A prayer for Peace

From the King's Ely Chaplain - Revd. Dr. Lane

Holy and Gracious God

We pray for the people of the Ukraine and the people of Russia; for their countries and their leaders.

We pray for all those who are afraid; that your everlasting arms hold them in this time of great fear.

We pray for all those who have the power over life and death; that they will choose for all people life, and life in all its fullness.

We pray for those who choose war; that they will remember that you direct your people to turn our swords into ploughshares and seek for peace.

We pray for leaders on the world stage; that they are inspired by the wisdom and courage of Christ.

Above all, Lord, today we pray for peace for Ukraine.

And we ask this in the name of your blessed Son.

Lord have mercy.

Amen

Job vacancy in King's Ely Senior

Within King's we have a pre-school, Junior and Senior School as well as an International School.

We currently have an exciting vacancy in the Senior part of the school which means you get a chance to work with me at my school. 

The job is shown below, and the link to the vacancy page is here.

If you are interested, feel free to get in touch with any queries.

Rana Plaza trial about to start

In 2013, when I joined King's Ely, I introduced a unit drawing on the work of Fashion Revolution: an organisation that started on the day of the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh in April 2013.

The owner of the factory fled after the collapse, and was eventually arrested but actually charged initially with tax offenses rather than mass murder...

The Rana Plaza collapse was one of several similar incidents, some including fires rather than collapses, and people trapped by poor attention to health and safety.

Ian Cook et al completed some work exploring the lead up to the collapse, using LEGO reconstructions.

A few weeks ago, someone tweeted from the Dhaka Tribune that the murder trial is finally going to get underway and over 500 witnesses are going to be called.

Gigi the Giraffe - Fairtrade Fortnight 2022

 

Another Fairtrade Fortnight is almost here. We always try to get involved where possible.

This year the focus is on Coffee and Gigi the Giraffe is your guide.

GeoGuessr

I've just sorted a PRO subscription to the GeoGuessr site for the department. Several students requested it a while back.

I used to play this when it first came out in 2013. It was developed by Anton Wallén, and was originally free, but has moved to a subscription based model and now has a thriving community and a whole range of boards and challenges, including trying to identify countries in a streak as well as a daily challenge.

There is also the option to create your own map using the Map Maker tool.

There are lots of sites giving tips on how to identify countries from a range of clues.

It also makes use of Google Street View, which doesn't cover the whole world of course. A map of the coverage is here.

Interestingly, the game gained a lot of additional popularity during lockdown when people started playing it as a way of 'travelling the world'.

This article looks at the value of playing the game, particularly during lockdown.

There are some very sophisticated groups out there such as GeoTips, who have their own Discord server for keeping track of activity and World Record attempts.

There are also Twitch streamers who play the game live, perhaps in Battle Royale mode, where you compete against other players to identify locations the soonest.

Any other GeoGuessr tips and ideas welcome.

Valentine's Flowers

Year 8 are looking at the story lying behind the flowers which will be arriving in florists and supermarkets ahead of the 14th of February. I used this Google Form a while back to collect data on the places where people were buying flowers as it came to Valentine's Day. This is for a piece of work with Year 8 students.

The original toolkit book by Louise Ellis can be seen here in the GA shop.