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.

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

 

Mission:Explore Food

• Overview
• Updates
• Backers
• Follow +

 

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!

-

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

 

2 / 3

 

Educreations some simple functionality to use it in geography lessons

Educreations to annotate a picture/chart with a audio commentary to demonstrate

Mini plenary describing graphs

Memo.m4a Listen on Posterous

Sent from my iPhone

Shack thinking

Podcast.m4a Listen on Posterous

Sent from my iPhone

A shield Volcano via Aidan Walker

Memo.m4a Listen on Posterous

Sent from my iPhone

Thailand Attractions from Liam Hewson

Podcast.m4a Listen on Posterous

Sent from my iPhone

Watching the Cricket

p304.mov Watch on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

Watching the Cricket tonight and what can I say other than GEOGRAPHYYYYYYY!!!

The video links mapping of the situation of the cricket ground and then straight into the analysis of a classic wagon wheel of scoring shots. Students have a plethora of data to analyse! Does the batsman prefer singles, twos, threes, fours to score their runs? Do they prefer a certain scoring location via a compass rose analysis? From this can you plan a field of attack?

The next two photos analyse bar graph data. This allows students to analyse patterns and trends (does a batsman score a century over a regular period? Have they had a purple patch of their career? Did they have a lull? When was that? Get video footage? Was it their technique? Location when they played? Team they played so angle of delivery? How did they get out? Was it a specific way each time?)

The 2nd looks at the current innings. Did the team loose wickets at a set time? Why was that? Weather? Pitch? Ball condition? Bowler? How do they deliver the ball? How is the pitch responding? The type of soil cracks? Does this type of pitch appear a lot? Is it particular with this pitch? Does a certain batsman, bowler suit a certain pitch?

This sort of graphical data through sport opens up a multitude of open ended questions / interpretation / theories

I could go on and on! But time to enjoy geography in action.

Daily Reading

See the full gallery on Posterous

As a Teacher I feel that it is important that I read up on my subject area of geography. In order to get a grasp of current affairs in the changing nature of how humans live their lives (human geography) and how the physical and natural world (physical) evolve and shape our planet to recurring and new issues and how we impact upon it to damage or repair it (environmental). I can gain an appreciation for this with the ever developing GIS to help me visually see changes and current / past trends/anomalies.

BUT how many teachers like myself have wanted to open the lesson up to students for a discussion on a topic and got blank faces back?

How many have had students utter the words 'I couldn't / can't find anything?'

Well I've taken it upon myself to train students to do a daily dose of reading into the world we live in. This sounds a vast concept and my initial effort llobgeog.posterous.com / llobgeog.blogspot.com got a little confusing after 2 weeks when students said

'Sir you said look on that site but there was loads of stuff we're not doing, so I couldn't find anything on our topic'

My response naturally wasn't oh that is ok but to challenge 'why wasn't the other topics relevant? Can they be related in anyway? Examine a word mat and see if any reoccurring geography terms appear that could link it to your topic. Categorise aspects - human, physical, environmental geography. Produce a ringed linking diagram to see if any overlap.. Etc

Anyway I evolved this to include twitter and added a hashtag to a tweet and add the blog link e.g #llobgeo7 indicating the tweet related to year 7 and when they clicked on the hyperlink they were taken to the correct page. This worked better BUT hashtags only last a week so via twitter that link would be lost and if a student missed it they would have to come back to me about it.

ANYWAY so to my current evolution. I've seized to add tweets or so many to my unofficial geography twitter account other than to link students to a specific topic of reading materials that focus students reading but actually allow overlap occasionally but also open up students to select additional interest reading into topics they might not be learning about currently but like I said have an interest in.
Another reason why I changed it to a single site for students is to limit them getting lost. More than 2 clicks and the student is struggling or capable of getting lost in their research.

