Earth NullSchool - now available as an app

Earth NullSchool is probably in the top five websites I've used in my teaching over the years, alongside sites like Digimap for Schools and Google Earth.

It is now available as an app for iOS and Android.

It works perfectly in landscape or portrait format on your device, and has all the same features as the desktop / web browser version.

Toporopa

A site with map quizzes. Suitable for KS1 and 2 pupils.

The focus is on learning the geography of Europe.

Biome Viewer

Thanks to Hannah Steel for the link to this useful visualisation tool.

Biomeviewer displays a range of information in a visual way.

It's really useful for identifying biomes in a general way, and rotating the globe to see where they are located and identifying their characteristics.

There are accompanying resources in a folder, student worksheet and apparently an iOS app too.

The worksheet takes students through the various features which are built into the app.

You can also explore anthromes: anthropogenic biomes. These are where the majority of humanity lives.

A classification proposed by E.C. Ellis, October 25, 2005 lists them. Minimum mapping scale greater than or equal to one square kilometer.

Source: https://ecotope.org/about/anthropogenic_landscapes/

There is a lot more information and some useful maps on this website too, which is the new home of the previous link. Lovely work and I now want to do something with this as well...

AI Mapping

I'm starting to explore a few AI related avenues for a project I'm going to be involved in for the next few months. 

I'm interested in the ethics of using AI when teaching geographical topics, and the implications for students' understanding of the world if they are exposed to images, text and other information which have been AI generated.

So far, we have had the launch of several large language models (LLMs) such as Chat GPT and a number of image models such as Dall-E and Midjourney. The map below was actually generated by Adobe Creative Cloud / Firefly for Education, which I have access to via school.

The prompt was: "A map of Europe, with the letters A and I hovering over it in gold with rainbow edges".

Adding a Structure Reference and regenerating created this output.

Quite a few people have shared how they use prompts to elicit certain outcomes from LLMs in a geography context. But should we be using it in our teaching and if so, what disclaimers should we display when we have used it? 

One ethical issue for me that should be considered is that of plagiarism, and the use of authors' works to 'train' the models without their permission. Using AI isn't developing students' geographical knowledge or imagination.

There are also issues with image generation. Models can't handle the fine detail of letters and other graphical content, or the fine details such as how many fingers on a person is too many.

There are some early map creators that have been developed and made free of charge. One is called PROXI, but doesn't seem to do a great deal that a simple tool like ArcGIS Online could do with a few clicks anyway.

A guide to Proxi is here.

Here's an output: a map of second hand book shops in Iceland - I made a map of Iceland to test it out.

powered by Proxi

There are going to be further developments happening at pace in this area one imagines, which will make it hard to keep up, but at the heart of it is the question of if and how we should be using this with young people, particularly when we are linking them with geographical information.

Mariana Mazzucato is professor of economics at UCL, and director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. 
She wrote this piece for the Guardian on the growing environmental costs of AI due to the energy needs of data centres.

This is another issue to consider - our online lives are having an impact which is not obvious. Even posting this blog post, and you taking time to read it right now has had an environmental impact and a carbon cost. Storing and caching this webpage for an inderterminate period of time will continue that impact.

AI's models use vast amounts of electricity and computational power.

Rather than come up with solutions to the climate crisis, it is likely to create further disinformation.

I also downloaded a keynote presentation from the recent EuroGeo Conference which was given by Nico van der Weghe from Gent University. It includes some useful ideas.

Please have a think and send through any relevant links.

Thanks to Bob Lang for sending a range of links already, which I will perhaps add in a follow-up post when I get a moment.

To finish, I like this sentiment from Joanna Maciejewska

"I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes".

All aboard the Windrush line

 

A lot of coverage of this story this week, not all of it positive. 

Londoners have become very familiar with the names of the underground lines, including the new Elizabeth Line (originally Cross Rail) and the Jubilee line (with their Royal choice of names). Now Sadiq Khan has outlined new names for the overground lines to aid discussions about particular routes - Londoners and visitors will quickly adapt to their new names, but there have been some predictable moans about the nature of the names... from the usual suspects.

In Year 7, we study the story of the Windrush generation, through the use of the book 'Windrush Child' from the late Benjamin Zephaniah.

This BBC News page explains what the names of each of the lines means.

Image source: Transport for London

The Windrush Line will run through several areas associated with the Windrush migrants (in London at least).

Ordnance Survey survey on teacher needs

I've been involved with the OS in numerous ways over the years: as a GetOutside Champion, author of support resources for Digimap for Schools and Digimap for Colleges / Mapstream. Also as an author of articles for Mapping News and other support for various campaigns and activities.

For many years Ordnance Survey has delivered support for education to encourage the awareness and use of high-quality geospatial data in the education sector and since 2020 this has been through an Education Plan, funded through the UK Government's Geospatial Commission (GC).
They are keen to gather evidence about how this has so far supported the work of teachers and consider what more they could be doing in this area. 

They would also like to understand what other training tools geography teachers currently access and the barriers that may be in place when using geographic information systems (GIS).


They are asking for 15 minutes (or so) of your time to complete a short survey. 

