Summer post 7: What lies beneath Antarctica's Ice

The Atlantic Video Land Unseen: What's Beneath Antarctica's Ice? Jun 07, 2013 | Rebecca J. Rosen Peel back the snow and ice and explore the planet's most remote continent. Courtesy of NASA

Summer post 6: The Internet in Real time...

Visit this site, and see how quickly the internet accumulates data and other assets...

Summer post 5: Lego on the beach...

There are currently thousands of shipping containers floating around the world's oceans, which have been lost from ships.
Some of them have captured the imagination of people because of their contents and the way that they are being spread around the world. This includes the container full of bath toys that was turned into the book Moby Duck.
If you're down on Perran beach in Cornwall, keep an eye out for Lego pieces.

Check out the LEGO LOST AT SEA Facebook page too for more on this theme.

The Lego Movie is out on DVD today... awesome...

Summer post 4: Globalised Tour de France

Two weeks into the Tour de France, and the French are doing very well this year. However, we explored how globalised the race has become.
Now National Geographic have created this excellent interactive which shows just how much more Globalised the race has become over time.
Visit the page and scroll down to read the story...

Summer post 3: Ocean plastics map from the National Geographic

One of the things I did when working as a freelance geographer before joining King's was work on some things for National Geographic. My friend Dan is one of their explorers, and we worked on some ideas for exploring places based on our Mission:Explore work that you'll remember from the Big Outdoors Day and Humphries Challenge.

The National Geographic's Education site is a great place to visit to find out about the world and some of the good news (and bad news) stories that are happening.
One story this week was about the state of the world's oceans and in particular the amount of plastic that is floating around in them.

It shows the areas where plastic accumulates in large areas called gyres...

What could we do to improve this situation ?

Summer post 2: It's a plastic World

The Geography of our Stuff.... how much of it is made of plastic or packaged in plastic... ?


It's a plastic world - English from It's a plastic world on Vimeo.

Summer post 1: The Environmental impact of your Hamburger

Ready for the new You are what you Eat unit next year...
Can you research other foods ?

by bsehenuk.

400 up...

That's the end of the first year of blogging here at GeographyTeacher 2.0

400 posts have been written during the first year, and we've had over 13 000 visitors.
We're taking a break now for the summer, and I'll be back at the end of August as we gear up for the start of the new Academic year.
You can follow the blog by entering an e-mail top right... That way you won't miss a single post.

Thanks for reading... and have a great summer...

Climbing a mountain....

Just before the end of term, I was contacted by my friend Dan Raven Ellison. He's a geographer, and one of National Geographic's Emerging Explorers.
We've worked together on a few projects such as Mission:Explore, which you'll remember featured in the Big Outdoors Day, and was also the format for the Year 7's Prep book during the Lent term.
This summer, Dan is going to be involved in the StepUp Mountain Challenge
Visit the site above and you may see some familiar uniforms getting in some practice for climbing lots of stairs.

After the summer we're going to be getting involved with the challenge by climbing the height of a mountain during one of our geography lessons when we explore the idea of landscapes.

Just have to choose a mountain now... may go for my favourite one....
Here's some of 7QP getting in training...

Get involved with the hashtag #StepUpMountain

If you want to get involved, visit the site for the details:

Inspired by Daniel’s urban expedition, Ordnance Survey have created this great step mountain calculator mapping tool to help you step up to the mountain challenge and calculate the buildings or mountains you have climbed the equivalent height of:
Type in the number of steps you have climbed. This could be on your own, as a team, in an hour or over a year.
The calculator will show you on a map the name of building and mountains that you have ascended the height of.

To follow Daniel’s expedition to step up to the height of Mount Everest you can follow him on Twitter at @DanRavenEllison #StepUpMountain

He would love to hear what you are planning and have achieved!

ArcGIS Online - new for 2014-15

For the last few months now, we've had a school subscription to ArcGIS Online, and we'll be starting to use this more often in the new school year.

We'll have a new StoryMap showing the school site ready for the new school year, and this will be something we'll be using in as many year groups as possible.

You can check it out for yourself free of charge. Visit the website above and click MAKE A MAP.
There's plenty of guidance online.

