The Fens

I was interested in the way that the Fens are represented by people, as they are a man-made landscape. They produce a certain response to people.
In books like 'Waterland' by Graham Swift, they are referred to in particular ways, using particular language.
I asked people in my PLN to let me know what the Fens meant to them.
Some of them are local, and others aren't - some have family in the area, some live in the area...

This is a Wordle of the responses that I got from people:

Word Cloud generated by Worldle.net 
Or this Tagul Cloud

More to come on this as the unit develops...

Icons of England

Year 5 and 6 Explorers (in the weekly activities slot) are starting the summer term of exploration with a look at Great Britain (as we run up to the Queen's 90th Birthday). Today, I went through 100 icons of England as voted for in a web poll some time ago (I used it as part of my Pilot GCSE unit on the representation of places). There are also connections to be made with this year's title for the 'Young Geographer of the Year' competition, which looks at changes in Britain (full details should appear in the next week or so)

Students were asked to identify the icons they'd heard of from the list, and those they hadn't. I did a quick whistle-stop tour of all those they hadn't... and they were then asked to identify their chosen Top 10. This is the collation of the whole group's choices.

We will be researching these next week, to produce a visual collage representing Britain, and then focussing on Ely...

Made with Tagxedo.

Cold as...

Year 8s have been creating Tagxedo / Wordle clouds on the theme of 'cold'...
Here's Joshua's...

Word Clouds

How many words for 'COLD' or similar feelings can you think of?

Freezing ?
Icy ?
Shivering ?

Create a Word Cloud in an icy colour scheme and appropriate shape if you like to sum up the idea of 'Cold'...
Use a Word Cloud generator.
There's some suggestions here:
a) Wordle
b) Tagxedo 
c) Jason Davies WordCloud generator
d) TagCrowd


There are quite a few others that can be found using a web search e.g. Tagul, which requires a log-in, but creates an embeddable result.... as below...

Created with Tagul.com

Not all of these will work on an iPad - there are apps for iPads and other tablets too... such as WordFoto and WordPack

Hint: Use a THESAURUS to find some weird and wonderful words...

Cities: an introduction...

Wordle.net 

Ready for next week - a word cloud to sum up people's thoughts on the characteristics of urban areas...

Here's one for LONDON...

This was made with TAGXEDO instead of Wordle.

Which city do you know the best ?
Could you produce a word cloud that would sum it up ?

Or 

Could you create some game cards for TABOO for cities ?
How would  you describe PARIS without using the words 'Eiffel', 'Notre Dame', 'Sacre Coeur', 'Arc de Triomphe' or 'The Seine' ?
Do these places really represent Paris anyway ?

Plenty to discuss, which we'll be doing in the Cities unit...