The survey is open to all geography teachers until Friday 8 December and the findings from it will help them to consider how to develop the Education Plan.

Complete the survey on this link.

Mapping Windrush

A new resource from the National Archives.

This is perfect for our unit on 'Windrush Child'.

We’re excited to launch our new resource, Mapping Caribbean Migration to Britain.

This resource traces passenger journey’s on three post-war ships, the Ormonde, Almanzora, and Empire Windrush, through a series of interactive maps.

Discover more: https://t.co/qSogHFuT4N#BHM

— The National Archives (@UkNatArchives) October 20, 2023

The iconic Empire Windrush passenger list acts as a gateway into the personal migration stories of those on board. It is an invaluable record as it provides a wealth of information about the passengers, such as their names, ages, occupations, onward addresses, and their last country of residence. Although not the first ship to carry migrants from the Caribbean, the Empire Windrush is symbolic of the wider story of post-war migration to Britain.

The ship visited numerous ports on its route to Tilbury docks in 1948. The first port that passengers embarked at was Port of Spain (Trinidad), followed by Kingston (Jamaica), Tampico (Mexico), Havana (Cuba), and Bermuda, before crossing the Atlantic to reach Tilbury Docks. Passengers disembarked at Tilbury on 22 June 1948. There were 1,027 passengers onboard the ship, all with their own personal story.

There was a diverse range of people onboard the Empire Windrush. Although the passengers were mostly male, there were also women and children onboard. They ranged in age from just six weeks old to 80, and travelled in different capacities. Some passengers travelled with their families, some alone.

Passengers also travelled to Britain for a variety of reasons. Some migrated to Britain to seek new opportunities and economic stability, others were joining family and friends. The extraction of resources from the Caribbean by the British contributed to the poor economic situation in the Caribbean, which influenced post-war migration to Britain too.

Over 800 people gave their last country of residence as somewhere in the Caribbean. A common misconception is that all passengers were migrating from Jamaica. However, people migrated from numerous islands in the Caribbean including Trinidad, St Lucia, Grenada and Barbados, as well as Jamaica.

The British government initially encouraged migration from its colonies and Commonwealth countries to boost the workforce after the Second World War. In 1948 it passed the British Nationality Act, which created the status of ‘Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies’. This new legislation around citizenship aided post-war migration to Britain, as it gave people from British colonies the right to live and work in Britain.

 

New Polar maps from the British Antarctic Survey

The Arctic and Antarctic are changing so rapidly that the maps need updating regularly. This work is completed by the British Antarctic Survey. I have one of their maps for my department, but perhaps need the latest now to replace it (or for comparison).

Today our cartographers released new Antarctic and Arctic maps - with lots of changes to these fast changing and fragile places:

🧊 ice sheet loss
🌊 new sea ice data
📌 using indigenous town names in the Canadian Arctic#WorldOceansDay #climatechangehttps://t.co/GNfe2F5BEF

— British Antarctic Survey 🐧 (@BAS_News) June 8, 2023

The BAS have just released some new maps.

News here.

Young Geographer of the Year Competition 2023

Around about the time of the GA Conference, the theme of the Royal Geographical Society's Young Geographer of the Year award is revealed. 

The new theme is now revealed.

We always use this competition as a focus for the final month or so of the Summer term, when lessons are often disrupted by trips and other events, and this forms a useful basis for some lovely class work. Students have time to complete their entries over the summer and we then collect them in in September and have an in-school competition judging and then send off the best entries.

The Young Geographer of the Year is the Society’s annual competition which recognises the outstanding work of the next generation of geographers. With its age ranges spanning the primary years to A Level, the competition encourages thoughtful and creative answers to the competition’s theme which is set each year.

The Society encourages schools to run their own in-house competition and then send their top 10 entries into the national competition. The Young Geographer competition has been running for over 20 years and in 2020 over 10,000 young people took part.

The theme for the Young Geographer of the Year competition 2023 is:

A blueprint for the future

The Society invites students from KS2 to KS5 to create their own blueprint for the future. 

They are looking for innovative ideas to address problems in areas such as food production and supply, energy and sustainability, water security, resources, population growth, economic crisis, transport, travel, urbanisation, risk management, trade, environmental management, biodiversity and more. 

Your ideas and recommendations should be forward-thinking, taking into consideration the depth of the problems and the reasons behind them, as well as what can be done to mitigate them. 

Your blueprint for the future could be a design for an eco-city, or a plan to produce and distribute enough food to feed the world. It could be a look at the future of energy and how we can produce enough energy sustainably without harming the environment, or a plan to revolutionise travel and transport in your country or beyond. 

Your plan must be realistic, but we welcome ideas for futuristic strategies and new technologies.

Details of the competition are here.

To get an idea of the standard of entries of last year's winners, head here.

Entering the competition

The competition has four categories.

Key Stage 2 (pupils aged 7-11)

Key Stage 3 (pupils aged 11-14)

Key Stage 4 or GCSE (pupils aged 14-16)

Key Stage 5 or A Level (pupils aged 16-18)

Students should enter the Key Stage category they will be in on 30 June 2023. 

