Many thanks to Comrade Cassidy !

From the time that we started on the Pilot GCSE Geography, we have been lucky to have worked with Tony Cassidy and Ingrid Marston at Kirk Hallam Community Technology College. I would recommend that you continue to follow Tony's blog next year (as well as look at back posts... I will tell you all about the Year 11 work once the exam is over...)

Tony has produced a new version of an infamous resource that he produced using 'The Apprentice' as a guide. This is a MEGAQUIZ....
Remember that in the section on MY PLACE, there may be references to a place other than King's Lynn.....

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There are only 10 days to the exam, so you will need to be in TOP GEAR for your revision now...
The final section on GREENLAND will be added tomorrow...

This POST on Tony's blog has the final links to some pre-release assistance that he has added recently...

Simpsons Britain Episode - Tony needs your comments

Tony needs our help. He has a posting on his weblog HERE, which follows a request from an American called Nathan who is asking for our opinions on whether we think the episode really captured what it is like to be British.
Have the Simpsons got Britishness right ?
Spend 5 minutes (no more) of the lesson this week in the ICT room typing a comment to this post with your thoughts. Make sure they are appropriate and are accurately spelt !

Global Culture - Year 11

Yes, with Year 11 we were once again indebted to Tony, whose Global Brand Quiz and powerpoint we were using today as a starter. Cheers once again Tony. My group did ask "do you ever do anything for Tony..." - of course !We discussed the idea that globalisation is leading to a global culture (or is it ?)
Once again we were indebted to Tony.
Are we heading for global culture ? What is the evidence for and against this ?What are the arguments for and against the development of a global culture ?

What is the evidence that a global culture (or it American cultural imperialism ? ) is developing ?

Is McDonalds really **** or not ?
You'll be doing some newspaper pieces this week...

Finally, you need to think about what contribution you are going to make to a multimedia piece on King's Lynn and its cultural diversity...

We will once again compare with other places: Liverpool and Nottingham in particular...

What culture do we have locally ?

Local bands
Local food
Local culture
Local religion
Local ethnic groups
Local celebrities
How do people in other parts of the country view us ?

Multicultural Timeline...

How has Britain developed over the centuries ?
Which groups of migrants have arrived, and from where ?
What are the reasons that they have chosen (or been forced) to move to the UK ?

We used some slides kindly produced by Tony Cassidy today.
Here they are for those of you who couldn't keep up with the task...
Need to do this for next lesson so that we can move forward.
Remember that time is very tight this half term !Also made use of the "This is Geography" books for this task...

Multicultural Britain - Year 11

So today we started to look at the key ideas relating to the idea of MULTICULTURAL Britain. Once again, we are indebted to Tony Cassidy for his excellent resources.
You said that you wanted to tell Tony how grateful you were for his help and one thing you could do would be to add a comment below to that effect...
We were looking at some key ideas relating to Multicultural Britain. Below are a few key slides for you with the key definitions. We also mentioned the work we are going to be doing.

Remember that this issue is not to be confused with illegal immigration. The UK has a long history of different cultures moving in and adding their ideas to the cultural mix. We will look later at the various culinary metaphors for how this can be described.

Do some research before the next lesson:

1. What would you consider to be the key elements of a multicultural society...
2. What do you think of Norman Tebbut's 'cricket team test' ?

Where do you sit on the continuum that we outlined ?

Remember that this is challenging stuff. This is not copying notes out of a textbook on how waterfalls are formed - it is REAL geography as it is all about changes in the places where you will spend your lives...

Add some posts to let me know that you are reading this and thinking about it !

What is the ethnic mix of the UK ? Visit this NATIONAL STATISTICS page to look at the UK and King's Lynn differences. How typical is King's Lynn of the UK ?

Mythconceptions of Place and Cultural Quiz

We used Tony's Cultural Quiz in today's lesson and you liked it a lot, especially Beethoven's 5th Symphony !
Good feedback - "fun", "good", "enjoyed that", "wicked.." etc... We all did better on the popular culture than the elite culture except for one tie...