The sites I've developed are as follows then i'll go into my reading technique each morning and night and which I expect students to do for 20 minutes each day and to eventually to take ownership of and to build up the extensive reading material as they home the technique to suit them for geography and other subjects to make them well oiled research learners.

geognewspopulation.posterous.com
geognewsflooding.posterous.com
geognewsdevelopment.posterous.com
geognewsanimals.posterous.com
geognewsmappingandplace.posterous.com
geognewstectonics.posterous.com
geognewsclimate.posterous.com
geogtnl.posterous.com

The sites may look long to type in but they are quite obvious titles for the students and I haven't had snubbed come to me saying they couldn't find it.
The tnl one is there for tools as I find them that students should experiment with and other teachers as well.

TECHNIQUE

Each morning I come downstairs with my iPad and I search the following sites to see if any obvious geography has occurred. I say that as geography is everything we do and get involved in and the future but for school curriculums and old fashioned core topics what current news would fit.

1. The BBC app. I search the headlines, world, uk, England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, science and nature, technology, health sections and then tweet to #geographyteacher so that I can come back to it and news blog later that day on. I also do this for other teachers of geography if they don't have time to read up in depth different sites so that they can have a quicker reading experience.

2. I go to sky news app and do the same

3. I go to google news and repeat the procedure. I love this site as it reviews lots of papers into a similar theme of story. This is a great site to get students to read in greater depth on a news story that crops up that is relevant for say a case study. Google news also creates a nice line graph which highlights stories that most journalists have covered on a particular search that you have conducted or around a similar theme to that written about on that day that has caught your eye. It can help give students a quick evaluation form as to what might be worth reading and what not Alternatively topsy turvy it and why is one article less popular? has it been written badly and so the message hasn't been portrayed well? How could the students make it stand out more? could it be the headline or the bulk of the story or the imagery used?

4. Personalised research news apps like Zite. This app is excellent as it allows you to custom the content to be of specific themes. You can even type a key term in and have that as a search for it to do and it will give you a back Catalogue of material on that theme.
I have found that this has really deepened my reading and made a lot of my teaching comments CURRENT. Through time I'll blog findings if students reading and see if it improves discussion lessons.

I love a comment by @anguswillson who I greatly admire for his wisdom that getting students to read their local media coverage will help get them to make connections with their own neighbourhood experiences as well as the global events as I'm sure many geography teachers have faced the question but why are we looking at this place!?!?! I', never going there I DONT CARE! How the local media portray global issues could assist students. Local concepts could open more doors for making the difference geography. Students could be more likely to get involved with assisting local issues and creating a difference than global.

