I’ve been very slow off the mark in blogging for/with my own students, compared to many of my online teacher friends and colleagues. That’s set to change with a new blog:
I’m going to use the blog in three ways. Firstly to link to various online materials that could be interesting or useful to the students. Secondly, I’d like to host some examples of student work. Finally, I’m hoping that it will provide an opportunity for those dialogues that could/should take place outside the classroom but never actually materialize. For example the comments could be used to discuss matters arising from homework assignments, examinations or current affairs. I guess we shall see.
I’m very grateful to Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith of digitally distributed environments for the opportunity given to a class of Year 7 students to design a fantasy building for London. Three of the winning drawings will be modelled in 3D by the team at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, ready to be imported into Google Earth.
One of the submitted designs
Look out for SketchUp. Recently acquired by Google, this software is ideal for adding 3D models to Google Earth. A free license is available for teachers, and there’s a lot of scope for cross-curriculular work with ICT and Design Technology.
I’ve just completed an article on the use of Google Earth as a teaching tool to make decisions about wind farm locations. Read article: Investigating Wind Energy with Google Earth
The suggested activites make use of a number of web sites. Creative Commons images linked to Google Earth come from Geograph. The MAGIC interactive map, an excellent UK government resource provides geographic information on a wide range of environmental themes. The lesson also uses the DTI wind speed database.
Investigating Wind Energy gets students to use a number of fairly simple, yet powerful applications to arrive at a decision about a site for a wind farm. They are handling real geographical data, giving the task lots of credibility. Wind energy is an emotive subject and the exercise will get students to question their own values and attitudes. There is plenty to challenge students of different abilities along with an option to extend the activity with some simple modelling in Sketch Up and Photoshop Elements.
I would welcome feedback!
Simon Renshaw has sent a really well-executed Google Tour of the Holderness coast.
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This is a classic coastal place study, and the tour makes use of map extracts and the excellent photgraphs by Andrew Stacey.
Excellent effort!
A class of (very) mixed ability year 8 students have begun work on my San Francisco decision-making exercise.
After the first session they have come up with some suggested sites for a new hospital, designed to be safe from earthquakes. Download the file here
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The original lesson resource is here
Next lesson we will have a little peer assessment and the opportunity to improve and refine their decisions.
Any feedback is most welcome and will be passed to the students.
Thanks to a recent post at SLN, I’ve discovered Maplecroft Maps. This is a remarkable site that serves up attractive, interactive maps on a variety of environmental, social, economic and polictical themes.
Close analysis of the data is encouraged; one can overlay maps in order to discern relationships between data sets, and a hotspot icon draws attention to critical information.
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The maps examine the response of business and government to the various issues, and icons describe cases of particularly good, or by contrast, poor examples of corporate responsibility.
The site will appeal across the KS3/4 geography curriculum, particularly for more able students with an inquisitive nature, and should be indispensible to A level students looking for material on sustainable development.
It’s an old technique - but fun nevertheless. Take a photograph, for example this picture of a high rise block in West London.
Now copy the picture into PowerPoint. Plug a microphone into your PC and get students to add their voice annotations using the Insert / Movies and Sounds / Record Sound path. The results can be interesting.
Download a Powerpoint file
View the slideshow and click the audio icons to hear the student’s impressions of life in the Trellick Tower.
This file was made by a group of Year 7 students studying the topic of settlement. The students themselves are from a small rural town in Somerset, UK.
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