Also coming up is another resource from one of my virtual Geography colleagues, this time it's Val from Scotland. Back in 2005, she looked at the ways in which Scotland was represented as a place, and here are the first few slides from the presentation that she used at the GA Conference. I was present at her session, and we even got some pictures in the GA Magazine...We're going to do a similar exercise with Liverpool, and some other places possibly...
How are places represented ?
Year 9s will also become familiar with the ideas here as they are used to explore the images and mythconceptions that we have about China...

Good luck to Tony Cassidy

Some of you may have been using the 'other place's weblog of Tony Cassidy.
He's off to Bangladesh for half term so we wish him well...

FUGIS Match-up

Tony Cassidy has produced a very useful FUGIS match-up exercise which you can test your knowledge of the 5 sections with.
Check it out HERE.
Cheers Tony !

Pre-Release materials (Cont.)

Hi everyone!
I hope KES Pilot students are reading as requested. You now have 2 MONTHS to go to the exam!
Remember that over 3 weeks of that are taken out by EXAMS, HALF TERM and WORK EXPERIENCE, and that you are going to have to do a lot of self-guided work (with the aid of the materials that we will give you, during your Work Experience time - and read a daily suggestion for some small task to do to familiarise yourself with the booklet...)
Thanks to Phil Wood for sending the materials that he had produced for 2005 and 2006. They form an excellent basis to work on for 2007 !

The year 10 work will contribute up to 50% towards your final mark, and it's important to get as many marks as possible (obviously!)
The other 50% should (theoretically) be easier to get, and this is why results on the Pilot GCSE have tended to be slightly higher than the more traditional specifications.

Remember that YOU have a part to play in the result too.
The PRIORITY for the next 2 weeks is to finish off and hand in the remaining coursework so that Mrs. Clarke and I can finish our marking and moderation and ensure that you get as much credit as possible for your hard work !

Good luck in the other Year 10 exams this week, but remember that the GEOGRAPHY exam in June is the REAL THING !!

Also check out Tony Cassidy's blog for an interesting MONOPOLY post, and some stuff on the Kent Earthquake (which also features on GeographyPages as you'd expect...)

Consumer Landscapes

OK, so today we were looking at the results of the survey which you carried out (although there was little evidence of that from some of you I have to say...) over the Easter break.

This was to ask relatives of the changes that they had noticed in CONSUMER LANDSCAPES: in other words WHERE, WHEN, WHY and HOW people shop today compared to the past.
There are several different types of CONSUMER LANDSCAPE, which include:

• the 'High Street' or CBD
• Out of town shopping centres e.g. Bluewater, Lakeside, Meadowhall, Trafford Centre
• Retail parks
• Corner shops and village centres / shopping parades
  
• Theme Parks / Resorts e.g. Center Parcs

I asked you for some of the general trends you had identified and they came out quite similar to the ones on THIS POST ON TONY CASSIDY's BLOG

Here are some random quotes from a survey:

COMING SOON....

So what are the changes that you have noticed:

BOGOF! (I only asked....)

King's Lynn - the fightback !!

King's Lynn Town Centre has just been redeveloped at a considerable cost. Was it worth the money ? Has it drawn people back into the town centre ? Did the lengthy construction cost cause people to try other places instead and then change their habits?

We are going to look at the differences between out of town centres and town centres.
Make sure that you can talk about the 'benefits' of places like Bluewater.
Check out THIS OTHER POST on Tony's blog.

Next week we are going to do the data collection for the final piece of coursework and (fingers crossed) the computers will work !

Remote assessment

Please head over to Tony Cassidy's blog and make a comment on which of the pieces of model making work by his students you prefer. You have until the end of Easter to do it !

