Ducks...

In 1992, 7000 plastic ducks were lost at sea. They ended up all over the globe.#BluePlanet2 pic.twitter.com/2bp2C5za88

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 19, 2017

Back to using this activity again... Always a classic...

The Norfolk Coast - a distinctive landscape

And a reminder today of how dynamic it is...

Labels vs Annotation

This tweet from a Geography teacher outlines some key differences which those approaching exam season might do well to take notice of...

Labels vs annotations #geographyteacher pic.twitter.com/kn0T0FV8nz

— Liz Pattison (@LizBPattison) April 28, 2018

Sendai Disaster Risk Reduction Framework

A couple of years ago, King's Ely Geographers attended the Hodder Natural Hazards Revision conference down in London, where Iain Stewart and various Chief examiners presented on wider research and ideas linked to the area of Disaster Risk Reduction.

This phrase is preferred by the scientists working in this area, and explores how the impacts of 'natural disasters' can be reduced by mitigation strategies, alongside the idea of Plan, Predict and Prepare, which is in the GCSE specifications too.
Marie posted a link to a resource on the Plan International website.
It can be downloaded as a PDF, and contains a 'child friendly' guide to the Sendai Framework with activities and cartoon graphics and text to share the messages about what is involved.

Useful for Year 10-13s to have a look at, particularly those preparing for exams.

Can eating insects save the world

I have been exploring this idea this week. Stefan was the keynote speaker at the ECOLINT IB Geography conference in Geneva I attended two weeks ago.

Worldmapper: help support this essential tool

The new Worldmapper website was launched at the GA Conference following months of investment of their own time and money from Ben Hennig and Tina Gotthardt. It is used in classrooms around the country (and beyond) and would be great to support them at this time. I'm amazed no geospatial company hasn't wanted to be involved in ensuring this remains free for all educators to use forever. The new mapping makes this an even more useful site, but as someone who used to run a website knows (albeit rather less useful), bandwidth and server costs aren't free...
Let's see if as many geography teachers as possible can donate the price of a pint, or a skinny latte (or more) to help payback for all the maps we've used over the years.

As it says on the Worldmapper site:

The new website is proving more popular than ever before. Unfortunately this has led to repeated server outages in recent days since the fresh new design and functionalities have considerably increased demands on the webserver that is hosting the Worldmapper homepage.
With this GoFundMe campaign we want to raise the necessary funds that pay towards the running costs for an upgraded server that we would like to switch to, to allow more reliability of Worldmapper while it keeps growing, and maintain the archive as well.

We need your #help! Our webserver is frequently reaching its limits causing #Worldmapper to be offline at regular intervals. Support us with a small donation that helps us to upgrade our server capacities. Every little helps! https://t.co/Booh8YULRt @gofundme #GoFundMe #maps pic.twitter.com/poINpaLjwp

— Worldmapper (@worldmapper) April 24, 2018

All maps shared under CC license. 

This week, Year 8 will mostly be exploring...

Click to download the 2018 Transparency report as a PDF

Welcome to Daisy - a replacement for LIAM

We've been looking at E-Waste, and the role of Agbobloshie....
Previously there was Liam



Here's a story from earlier this week about Daisy, which can dismantle 200 iPhones an hour.
Our question was, what happens to Liam now? Do we need some robots to dismantle him?



Image: Apple

We like this idea... Try it out Y10s

Impressive time lapse costal landforms from year 10 today 👍 #geography @Preston_School pic.twitter.com/eEstv0hz4Y

— Andrew (@mrcullingford06) April 19, 2018

Sponsor Miss Kyndt for Sunday's London Marathon

If you want to get fully involved in supporting the London Marathon this Sunday, and want to sponsor a runner, can I recommend Miss Kyndt.
Go here to donate to Claire.

Claire will also be running in the Uganda Marathon in June, our main King's Ely Junior fund raising choice.

London Marathon - if you have a few spare pennies (or pounds) send them to Miss K https://t.co/Rcrsy1lPeq

— KingsElyGeographers (@KingsElyGeog) April 19, 2018

Mr. P at the GA Conference

Can you spot him here, as part of the volunteers who help the work of the Geographical Association?

