Webinar on the drainage of the Fens

Free to register on Eventbrite.





Today's Fenland landscape is essentially the creation of the past 500 years, although some evidence of Roman and early medieval attempts at reclamation can still be seen. This talk explores how successive generations have tried to secure the Fens against flooding, from Vermuyden's work in the 17th century through windmill drainage in the18th, steam in the 19th to diesel and electric power in the 20th, and then the major works that followed the 1947 floods.

Throughout much of the period drainage was further handicapped by administrative confusion and conflicts of interest, for example between drainage and navigation and the hostility of King's Lynn towards inland works that could adversely affect the harbour and the Ouse outfall into the Wash.

This outwardly simple landscape of straight lines and great skies has a hidden complexity: every dyke, field, road, railway and building has a rich story to tell, if you know where to look.

IB DP Webinars

During this term of lock down, Richard Allaway and Matt Podbury have been doing a double act to support the global IB DP community.
Think 'Reeves and Mortimer' rather than "Laurel and Hardy'....

Richard's site: Geography all the Way has a fantastic range of materials for teaching a whole range of age groups. Most areas of the site, which has built up over many years, remains free, and the IB area is one of the few areas that is subscription based, but well worth the small amount to gain access - think how much money you're saving by not using glue sticks, photocopier etc.

Similarly Matt Podbury has a wonderful site: GeographyPods which is largely free, but has a relatively new IB area which is behind a paywall to help support the development of further new materials for the wider teaching community.

Both sites are well worth paying the small subscription fee from departmental budgets.

You can watch a repeat of each webinar on this link here. 
You will also see that there are links to the earlier webinars and associated references.

It was good to see so many people joining in. I managed to speak to colleagues from France, Switzerland, Guernsey, UK, Brazil, Poland, Canada, Qatar, North Cyprus, Hong Kong, Singapore, Netherlands, Philippines, Cambodia, Norway, Switzerland, Ghana, India, Poland and Kazakhastan.

For ease, here's the first run through of the slide deck, which I think was the best one.
I didn't realise I'd be seen alongside the slides on the recording so excuse any gurning...



Feedback welcome.

The Slides themselves can be viewed here.

Full disclosure: as I contributed resources / ideas to both sites, Rich and Matt have kindly given me a free subscription to access their sites, which has allowed me to see their contents and comment on their usefulness for IB colleagues.

Hywel Roberts Webinar

Hywel Roberts is running a webinar on the use of narratives in teaching, drawing on his work in this area with a number of other educators. It is described as a reverie.

The link to the webinar is here.

It's free, and having been fortunate to see Hywel present his ideas in person, I'll certainly be making every effort to listen in to this one.