TNCs thanks to Tony

By popular request (well OK, someone asked me to) here are the slides we used when we investigated Premier Foods.
Thanks to Tony Cassidy, who produced the original slides which I skilfully adapted (i.e. removed all references to Ilkeston...) - thanks Tony, hope to see you next week !

Assessment

Later this week, you will be having an ASSESSMENT.
You will be given some PAST PAPER questions on Extreme Environments.
This is not a MOCK exam - you will have some more short assessments nearer the time of the exam, but is just to help us finalise the TIER of entry for the exam: whether it is HIGHER or FOUNDATION.
We will make a decision based on:

• the data that we have about your predicted performance
• your work so far this year
• the quality of the first piece of coursework and progress on the second piece of coursework
  
• your answers on this assessment

Mr. Cassidy has sent me a very useful revision resource that he did for his students to summarise the first unit, and I am currently adapting this using his template for the work that we have done.

Britishness and beyond...

OK, so we're back from half term, and it's time to get down to business.
We will be having our long promised visitors shortly, but need to get down to business on the 2nd piece of coursework. Once again we will be adapting the fine work of colleagues Paula Cooper and the Geography Department at King Edward VI 5 Ways school in Birmingham.
This will be a combination of several sections we have been building up to:

• local sustainable communities (and AGENDA 21)
  
• ideas of deprivation and improvement
• primary data collection from people about their views on King's Lynn (questionnaires)
  
• planning for the future

We are going to be using a few resources which have been very kindly provided by Tony Cassidy to just recap "the story so far". We've had quite a journey since the start of the course, and I still hope that we'll get a few more comments on the blog to convince me that you're reading it and getting all the available help from it...Tony's resources will remind us of what it means to be British, and there are some great fun elements to the powerpoint which I know you will enjoy. Thanks for these Tony!

We will then be moving on to look at AGENDA 21, ready to fire some probing questions at our visitor....

Weekend Roundup & looking to the FUTURES...

Not really got time for this, as I have a great deal of stuff to do for tomorrow, but then I've already spent far too much of my own time this weekend doing work.
Firstly, thanks to Danny O Callaghan for the resource pictured above, whih we shall be using soon. Nice piece of work.
Tony Cassidy has finally moved on to MY PLACE and has sent me some predictably useful resources that I shall add to my growing digital archive of Pilot materials ready for next year, and will also develop for the revision period as well. Thanks Tony!
He has also sent me some very useful resources relating to the Rural dimension, which will certainly be useful for a number of ongoing projects and courses.

Thanks to John Lyon from the Geographical Association for bringing the GREEN LEARNING site in Canada to my attention. This includes a large number of very useful resources. I would recommend that for the Tuesday lesson you will use this, but I will post the work tomorrow so that you will have it for Tuesday - remember that we can't afford for you to waste time: we need to keep up the momentum.

You should also pay a visit on Tuesday, when I'm not there, as I'm taking some 6th form students to a conference at the University of East Anglia - that might be some of you in a couple of years time I hope !

Down to London at the weekend, and on the way down, I read the first quarter of the book "Estates" by Lynsey Hanley. Some fascinating material for landscapes of housing and the effect of these social divisions on the country. Astonishing to read about the CUTTESLOWE walls.
See what you can find about this - it's the complete opposite to what is being planned for the community in South Lynn...

Picture courtesy of Oxfordshire County Council Photographic Archive - please let me know if you object to its use here for educational purposes...

On the way back, I was talking to a colleague about some ideas for teaching about Landscape, and we discussed lots of useful ideas. Also read more of my book of the moment: Stuart Maconie's wonderful "Pies and Prejudice" - loads of stuff for Cultural Geography and the identity of the North compared to the South... Plenty of that to come in Year 11 !

We also have more links with China coming up shortly. We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding which means there will be closer ties between our schools.

To finish, a quote from Rex Walford, who still came into KES until recently to see the associate teachers which we have in the department. It relates to the idea of FUTURES.