Today is #VolunteerRecognitionDay and we'd like to say a big THANK YOU to all the people who work tirelessly to help with the GA's mission to further geographical knowledge and understanding through education #WeAreGeography pic.twitter.com/Rsq73zeLym

— Geographical Assoc (@The_GA) April 20, 2018

Fashion Revolution week is next week....

We will be taking part in this event as we have done for the last five years.

A guide to taking part can be downloaded as a PDF by following this link.

Heading for Geneva

These are anxious times for the residents of Cape Town. They have been counting down to Day Zero: the day when the taps were due to be turned off, and they would have to rely on standpipes and rationing of water. There has been a drought for three years in this area of the Eastern Cape, and most of the major sources of water have been depleted, or are at very low levels.
Channel 4 news had a number of reports on the crisis, which in January had set the date of April for Day Zero to arrive.

Thanks to a lot of efforts by residents to cut down on their water since then, and this has now been put back to later in the year, and possibly now into 2019 if current usage levels are maintained.

There will be a focus on this story for my workshops in Geneva on Saturday.
July was previously the date when the water was predicted

I will be sharing all the work from my workshop at the ECOLINT IB conference, which has been organised by Richard Allaway here, during and after the event itself.

The Cape Town City Council website is a very useful place to go for further information, as they provide guidance for residents and visitors on how to reduce their water usage.

An interactive by National Geographic has been featured here before, and here's the link.

I shall also be using some ideas from our rather fine Mission:Explore WATER resource which some of you may not be familiar with. This includes some of Tom MJ's wonderful inkings. It's 78 pages long, and the 5Mb PDF can be yours to download by clicking here.

Thanks to Jo Payne for sharing some work she had done, and also to Ben Hennig for consultation over some maps. Also, though not linked to Cape Town, check out the WATER DIARIES resources on Jordan for more watery inspiration.


Illustration copyright: Tom Morgan-Jones

Guy's rants

Thanks to Simon Renshaw for directing me towards the website of Guy Watson.

Guy is the owner of Riverford Organics, so obviously has an interest in promoting his own approach to farming, and has had time to develop and build his business to the point where it is now.

A series of his 'rants' can be found on YouTube, and some of them would make useful provocations or introductions to thinking about agriculture. I haven't watched them all, so can't guarantee the odd bit of (organic) fruity language...

Iceland and Palm Oil

The supermarket not the country...

BREAKING NEWS: We're the UK's first supermarket to commit to removing #palmoil from our own label products by the end of this year! Watch here to find out why...#PalmOilAlarmCall pic.twitter.com/hfGvH2QRDW

— Iceland Foods ❄️ (@IcelandFoods) April 10, 2018

125 top Geotips from Mr. Parkinson

For the 125 days leading up to the conference, as part of the #125GA celebrations, there was a daily tweet offering a Top Tip for Geographers, with a tag #125geotips. These were on all sorts of geographical themes.
Thanks to the tens of thousands of people who read them and responded to them over on Twitter, but for those who don't use Twitter, here's all 125 collated for you. The hyperlink will take you through to the original tweet with all the relevant images and links to the resources.

125 Top Tips for the Geographical Association’s 125th Anniversary Celebrations by GeoBlogs on Scribd

GA Conference 2018 - Mr. P and Mrs M attending...

One of the things that happened over the Easter holiday was the GA Conference.

This featured a workshop of the GI Learner project that the school is involved in.

Mr. Parkinson was involved in the workshop at the conference sharing some of the outcomes from our GI Learner ERASMUS project. Thanks to those who came along to the workshop.

Here's Karl Donert and Luc Zwartjes finalising things...


Check out the materials here.

There is a final meeting for the project in Ghent in June, and as part of that we are presenting some of the work, and working with teachers who attend the event.

This will include a grant for those teachers who want to come along, and for teachers in the UK, and other countries outside of Belgium, there is a grant of €150 for attending, which should pay for transport and accommodation, as it's a 1 day event, so manageable from London in a single day for example, given the good train connection and the link with Eurostar.
Teachers are asked to pay €50 to secure a place, and once they attend the event, they will receive a payment of €150.

There are 20 grants available, and these are available on a first come, first served basis....

See the details below for what you need to do if you want to join me in Ghent in June.

Final conference Ghent from GeoBlogs

Image: Alan Parkinson