Brazil Olympics 2016

We hope that all KEJ geographers are watching the Olympics, and keeping an eye on their atlas, and working out where the competing nations are from… 

Where is Fiji for example? They won their first Olympic medal yesterday in the Rugby 7s….

Geography on foot...

An interesting article in the Geographical Magazine.

It suggests that walking and exploring your local area is at the heart of all geographical study.
We do a fair bit of walking at King's, but perhaps need to do a little more of it…

Where was the last place you walked to?

Geography is a vigorous discipline, with no real need to justify itself.

Modern human geography is a powerful analytical tool. Physical geography, with its abandonment of Penckian and Davisian concepts has become perhaps more descriptive of phenomena. Geography is also a synthesising discipline and in synthesis unites both aspects of the subject. A study of landscape reveals the fundamental geology, the pedology, the biology (including lichenology), microclimatology, history, and sociology. This can all be achieved by a study of the local area on foot.

It is therefore advocated that all geographical teaching should begin with a study of the immediate vicinity on foot. As in Pestalozzian theory this should commence in the junior school and continue in later education. By so doing the two halves of the subject are reunited. For the individual the learning process is enhanced, and they are given the opportunity to establish a link with the genius loci, to have roots and to belong.

A song for the rain forests

Crystal Serenity - new for the Pole to Pole unit

Countdown to Crystal Serenity: The 1 per cent are coming to Canada’s Arctic https://t.co/616MkOUUsr via @macleansmag pic.twitter.com/RpJ1CEzTWf

— Jane George (@sikugirl) July 19, 2016

This post has been in draft for a couple of months, and the story has evolved since it was first announced. This would now be a useful idea for exploring fragile cold environments.

I'm going to try to develop this as an evolved case study piece, but ran out of time… will come back to this I think

I've just read a Jonathan Franzen piece on Antarctica in the Times which was excellent and worth hunting out...

The Crystal Serenity is a large cruise ship, which is going to boldly go on a voyage this summer, setting off in August 2016… and it's one that all geographers should be fascinated by. The ship is going to sail around the north of Canada, and go through what would have been referred to in the past as the Northwest Passage.
The ship's website has a range of detail on the voyage, which includes the itinerary and the route that the ship is going to take. I won't put it here due to copyright, but it's well worth hunting out and taking a look.

The voyage is rather expensive too (at over $20 000 per person), as all Polar voyages are, and apparently all the places have been booked.

This has attracted a lot of interest given the size of the ship, and also the nature of the voyage, which is a commercial voyage through an area which is being changed by human activity, and the ship may well cause other interruptions to daily life for people who live in the area.

The ship will be accompanied on the voyage by the BAS ship Sir Ernest Shackleton.
This has a heavily armoured hull which can withstand ice, and will also be able to have a
range of additional equipment and potentially help with an evacuation if there is a problem with the cruise ship. There has been some criticism of a scientific ship being used in this way.
There is a Canadian radio show here which includes a useful 30 minute report on the proposed voyage, although it won't be there for ever.

The Guardian has published an article on the voyage, which provides some useful additional information.

However, Klaus Dodds, who specialises in geopolitics has pointed out that there are lots of different perspectives at play in the Arctic, and this is just one of them. This is excellent on how Nunavut and Cambridge Bay is preparing for the visit.

And via Twitter, I came across a useful few tweets with ideas that are relevant, including from people living in the area.

A Pew Trust research report also contains some very useful diagrams and data on the growing changes in the Arctic.

There's a splendid infographic on this National Post article.

And finally, there was a report published recently on the sustainability credentials of cruise holidays, and the impact of these large ships on the sea through which they sail.

PokemonGo Geography ideas

Pokemon Geography ideas collated on Google Drive

Making London a National Park City

Dan Raven Ellison is coming to visit us in September. Here he is talking about his idea of making London a National Park City.

Google Expeditions

We're going to be visited by the Google Expeditions team in the 2nd week of the new school year. Professor Shailey Minocha will be bringing all the gear for us to try out some VR Expeditions experiences.

Google Expeditions (GEs)  are guided tours (field trips) of places that students experience on a smartphone through a virtual reality viewer called Google cardboard. 
GEs are comprised of virtual reality panoramas and are led by a guide or teacher. 
Using a Tablet, teachers can guide up to 50 students wearing the virtual reality (VR) viewers and point out highlights while referring to editable notes.