"In urging that we teach a Geography of the future, I do not mean that we should give up teaching the geography of the past: but we should make the past the servant of the future. If the future is unavoidable, let us at least not walk backwards into it..."

A few connections...

First of all, today had a meeting with our Chinese visitors from Qinghua Middle School in Chongqing. We've been showing a DVD of aerial views over the city which was presented to us by David and Mr. Yin, which shows it to be an incredible city. I showed the visitors Google Earth (of course), and we flew from Beijing and Tiananmen Square to Chongqing and managed to locate the school. We talked about the ideas of exchanging information between the schools, and will look to doing a project involving a new computer based 'chat room' and Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) called UNISERVITY.
I also tried my best to get a trip out there, to see the 3 Gorges.
We also talked about how China has one time zone, so that whatever the time is in Beijing, it is the same time in the whole of China, despite the huge size of the country.
We also talked about KARST scenery, which is the scenery produced when areas of limestone are eroded at different rates. The famous GUILIN pinnacles are a short flight away from the city.

I also had a virtual communication with Sarah from PICKLE MY FANCY. She is following the 100 Mile Diet idea which I mentioned in an earlier post. The idea is that you can only eat food produced within 100 miles of where you live. Sarah got in touch to tell me about her blog, which makes very interesting reading. There are some obvious links with the local area.
One of them is this product below. Do you recognise it ?
I'll post more about this product and its local links at the weekend.
How do you know how far away a place is from your house ? Well Sarah also mentions on the blog a very useful tool called the UK POSTCODE CALCULATOR.
This allows you to put in 2 postcodes and it will let you know the distance : 'as the crow flies' rather than along roads - it will only take the first part of the postcode e.g. PE30, but is a useful little application.

Can I also mention Tony Cassidy's recent posting on Global Warming in Antarctica. Although it is not related to SVALBARD, a lot of the processes that are mentioned are relevant to us too. Remember that you need to be able to talk about some of the Physical processes in the area - as shown in the past paper question you had recently.
Refer to GLACIAL processes which happen, and also WEATHERING processes which occur because of the low temperatures.
Remember also that you will need to know the definitions of the 5 terms which make up the word FUGIS. Not all of you could do this easily, and you MUST be able to write these - we shall be testing this as we get nearer the exam, but you can make a start now.

34 behind Tony.... & the Great Fen Project

Tony Cassidy over at RADICAL GEOGRAPHY blog has just celebrated his 200th post.
I'm still a way behind, although Mrs. Clarke is getting a bit worried that you're still covering Extreme Environments Tony ! Do you know something we don't ? ;>)

Thanks to James for pointing out this useful site for those of you who are doing THE FENS as your physical landscape.It's called the GREAT FEN Project and is supported by the Geographical Association. The aim is to restore an area of Fenland. There are details / booklets which can be downloaded from the website to give some more.
There is a deadline of the end of January for raising money for the land purchase.

Merry Christmas!

Next Thursday we will do a bit of work on Christmas and CONSUMERISM to act as a little taster of the "People as Consumers" unit...
Here is another nice VIDEOJUG video, which I'll use as a STARTER...

You need to watch this...

Judging by the half-mast accumulations of fabric, the sloppy 'knots' and general inability to look tidy, some of you should make use of this video from VIDEOJUG (thanks to Tony Cassidy for guiding me here via his blog...)
I'll hope to see some perfect Windsor knots on Tuesday...

A mention for me on Tony's blog

"There are a number of Geography blogs springing up at the moment, I find reading blogs a useful tool for professional development, for student readers its a great way of gaining a little extra knowledge and to see what other students are doing. Why not set up your own personal blog? It doesn’t have to be about Geography…

Most of us are indebted to Alan Parkinson, Mr P of GeographyPages fame, I believe he lead the way, his original Geoblog and links to other interesting examples are here. I remember when I started teaching, there were few very good geography sites on the web and Alan’s was like a little flame in a very dark cave."

Nice to hear some positive feedback now and again. Thanks Mr. C