The deadline for receipt of all entries is Monday 2 October 2023 at 5.00pm. 

Entries received after this time will not be accepted. The RGS encourages schools to run an in-house competition and only send their top 10 entries into the national competition. 

All winners and highly commended students will be invited to an Awards Ceremony at the Society in London on Friday 8 December 2023.

The general entry criteria are the same as usual

KS2, KS3 and KS4 students should produce an A3 size poster entry. 

This can be handmade (then submitted electronically using a scanned copy or photograph) or using PowerPoint, Word, Publisher or PDF, etc. KS5 students should produce an Esri Story Map or write an essay – both of which should contain no more than 1,500 words. 

Key Stage 2 criteria: 

Provide your plan for at least one geographical issue, using annotated images, maps or diagrams. 

Key Stage 3 criteria: Provide your plan for at least two or more geographical issues, using annotated images, maps or diagrams. 

Key Stage 4 criteria: Provide your plan for at least three or more geographical issues, using annotated images, maps, diagrams and data. 

Key Stage 5 criteria: Provide your plan for multiple geographical issues, using annotated images, maps, diagrams and data.

Good luck to all those who put together an entry.

Using the new Census 2021 mapping - a student guide

 

Thanks to Ahmad Barclay for the heads-up (once again) on ONS data and map releases from the Census 2021.

📈Big new data release today on #CensusMaps!📉
See how your area has changed over the past 10 years, right down to a neighbourhood levelhttps://t.co/mIj0ahCHBd
1/3 pic.twitter.com/RiBEdwmq9E

— Ahmad Barclay (@bothness) March 7, 2023

These maps are going to be very helpful for a lot of teachers and students. 

I put a quick guide together which you are welcome to use / download / distribute: 

Census data and maps are shared under an Open Government License.

Where are the Jamaicans in England and Wales?

Following our work on 'Windrush Child', the new Census 2021 maps from ONS may help answer that question: 

How has the High Street changed in recent years?

 

This article and interactive from the BBC News website is particularly useful in helping to answer that question and is particularly relevant for our work with Year 7.

Enter a postcode to see which changes have occurred in your local area.

There is also a useful summary showing the changing fortunes of certain shops and services.

The data has been collected by the Ordnance Survey.

Ely High Street mirrors some of these changes to some extent.

The hottest places to live #2

I've previously shared a link during the heat of earlier in the week, which may well return before summer is out.

This BBC article looks at people living in the hottest parts of the country.

This is defined by a data set which is called the Heat Hazard Score.

This could make a useful secondary data set for an NEA.

I will also refer to this when we start back for the new academic year.

Enter a postcode to get a score. I put in my school postcode first, and got a score of 2.

The website also tells you the heatwave threshold for each postcode.

For East Cambridgeshire, this is when temperatures in the postcode area hit 28°C or higher for three consecutive days.

Use Google Street View to explore locations which have a score of 4 or 5 to see what their characteristics are.

This article has an interview with Richard Flemmings, the CTO of 4 Earth Intelligence, who captured the data and created this layer.

Also explore the impacts of heat on transport with this ESRI StoryMap made by the UK team along with the Met Office.

GI Pedagogy Training Course - 4-6 July

Last week I had a meeting of the GI Pedagogy group of partners - which is funded by an ERASMUS+ grant, given by the British Council.

I represent King's Ely on this project, and have completed all the intellectual outputs and supported other partners and worked on a range of work packages.

We have been working on resources and an online teacher training course. 

We now have an opportunity for you to join us for a face to face event in Madrid.

Free training course for secondary teachers - introducing an Innovative Pedagogical Model for Teaching using GIS, July 4-6 2022, Madrid, @GIPedagogy project, some travel grants available - find out more and register at https://t.co/8uy2lRNfpA

— karl_donert (@karldonert) May 19, 2022

The Registration form is here, and you can also request a first-come first-served grant of €200 to help with the cost of attending if you are outside of Spain.

It would be great to have you there. Happy to answer any further questions as well. 

Who made my clothes?

Margaux Bourdon works for Datawrapper and recently put her data visualisation skills to work to show the origins of the contents of her wardrobe.

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.

Competition stimulus

This book is part of a competition for students:

The competition has been put together by the team at Oak National Academy with BAFTA and other organisations' support.

Details on the link.

ArcGIS Atlas Collection - great for home learning

Need an Atlas but not got one in the house?

Check out the digital atlases.

Shared by the ESRI UK Education Team.

A new collection of digital atlases for use in lockdown learning.

Access them all here.

Don't forget that the GA also has its Geography From Home section ready to help as many return to remote teaching for a few weeks at least.

Mapping this Moment

Nate Padavick's Mapping this Moment has been mentioned before. It is one of the extension opportunities on Firefly.
Well done to Aoife for sharing her map of her travels in Rome. I love it.

ONS Map of Covid-19 casualties

As Senior schools begin to explore the geography of the Pandemic... this ONS map is revealing the geographical patterns of fatalities. Remember that each dot here is a person, people, families whose lives have changed forever.