Toolkit books are "in the building"

....actually they aren't...

but the container in which they are stored has arrived from China at Felixstowe according to my colleague Paul, and the next phase is for them to go through customs, and then be dispatched to the GA.. so expect them sometime in the next few weeks. Will let you know when I finally have my hands on them...

Landscapes of sound

Have mentioned the SOME LANDSCAPES blog before, and if you are teaching about landscapes this is worth adding to your FOLLOW list.

The AUTUMN LEAVES sound site is rather good.

Countryside Quality Counts

Regular readers of the blog may remember some recent posts on the idea of LANDSCAPE CHARACTER.

Came across an old map when sorting through some stuff in the loft at the weekend which showed the whole of the UK split into different areas.

On it was a website, which turned out to be out of date, but did lead me to the Countryside Quality Counts website.

Some useful resources here for exploring local landscape change...

Travel Writing

One aspect of the book is a look at TRAVEL WRITING.

There was a good article on the future of the genre in Saturday's Guardian.

A few good quotes from the piece, from two of my favourite authors:

"A good travel writer can give you the warp and weft of everyday life, the generalities of people's existence that are rarely reflected in journalism, and hardly touched on by any other discipline. Despite the internet and the revolution in communications, there is still no substitute."

Colin Thubron

"Old travellers grumpily complain that travel is now dead and that the world is a suburb. They are quite wrong. Lulled by familiar resemblances between all the unimportant things, they meet the brute differences in everything of importance."

Jonathan Raban

The Big Picture

A nice idea taken from a FLICKR GALLERY by user Kristal

A landcape made from a series of images for sky, horizon and foreground.

Similar to the activity in the book looking at images as a mosaic a la Rolf Harris.

Norfolk Coast Management Plan

Got a copy of this document on Monday night via the Norfolk Coast Partnership

It's the proposed plan for 2009-2014.

It includes some useful sections on landscape, and something called landscape character. The whole of the Norfolk coast has been split into sections which have a particular character.

I live on the border of the North Norfolk AONB: Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which then extends all along the coast from my village.

What is Landscape character ?

Put simply, landscape character is what makes an area unique. It is defined as "a distinct, recognisable and consistent pattern of elements, be it natural (soil, landform) and/or human (for example settlement and development) in the landscape that makes one landscape different from another, rather than better or worse".

Natural England have a range of landscape character resources on their website.

One activity that could be tried would be to come up with some new types of landscape character for the area around your school, or perhaps to try to identify the landscape character of local areas from images and other resources.

More to come on this later...

Language of Landscape

The Ordnance Survey are sending their free maps into schools once againthis term. Make sure you have registered to receive yours.
This year, in addition to the usual maps, stickers, map skills guide etc. there will be a 12 page booklet produced with Natural England.

Natural England website now has all the resources.
You can read about the scheme, and the booklet, which is called "The language of landscape" is available to download as a PDF.

The booklet is accompanied by a series of other PDF downloads to support the activities, which could contribute up to 4 lessons to a Year 7 Scheme of Work, such as these fab ACTIVITY CARDS (PDF download)Thanks to Mark Jones and Val Vannet, and also to Ian Gilbert for inspiration for part of this resource. Those credits didn't make it into the final document...

If you use this, please let me know what you thought of it, how it went, whether you invented some other activities etc.
Also send any pictures of work that grows out of the resource - that would be cool !

Update: now featured on Natural England home page.

Please let me know what you think....

Thought for the Day

Travel is mostly about dreams—dreaming of landscapes or cities, imagining yourself in them, murmuring the bewitching place names, and then finding a way to make the dream come true. The dream can also be one that involves hardship, slogging through a forest, paddling down a river, confronting suspicious people, living in a hostile place, testing your adaptability, hoping for some sort of revelation.

Paul Theroux

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/The-Long-Way-Home-USA.html#ixzz0QAiy0MgT

New GA website now live....

Not necessarily related to landscapes but...

The GA web team: Anne Greaves and Ben Major, have been working away for months with designers Ledgard Jepson on a new website for the Geographical Association, and it is now live, after several weeks of beta testing and tweaking. Visit the GA URL http://www.geography.org.uk to see the new site.

The site looks a lot brighter, clearer and easier to navigate, and uses more of the screen’s width. Thanks to a major effort on tagging the resources, it is also easier to find things using the ‘Search’ function if they are not immediately obvious from the home page, and a new ‘Resource Finder’ should help you find something appropriate to the key stage and topic that you are interested in quickly, or items written by a particular author.

A one page user guide to the new site and how it’s laid out can be downloaded by following the link (PDF download): http://www.geography.org.uk/download/GA_NewWebsiteGuide.pdf

Members can also bookmark their most useful sections of the website on their own personal homepage. Logging in to the site will provide members with details about their account, and allow access to the journals which you subscribe to.

There are plenty of new items in the shop, which are displayed in a scrolling window, which will also suggest items that might be of relevance to you if you login.

News is easier to find, and has all been updated.

If you are not already a GA member, this is a good time to join and take advantage of the many membership benefits.

The website is also home to all the resources supporting the GA’s manifesto for school geography “a different view”.

Download the latest GA MAGAZINE from the site now