We will be helping with their research.


The focus of this Google-funded project is to investigate the pedagogical effectiveness of GEs, in biology and geography fieldwork – subjects that have a long tradition of physical fieldwork.

The project aims to answer questions such as: whether virtual field trips can be used effectively to support the teaching and demonstration of fieldwork skills such as experimental design, ecological sampling, recording and analysis of data?; can a VR experience enhance physical fieldwork?; can VR-based field trips support self-directed inquiry-based learning and higher-order thinking?; and what are the perceived barriers, if any, for adoption of VR-based field trips?

The key outcomes from this project will be: evidence-based understanding of whether and how VR-based GEs can complement physical field trips and enable learning and teaching of fieldwork skills; how virtual field trips (VFTs) in VR environments should be designed for their effective use in learning and teaching fieldwork and in CPD; and whether and how VR-based GEs can support a variety of pedagogies. The project will come up with recommendations for the content, and user interface and service designs of VR-based VFTs such as GEs.

Just part of the exciting extra opportunities for King's Ely geographers in the new academic year.

New Lego minifigures

We're looking forward to getting our hands on these new series figures: an Antarctic tourist with Penguin, and a walker with map and compass - great stuff!
At King's Ely we love Lego :)

A visit from Dan Raven Ellison

We are going to be visited by National Geographic Explorer Dan Raven Ellison at the start of the new academic year.
He is currently walking across all the cities and National Parks in the UK, and we will be walking across ELY as part of this project.

Just part of the exciting extra opportunities for King's Ely geographers in the new academic year.

Microclimate Weather Station

We will be using these in the new academic year.

Did I make the most disco (discoest?) bird-faced weather station ever? Yes. Yes I did. #maker #weather @DoItKits pic.twitter.com/ffKrU32Cie

— helenleigh (@helenleigh) July 28, 2016

Just part of the exciting extra opportunities for King's Ely geographers in the new academic year.

Teachmeet RGS - 9th November

There are only a few tickets left for the 2nd Teachmeet to be held at the Royal Geographical Society.
As I have some free time on Wednesday afternoons in my timetable next year, I was able to make the date this time round, and have also signed up to present at the event.
It's the week after the Practical Pedagogies event in Toulouse, so I will be sharing a slimmed down version of my presentation there, on the Power of Geographical Information.

Mission:Explore National Parks - now out...

Members of QP will remember the part they played in the development of the latest Mission:Explore book, which is published in association with National Parks.

There's an excellent Ordnance Survey Blog post here which says a lot of nice things about our Mission:Explore National Parks book. It also features a short video with Steve Backshall.



The Mission:Explore team compiled the book after putting a huge selection of challenges to the vote by schoolchildren, with the favourites selected to be published.

It’s the seventh book the Mission:Explore team have released, since winning the Geovation Challenge in 2010, when they wowed the team with their exciting ideas using geography. If you haven’t come across them before, the project encourages people, and especially children, to see, explore and act in new ways.
Mission:Explore founders saw the subject of geography being marginalised, and in schools and neighbourhoods children’s physical geographies being reduced due to risk aversion. And they wanted to change that.

Rio Olympics - the BBC trailer

The BBC trailer for their Rio Olympics coverage places a lot of emphasis on the wildlife of the Amazon… How relevant is that to the urban locations for the games? Is Brazil defined by the Amazon? Are some of these animals threatened by habitat change? Some interesting discussions to be had…

Ocean Plastics story

A nice story from the very useful A View to Sea blog, which is written by Holly Griffin, a geography graduate.

It's about Ocean Sole: a company that makes sculptures from ocean plastics. They make a range of items

As a bizarre and yet very real phenomenon, thousands and thousands of flipflops are washed up onto the East African coast creating an environmental disaster. Not only spoiling the natural beauty of our beaches and oceans, the rubber soles are swallowed & suffocated on by fish & other animals, they obstruct turtle hatchlings from reaching the sea and are a man-made menace to our fragile ecosystems. 

Our creative team of artisans transforms the discarded flipflops into elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinos, dolphins, sharks, turtles and more. These colourful masterpieces come with an important message about marine conservation whilst bringing smiles to people all over the world.

Have a great summer!

See you in a month or so...
Thanks for reading...

Look forward to being back here next week...