.

I was grateful to RIDO for letting me have access to a range of documents relating to the plans to redevelop the town centre. One major change has been the relocation of quite a few major buildings such as the town's library to the opposite end of town than it used to be.

There is also now a new football stadium which has been completed - and coincidentally the football team were promoted this year too. You can try out an activity where you choose a possible new site for the football team (which was written before the new stadium was built) on the GA website.

Writing this has triggered an urge to go back and visit as soon as I can. I'm up in the area later in the year for some work at the GA, so I'll pop into Rotherham and let you know how I get on and put some pictures here...

The picture at the top of the post is of the Cross Keys, where I used to have the odd pint and chip butty. It was taken in the 1960's.... I'm not quite old enough to have been drinking it quite that far back...

The man who fell to Earth....

Many people, including me, have been following Chris Hadfield's stint on the ISS thanks to Twitter, and the amazing photos that he has been sharing. I've blogged about them previously.

He's now safely back on earth... but had time before he left to make this great video...
Thanks for all the tweets and images Chris !

Bruges - Day 2

After a good night's sleep, opened the windows onto damp cobbles, and the town coming to life.
Down to breakfast, with a view over the canals and bridges of the town - the hotel was in the centre of the city of Bruges so it was good to see the deliveries, street cleaning etc, the carriage owners preparing their carriages and horses for a day trotting around the city.

Walked through the Markt square where they were dismantling the grandstands for the previous day's Holy Blood procession, and out to the school where the conference was taking place.

Registered for the conference and had coffee, then spent the morning working on a few projects and writing, as well as having conversations with delegates from all over Europe and beyond.

Joseph Kerski from ESRI were there, and had a chat with him, following a chat we'd had the previous week.
Also went up to the iGUESS course that was taking place, which had some UK participants, including James M and Duncan H.

Spent some time talking to a Russian geo-chemist from Moscow, then had a nice lunch in the school refectory.

The afternoon was spent in a 4 hour workshop which had funded my participation in the conference. It was a discussion with various colleagues from countries on a project called GeoCapabilities.
It was chaired by Michael Solem from the AAG, along with David Lambert from the IoE and Sirpa Tani from the University of Helsinki.

I'll put up a separate post in a few days about the idea.

The meeting ended quite late, so it was a quick yomp across town. In the evening, it was over to the Halve Maan brewery of Henri Maes (several generations of the family...)
The evening started with some Zot (a light beer), before a tour around the brewery.
Later, it was back to the restaurant on the top floor (formerly used for malting barley) for a meal and more Zot.

Into a nearby bar for Malheur, and chat with colleagues from around Europe.

Village at the End of the World

Interested to read about a film called 'Village at the End of the World', set in Greenland. Sounds like an interesting film.
If follows the lives of some of the residents of a remote village in Greenland.
It shows how social media connects young people with other places, and avoids some of the cliches of other films that have been filmed in the region.

There are suggestions that the film may spark a mini tourist boom to Greenland.
You can fly there from Keflavik airport in Iceland, I noticed when I was last there...
Check out a showing if there is one near you....

Images of Bruges

A growing Flickr set of images from my visit to Bruges for the EuroGeo conference, and the meeting of the I-USE project.

Feel free to browse to get a flavour of the city....



To find out more about the I-USE project, on the theme of statistical literacy.
Visit the BLOG
Sign up for the FACEBOOK group.
Follow us on TWITTER

Follow the Things Update

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 such as Conor Woodman's 'Unfair Trade'
- Opportunities for you to get involved
- Some further missions on the special Follow the Things challenger area of the Mission:Explore website.
- Thinking on the people who manufacture items that you wear, or use - this will particularly link to the events in Bangladesh and beyond.

Go to the PRODUCTS OF SLAVERY website to find out more about this process.
You can also download a rather nice PDF of a poster (which can also be ordered as a hard copy) - donations are also welcome if you download the PDF

We'll be having one (or more) Google Hangouts later in May to give you the chance to see the updated site in action

We're covering social media too - we'll be adding links to:
- Twitter lists of relevant accounts relating to trade justice - you can also follow FOLLOW the THINGS on Twitter to get the latest relevant news retweeted out from a range of organisations
- Websites and ready made resources to extend your knowledge in this area
- Pinterest boards with relevant images from campaigns
- Case Studies of trade justice issues, and particular products which might resonate with students as young consumers:

These will focus on some of the more popular areas of the website, such as our LEGO re-enactments.
With LEGO now being the world's biggest toy brand apparently, this is perhaps a good time to focus on these, as well as the Lego School being built in Billund, Denmark.