Questions for Sian Welby

Questions for Sian Welby

1.     How did you find your current job?

2.     What was your favourite subject at school?

3.     Who inspired you when you were 11-18?

4.     Where do you get your clothes from as you have lovely style?

5.     What is a typical day for you?

6.     Where is your favourite place in the world?

7.     What do you fear the most?

8.     What do you love of life?

9.     What does your job involve?

10. What do you want to achieve?

11. How do you travel to work?

12. What type of house do you live in?

13. What type of car do you have?

14. What is your favourite programme on tv?

15. What music do you listen to that cheers you up?

16. What do you hate?

17. If you could visit one place where would it be?

18. Who do you most want to meet?

19. What jobs have you had?

20. Do you like sport if so what is your favourite?

21. What make up tip would you give any girl?

22. How do you tell the weather?

23. How do you monitor the weather?

24. What percentage of the time do you get the weather forecast right?

25. How many people work behind the scenes at channel 5 weather?

26. What jobs do the other people in the office do?

27. How long did it take you to learn how to read all the different parts to the weather?

28. How do you know if cloud cover from a satellite will cause rain?

29. Will we get snow this winter?

30. Do you believe in global warming?

31. Do you believe in climate change?

32. What do you think life will be like in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years?

33. Who will most likely cause WW3?

34. If you could make a law what would it be?

35. What is your favourite name?

36. Can you speak a foreign language?

37. What is your favouirte food?

38. What is your favourite drink?

39. Who is the fittest man in the world?

40. Who is the fittest woman in the world?

41. If money was no object what outfit would you buy?

42. Who is your favourite designer?

43. What is your favourite shop?

44. What supermarket do you shop at?

45. Do you recycle?

46. Do you play xbox?

47. Do you play PS3?

48. Which is best PS3/XBOX?

49.  What type of phone do you have?

50. Who is your favourite comedian?

51. What is your favourite song?

52. What is your favourite film?

53. What is your favourite colour?

54. If you were told you only had 1 meal left and it could be anything what would it be?

55. Would you ever visit our school?

56. How do you stay so slim?

57. What exercise do you do?

58. What shampoo and hair products do you use?

59.  How many pairs of shoes do you have?

60. What was your geography teacher called?

61. What was your best ever lesson that you remember?

62. How well did you do at school?

63. Which A-Levels did you study?

64. Which University did you attend?

65. How many houses have you lived in and where have they been?

66. Are you still friends with anyone from primary school?

67. Are you still friends with anyone from secondary school?

68. What was the naughtiest thing you did at school?

69. What makes a day at work bad?

70. What do you look forward to most each day?

71. What is your favourite day of the week?

72. If you could make an advert what would it be for?

73. What are your hobbies?

74. Do you have any pets?

75. Do you think what is taught in schools is worthwhile?

76. What would your dream job be?

77. What did you grow up wanting to be?

78. What is your favourite weather?

79. Will weather forecasting change?

80. If you could be on Dragons Den what would your product be?

81. What is your favourite computer game?

82. What was your favourite challenge?

83. Who is the most famous person you’ve met?

84. If you could be reincarnated as someone who would it be and why?

85. If you were in the Alan Partridge episode where he is fighting to get a second series and he has to think off the top of his head a TV show what would you say? What would it be about?

#tmclv - Chair/space personalised learning and Inspiring outdoor learning

Personalised Chair

 

This post is created for #tmclv, which I will be attending tomorrow night.

The main theme of my presentation is dealing with a time issue I have found since I have joined a new school.

Last year I was use to 1 hour lessons now I'm down to dealing with learning taking place in 50 minutes.

 

My main issue was with a couple of my classes. My main classroom is on the 2nd floor, but for a couple of my lessons during the week I teach on the ground floor. By the time I finished a lesson on the ground floor and climbed the stairs (I had a knee op in the holidays) I had lost 3 minutes of the lesson with the students waiting. 

I tried giving them some bell work to get on with whilst they waited. I found that some times these were ok but not personalised and some struggled.

 

So How could I make sure that this 1st 5 minutes to the lesson without me would be productive, and click the students into gear so that when I arrived we are cooking on gas and have a learning atmosphere straight away.

Enter the personalised chair.

This picture highlights my idea.

Each class have a 'personalised' section on each chair. I found that I had lots of strips of paper that was just going into the recycling bin after the paper cutter was unleashed on some paping sheets.

After a quick lesson it became apparent that the personalised learning sheets needed to be laminated. I to make sure they were stronger and also to make sure the strips could be reused, using a whiteboard pen. The strips are attached by velcro circle discs. During the lesson when the strips are reattached if a student messes with them I hear the rip very clear and the students dont even bother.

I did a survey of all the students who had a smart phone that could accept a QR code scan.

Those students were linked with students from other classes so they were seated on the QR code seats.

They would be sent to a page which would have a simple task for the students to focus on for 2 weeks.

This sounds a massive task I know but it took me an hour to set up and lasts for 2 weeks for ALL students I teach so 3 hours each half term for personalised bell work for ALL students.

He is the idea in a little video clip. 

IMG_1715.MOV Watch on Posterous

The students were asked what they liked about the personalised chair? They gave a wide array of answers from,

'It is different and I wanted to know what it was about'

'The work gave me a clue on what I was could improve with my descriptions and asked me to practice'

'It allowed me to be creative with misson explore'

'It brought on my handwriting as it was time to practice when sir wasn't here'

'My question was different from everyone else'

This is only 2 weeks in but it has made a real difference with all classes and means I don't feel AS pressured to glance at the clock and think AHHHHH!

