Wednesday, 11 January 2012
An evening of informal Geography chat not to be missed
David Guetta feat Usher do continental drift!?!
A video that with the music is a bell work task for students to pick out what is happening. It links to continental drift and where we came from Pangea connenting us together and the without you aspect of the song could be interpreted that we can't exist as a planet without everyone?
Hypothesis the meaning of the song yourself. Link to a jigsaw puzzle exercise of the tectonic plates and get students to produce an animated model of continental drift using a Bourbon biscuit broken in two......
What could I mean? get a bourbon and hypothesise what Alfred Wegener might of done with it to prove continental drift of Africa and South America.
Google Fusion table map and Intensity Map of Mega cities vs cities of the World
Since December I have discovered google Fusion tables and have fiddled on with them and spent many an hour exploring created maps from them on the internet.
As a Geographer mapping is key to me. It can provide so much visual information for the reader.
Here is my latest effort to map all the mega cities in the world against all the cities using simple visual cirles. Larger circles show megacities, smaller cirlces show cities.
What patterns from the following maps do you pick up?
Many many more maps are to follow from me in various complexities. This one been very simple. I can natural resort to using hacks to change styles and bling up various maps but these will come in following posts.
The 1st picture is simply of city placemarks of the world.
The 2nd map is a visual representation using 2 circle sizes.
small (light green) = city
large (dark green) = mega city
As a Geographer mapping is key to me. It can provide so much visual information for the reader.
Here is my latest effort to map all the mega cities in the world against all the cities using simple visual cirles. Larger circles show megacities, smaller cirlces show cities.
What patterns from the following maps do you pick up?
Many many more maps are to follow from me in various complexities. This one been very simple. I can natural resort to using hacks to change styles and bling up various maps but these will come in following posts.
The 1st picture is simply of city placemarks of the world.
The 2nd map is a visual representation using 2 circle sizes.
The following link is to the google fusion table data for you to play around with.
I'll put one embed example in only as it will drastically slow down the browser.
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S357504wfN5
Those on apple devices won't see them so I have attached some screen shots as well.
small (light green) = city
large (dark green) = mega city
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
Mission:Explore Food
Mission:Explore Food
We need your help to create Mission:Explore Food, the latest in the series of children's books which The Society of Authors have said "encourage children to explore the world around them, developing their curiosity, confidence and courage along the way…".
Mission:Explore Food will be a revolutionary cookbook, guide, fieldbook and atlas to what we grow in the ground, chase around fields, put in our mouths, poo out our bums and plant our seeds in. The book will include scores of both delicious and disgusting recipes, missions, games and wisdom on good ways to find, eat and dispose of food.
Written by The Geography Collective (a team of teachers, academics, artists and explorers) in partnership with City Farmers and illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones, Mission:Explore Food will go where no other family food-related book dares!
The first Mission:Explore Book won the Hay Festival & National Trust Outdoor Book of the Year and is Pink Stinks for being forward thinking and positive on gender issues. Our next book will be even bigger and better.
Mission:Explore Food will cover sustainable, healthy, slow, self-grown, urban farmed, ethical, local and international food. Readers will be encouraged to think critically and creatively about where their food comes from, how it's transported, traded, processed, prepared, cook, eaten and disposed of.
Chapters in the 320 page full colour and illustrated hardback book include:
1. Grow
2. Harvest
3. Cook
4. Eat
5. Waste
6. Soil
In true Mission:Explore style readers will be challenged to complete missions which involve planting, digging, watering, finding, foraging, growing, investigating, testing, questioning, sifting, rolling, talking, throwing, climbing, harvesting, hunting, picking, sharing, learning, soiling, pooing, weeing, recycling, trading, singing, creating, cooking, stiring, boiling, grating, skimming, churning, thinking, mapping, eating, tasting, smelling, sniffing, burning, chilling, drinking, gargling, farming, playing and fooding.
We will be preparing free units of work to help teachers use the book in schools across the curriculum. The missions will also be integrated with www.missionexplore.net so that readers can collect points and earn rewards for their efforts.
If you are a charity or food related organisation and would like to support the book in a way that is not directly on offer on this page please let us know.
We plan for the book to retail at £20 a copy and to launch at the Hay Festival 2012. Please help us to make this happen and be a part of something special!
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Here are a few words from other people on Mission:Explore.
"Mission Explore by the Geography Collective and published by Can of Worms Press was ‘mischievous, quirky and fun. full of truly challenging, thought provoking and slightly bonkers activities. Nicola Davies particularly liked the ‘Mint Stint’ which asks readers to see how far they can cycle sucking the same mint, giving page space for the route maps of three attempts.’ But the judges admired the book as being a lot more than frivolous entertainment , liking the way it fosters an attitude of observation , enquiry and engagement with the world,, asking children to interact with their environment, interact question it and think about it – and to play with ideas, places, objects - a playful approach that is the foundation of all creativity." Society of Authors on becoming a runner up for the Best Education Writer of the Year Award 2011.
"Mission:Explore is bold, cool, exciting, innovative, geographic, educational…and just plain fun! Every curious kid, budding geographer, and responsible parent should have a copy!" National Geographic Education
"Mission:Explore is splendid - great fun, and a lovely way to get children out into their environment and using their brains." Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood
"We love the creativity of Mission:Explore and the way it creates experiences for all children so they can share, learn and play together." Pinkstinks Approved
"Designed to be read, scribbled on, illustrated, smeared, scratched and sniffed, it may just be the most revolutionary geography-related book ever published." Geographical Magazine
"Learning to engage with the world around you is the key to effective citizenship education, Mission:Explore sits at the heart of what we believe is good citizenship education!" Ade Sofola, Citizenship Foundation
"THE KIDS' CLASSIC - Attempting to travel with a wriggly child? Buy a copy of Mission:Explore, a book of 102 spy-style tasks and assignments, such as 'How far can you travel while sucking the same mint?' and 'Make a map revealing local cat routes'. It's like bringing along a nanny with endless patience and a James Bond fixation." Sunday Times Travel Magazine
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