And we'll also be developing ready-made materials for CPD sessions, so that you could spend a departmental meeting exploring the ideas on the site.

There's no shortage of interesting material and inspiration related to this issue..
For example, here's an interactive map which shows the places that supply Apple. Thanks to Karl Donert for the link here.

At a time when the world is increasingly globalised and interdependent, the work that is covered on Follow the Things is becoming more important than ever...

Test - ArcGIS Online

View Larger Map

 Just showing a Danish colleague how this works - move along - nothing to see :)

Bruges Day 1

Up early for the train down to St. Pancras, where I bought a cheap copy of Nick Papadimitriou's 'Scarp' - always a bonus :)
On Eurostar to Brussels (very easy as always), and a quick turn round to buy some waffles before getting the IC train via Ghent to Bruges. I accidentally sat in first class for most of the journey before being kicked out. Sunny day with high clouds and beautifully warm.

Arrived in Bruges, and headed for the centre. The city was thronged with tens of thousands of people, as on Ascension Day, it was the day of the Procession of the Holy Blood.

I arrived as the procession was underway, and spent the next hour or so working my way round to my hotel, which was right in the middle of things it seemed. As it backed onto the canal, there was no way to get to it from the back, so had to dodge the procession a little to make it to the reception. Once I'd checked in, I found that my room opened onto the main street, and I was able to watch the last bit of the impressive procession from my room, with a coffee.

In the late afternoon, I took a first wander around the centre of the city, then it was out to the Maximillian restaurant by Begijnhof, where we had a meeting and an evening meal. Met up with friends from a number of EU countries who I've worked with on various EU projects, David Lambert and some American colleagues who I'd previously met at the Ga Conference. Was delighted to be presented by Dick Boehm with a medal from the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Centre for Geographic Education in Texas, for 'meritorious service in support of geographic education'.
A local beer, some fine red wine and wandered back to the hotel late along floodlit canals, and cobbled streets. Tomorrow, I have to do a little work....

EdGIS

Thanks to Joseph Kerski for the lead to EdGIS
A few useful tools here, particularly the information about linking a Google Form that has been used to collect (collaborative) data.

There's been plenty of work done in this area at the moment....

Thought for the Day

"People look down on stuff like geography ... but only because they are standing on [it] ... "!

Terry Pratchett

Millionaire Cities

When I used to teach about settlement, and we got onto the idea of 'millionaire cities', there were always students who asked whether they were cities where millionaires lived.

The Guardian's DATABLOG has now released a range of maps and visualisations based on the cities which are homes to the world's millionaires and billionaires.
They make interesting viewing, and would be particularly relevant to some topics, for example at Edexcel 'A' level.

Images: Alan Parkinson

City Dashboard

A reminder of a tool that I featured on the blog some time ago, but was reminded of while in a meeting last week, and while on the phone earlier...
London City Dashboard takes live data feeds from various sources and puts them in one place.

Click CHANGE CITY to move to other major UK cities, some of which have less 'elements' to them than the London page...

Students could create their own 'analogue' versions of these, or suggest other data feeds that might be added....

Goldsmith's Science for Society Course - July 2013

An amazing opportunity for teachers to update their professional knowledge, as well as experience some amazing places.

You will need to get yourself to Southampton University, but everything else is paid for....

The course runs in the last week of July, when a lot of colleagues may have a ligher timetable, or have activity days (or may even have finished for the summer)

The special 6 day course has been organised by the Ordnance Survey, along with the Goldsmith's company. It runs from the 21st to the 26th of July 2013

Science for Society Course: New Developments in Physical Geography 

This course is designed for mid-career specialist geography teachers in secondary schools who are teaching GCSE / A level students.  The emphasis is on physical geography, providing an intensive immersion in new technology for data collection, analysis and modelling.  The course includes an introduction to new equipment for field and laboratory, and explores recent developments in remote sensing and GIS technologies, and their application to teaching. 

Full day visits to both Met Office and Ordnance Survey are included.

The course is provided by the Geography Department of the University of Southampton and Ordnance Survey in association with The Goldsmiths’ Company, under their Science for Society initiative. 

There's also a Gala Dinner at Goldsmith’s Hall, London. 

Tuition, accommodation, food and travel during the course are all provided free of charge. Delegates must fund their own travel costs from home to Southampton University. There is a £50 deposit to pay, which is refunded at the end of the course.

For more details, see the Goldsmith's website, where you can download an application form.

This is certainly something which I would have applied for if I was still teaching

You must be a teacher employed at a secondary school in Great Britain teaching GCSE/A level standard qualifications in geography.