 

Misson explore

As you saw in the personalised learning strip I used in the video. One passion that my students are really enjoying experimenting with and are stretching their creativity juices with www.missionexplore.net I'll show this off at the Genius Bar as it is an outside learning resource my students are loving.

Concertina form information 

As a form tutor I find me asking the parental questions more and more. 'So what are you learning about in your subjects?'

PLTs is big in lots of schools so I thought why not create concertinas for the different aspects.

So now in form the students add to it how they have used each aspect during the week. From it I can evaluate as a school are we hammering a certain aspect of PLTs and as a result mission lots of it out or are we allowing students to practice and improve each aspect? Or do we do one PLTs one week and then forget about it for months?

 

Other learning that is getting my juices flowing ALL I'VE FOUND OUT ABOUT VIA TWITTER!!!

• Tait Coles Punk Learning
• SOLO Taxonomy
• Researching tools for students - mashpedia, 
• Skyfire App for ipad - enables flash and searches for videos which are related to your choice.
• Stop animation - Jellycam
• websites similar to ones you know - moreofit.com

 

I'll add others on my twitter page. 

@JOHNSAYERS

Students Find A Problem

STUDENTS FIND A PROBLEM

Students find a Problem!

students find a problem!

make it geography and we'll discuss next week!

My latest Hodder Education post preview before it goes on the site

 So……… the majority of teaching staff have gone through their first two weeks of the new academic year.

For some this is the first rotation of a two week timetable, for others the chance to see classes a handful of times to create those key early learning hooks to engage classes and make an informed assessment of where their classes are after checking through books and discussions on a class and one to one level.

Many of you including me are tired (after reading that extended last paragraph) getting back into the routine… 

Alarm, tea, drive, turn computer on, check resources for the day, briefing, emails, meet and greet for class and then bang teaching…… turn computer off, mark books, drive home, turn kettle on, dinner, think of lessons for the next day, bed.

But I’m not writing this to fill you with dread but to perhaps give you a flicker of a light in the distance of does it have to be like this?

I’m watching / listening to the TED x London conference whilst I write this as I’ve found that listening to others and engaging with passionate people has helped me be creative and sit down at the drawing board and think as creatively as I can to try and create a table tennis environment of fire out an idea, get one back and give one back again. I get this from twitter on a daily basis and this is my connective to my last blog post. (I keep hearing you have to connect the learning from one lesson to the next).

“Georgia TED – This morning I’ve being on facebook, google maps found where Camden is, checked the roundhouse website found out how many it seats, downloaded the tedxlondon app so I’ve done loads of learning so far and I’m not anywhere near school. Why do we learn loads of irrelevant material?? That in our lives we will never use!?!?!?!?”

WE HAVE TO MAKE LEARNING RELEVANT!! 

This blog post is going to focus on blogging. Because lots of small voices makes a loud noise and influence. I say this as it seems to be the buzz word surrounding new school learning activities. 

                                                                      

I’ve dabbled with blogging, creating my own blog of resources that I have made at PGCE level and beyond. I’ve used it to inform others of useful websites that I have found or been told about. I’m put videos that I have converted onto it that have inspired me. It has become a resource communication medium for me. I’ve been told by educators, peers, colleagues ‘Oh I looked at your blog, lots of good stuff on it’.

This is where the trigger for me and many bloggers out there has hit home in our thinking that this resource is a gold mine for students.

Via twitter I have received links from my PLN (Personal Learning Network) for their class blog, which has a vast array of STUDENT created material. They have asked for comment on the posts created by their students. I think this is brilliant as you find what happens next is that the student creates more, purely due to being inspired as they’ve captive audience to write to that are positive and often from places far and wide or from friends. Some comments give advice but most positive messages from teachers are open-ended seeking more from the student. I’ve mainly seen this in primary where students write stories on their blogs.

