GI Learner - the project poster

We have been involved in this ERASMUS+ funded project for the last three years, and have been involved in getting the final report underway the last few months, with lots of admin and other last minute work to get the findings so that they can support as many other teachers as possible.
Here's the details for you.

Poster GI Learner1 English by GeoBlogs on Scribd

Uganda Marathon charity

Over to the Cathedral for the mid-term service on Friday, and to hand over a cheque to a representative from the Uganda Marathon for over £23 000 !!!

It was lovely to see our Miss Kyndt up on the stage as she was one of the King's Ely runners who made their way over to Uganda earlier in the year, and braved the course.

We are very proud of what we've achieved as a school.

Transmission Antarctica

Aral Sea and Fast Fashion

When I first started teaching back in the 1980s (I know), a key case study for environmental change, and also the management of water resources, was the decline in the Aral Sea. I had an old VHS tape which followed the tale of the sea's shrinking, with details of the canning factories which were closed, and the ships which were left stranded in the desert that consumed the area. Nick Middleton later visited during his 'Going to Extremes' series, which we also used to show (and there is a matching book also)
He visits Voz Island, which is contaminated due to its location where salt has been exposed at the surface as the sea evaporated....



A Global Oneness project resource explores the latest ideas relating to the Aral Sea too, and there are some useful resources here.
Images by Taylor Weidman are used in this resource.

The tourism aspects of the Aral Sea were picked up in a recent Guardian article too, which shows the possible rehabilitation of this environment, which also could be used as a venue for a music festival. This sounds like an interesting opportunity for the region, and moves away from the idea of dark or disaster tourism.
Interesting description of the area though:
Visitors to Moynaq, a forlorn Uzbek town, are usually disaster tourists coming to gawk at the desolation of the apocalyptic landscape, where the carcasses of ships rot on sand once covered by the world’s fourth-largest lake.

You can see the changing Aral in NASA images from the Earthshots website.
A quick check on ESRI StoryMaps library reveals this map too.


Also in the recent (and rather wonderful) William Atkins book on deserts, there are some alternative perspectives on the area, with a fantastic chapter on the Aral Sea, which is really worth reading.
The area could be turning round, and there are hopes that the sea may begin to grow again in the future.

And the Aral Sea came back to TV tonight with its inclusion in Stacy Dooley's Fast Fashion documentary.

Stacey Dooley travels the world to uncover the hidden costs of the addiction to fast fashion. She sees for herself how toxic chemicals released by the garment industry pollute waterways that millions of people rely on. She witnesses the former Aral Sea, once one of the largest bodies of fresh water, now reduced almost entirely to dust.

These are shocking discoveries likely to make you think twice about whether you really need those new clothes.

A lot of people on Twitter were amazed that an entire sea could disappear just to provide cotton. Just ask a geographer if you want to know more...

GI Learner Curriculum Report

One of the outputs from the GI Learner project, which included King's Ely as a partner, has been the curriculum report on GI thinking which is linked to below. A very useful document, and one which took a great deal of thought and effort. There are translated versions in all the partner languages, and these can be obtained from the GI Learner website.

GI Learner O7 English by GeoBlogs on Scribd

Armistice Project

One for King's Ely Staff, Students and Parents (and Old Eleans) only please.

Arm100 Poster 2 by GeoBlogs on Scribd

UK in 100 Seconds

We showed this video to Year 11 yesterday, and it provoked a great response.

We started with the trailer and the description of the film.
Dan had been to visit us in school last year, so we were pleased that he was in the film.

The UK in 100 Seconds - Behind the scenes from Friends of the Earth on Vimeo.

We then gave out an updated version of the CEH Land Use cover map. The Hodder textbook that we had was a 2007 version of the map as that was the most up to date at the time.

The 2 maps can be compared.

Students were asked to guess what percentage of the UK would be greater than 1% and then feature on the film (we had a copy of the data at the end to give them once the film was shown)

Finally, we shared the link to the ESRI map which accompanies the film, (seen above) and then showed the main event: the film with Ben Zephaniah narration...

The UK in 100 seconds from Friends of the Earth on Vimeo.

UK has cheap food ... for how much longer

An interesting BBC News article which comes with a range of  useful statistics and other commentary on some of the reasons why the UK currently enjoys the cheapest food prices in Western Europe: a combination of human and physical geography one could argue..

Should tourism be banned in Antarctica?

A question that Year 8 are considering.
Should we deprive people of the chance to see these sights? and sites?