End of term - 3 of 3

I've just come to the end of my first year back in the classroom after five years of work with the Geographical Association, and then as a freelance geographer, which saw me working for the Open University, running courses in Salzburg, getting involved in EU funded projects which took me around Europe and Scandinavia, and writing materials for a whole range of organisations including the BBC, Google, National Geographic and the Ordnance Survey.
It's been great to be back in the classroom, and start learning all over again.

I've enjoyed teaching through some units for the first time, and preparing some new resources.
I've enjoyed writing this blog.
I've enjoyed working with new colleagues, and learning the routines of a new school.
I've enjoyed the outcomes and seeing the exciting work produced by KEJ pupils, and been buoyed by their enthusiasm
I've enjoyed a variety of trips: Flatford Mill, Kew Gardens, The Big Outdoors Day, Castles, Oliver Cromwell's House and more.
I've enjoyed being 7QPs form tutor and getting involved in Queen Phillippa house events
I've enjoyed driving through the Fens in all four seasons... sometimes on the same day...

The term ended with several prize-giving assemblies and the End of Year service in the cathedral.

Image: Alan Parkinson

And now, I'm looking forward to enjoying a break from teaching, which I'm mostly spending writing new resources for a range of projects, and updating and refreshing all the resources we use ready for the new academic year.
See you in September! 

(There may be a few new posts here during the summer to include interesting items of note relevant to the curriculum at KEJ, otherwise I shall return at the end of August as we start getting ready for the new academic year...)

End of term - 2 of 3

Over the summer, there will be a lot of work continuing as always. That has already begun with the clearing of the room. There are going to be some changes to the Junior school classroom, as well as some new facilities in Old Hereward. These will allow us to organise our resources more effectively, and also improve the facilities for students at King's.

Thanks also to the ICT team for their work which will improve the wifi and internet access, and also add some speed to my classroom computer, which is also now loaded with options for mirroring iPads a little more than we have previously done.

Thanks to all those of you who have visited the blog. There have been just under 400 posts added here during the year, and I've had over 13 000 page views.
This has a way to go to catch Living Geography's 1.2 million views, but we're on the way.

Here's a tune for the summer:

Tour de France 2014

We mentioned the Tour de France as one of our global sporting events that was taking place over the summer.

I hope some King's students and staff will be heading for Cambridge, or places further south, to watch the stage of the Tour de France on Monday. I know that some of you have also been in Yorkshire to see it.

Two merits to kick off the year for anyone who sends me a photo from the tour over the next few days via my school email, especially ones which show how globalised the event is.

End of term - 1 of 3

In the last few days, we've had a few visitors to the department who've come in to take a look at what we've been getting up to.
They've been very impressed by the work of students at King's Ely, the facilities that we have here, and also the work done by staff.
As you'll know from the signs up around the department, we are a Geographical Association Centre of Excellence for Global Learning.
This means that we have been judged to have met some very strict criteria relating to the quality of the geography teaching across the department, and the work of the students.

One of the final events of the year was the Open Morning on Saturday the 28th of June.
Thanks to all those who came along.

Here are a few images of the room, and my new teaching partner for the day...

We offered a range of activities:
- mapping where in Europe where visitors had been
- telling us where the coldest place was that you had ever been
- OS maps of special places
- example entries from our Young Geographer of the Year competition
- storybooks
- Top Trump games to play
- examples of student work from our Year 8 You are what you eat topic

We couldn't quite compete with the Daleks though :)

Bordering on genius...

Year 8 have been finishing off the year with a look at WALLS: the boundaries and borders that have fragmented the world and are the cause of a great deal of conflict. Next year, we are planning to develop this a little further.

We've explored the eco-boundaries which were erected around some of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro in advance of the World Cup, and also started to think about other boundaries such as North Korea and South Korea, and the Syrian/Israeli walls (in the news again today)

One of the resources that we made use of was the Institute of Play's Toolkit.
My summer reading includes this book, which explores some of the issues in more detail.
And just to show how up to date this is, there have been a number of recent stories about the US-Mexican border in the last few days. This has been linked with ISIS: and mirrors some of the issues explored in the book, but brings them up to date.

After tweeting an image of the book and describing it, I was contacted by the book's author, so we may well have some further insights next year when we repeat the teaching of the unit. It's a reminder that social media offers the chance to engage in dialogue with people in new and exciting ways.