Many teachers out their included me have spend hours and hours creating resources and jazzing things up like blogs. BUT what blogging appears to be doing is providing engagement. It appears to get students writing and writing A LOT! Therefore it seems to be bringing students writing on and at an accelerated rate! 

RANT SOAP BOX TIME….

I’m sick and tired of seeing targets and looking at the projected target path for each of the students I teach. (In a robotic voice say the following - You are a level 4c you will reach a level 4a by the end of the year. Next year you will reach a 5b).  I’ve seen many students who once they hit that target stagnate ‘well I’ve reached my target’. Then it becomes an uphill battle trying to persuade them no no no this is just the beginning and you can go on from here and achieve more!

I remember seeing BBC breakfast and @DeputyMitchell and some students from his school blogging and he told the journalist correspondent how it had drive students achievement through the roof!

So blogging has great potential for primary. But what about Secondary?

Well David Mitchell has created an amazing concept called Quadblogging. It has the principle to set up multiple blogs from different schools who are similar age, or blog about similar things such as having a subject specific focus such as geography. I think this could be massive and get schools up and down the country working together to really bring each other on with their geography. It could also engage our students into seeing the importance of learning about far away places when they are blogging with students who live in those far away places!

For the new school that I have joined I am going to meet with all the A-Level students and get them to create a blog of their work as an e-portfolio. So that universities that they apply to can get a feeling about their potential before even meeting them in a more informed manner than relying purely on a UCAS application. Why limit their chances especially when we hear that competition is so fierce especially to get into the elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge.

However I have a problem! My school has blocked bloggingL So why am I so passionate about it still?!?!?!? Well lets engage students at home! Why ask them to do homework that they don’t want to do and see no value in? Why not give them the freedom to blog and learn about what they want to do! So if they want to blog about geography great. If they want to blog about maths great, if they want to blog about dancing and them performing great! We need to stop stifling and beating into kids do this, this, this, but be creative with what they want their life journey to explore. Blogging allows students to link up with other like minded students from around the world and also different minded students to create intriguing and open ended dialogue of constructive differences. Sounds odd but students looking at a problem or blog post from a different perspective have really opened up students minds to a different way of doing something other than their own way or their teachers way of doing something. As a teacher is my way the best for all the student that I teach always?

What about other benefits of blogging? Blogging allows students to peer and peer assess by leaving comments on each others blog, it allows staff to easily mark, find what students have created by the date entry and leave a mark / comment. It allows parents to see what their child has done and whether their teacher is commenting on their learning blogs. 

Blogging can be done via a computer so in the classroom and at home via a computer. BUT it can be opened up as it is mobile. I use posterous in this way. I have live blogged a week residential student camp for parents to find out what activities their child is up to. It has then created a great memory board for when students get home they can look at it and comment on it to keep that memory forever.

So what about geography blogging? What should it look like?

A big question! 

Should it be about sharing pictures of locations staff, students have visited around the world? Or be more focused on where they live and their every day lives and linking this to students around the world and how they live their lives? Isn’t that HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? This might give students a clear insight into where might suit them in the future as a location to flourish at what they are passionate about.

Should it be about the use of technology and posting clear demonstrations of creating a landform diagram and explaining it using voicethread? 

Should it be about students putting essays on it? 

WELL HOW ABOUT THIS!

@ewanmcintosh at TED x London and his problem finding education why not set up a geography blog where we set up problems for STUDENTS to try and come up with solutions for? Possibly as an ENVIRONMENTAL GEOGRAPHY approach.

This is where it is over to you and your thoughts on the matter as I think it is an area as geographers that we should sit down and have a debate about blogging and our subject as it is clearly a medium on the rise.

My next post will be about setting up a geography club.

John

A Twitter e-safety set of points and an example feed

Please see the attachment as an example of a series of e-safety points I'm proposing to my school. 

Too strict?

Recommendations?

Please comment so I can take to my school with a solid policy to implement twitter as a learning tool.

E_safety_points_for_Twitter_LLOBGEO.docx Download this file