Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2015

See you in the New Year...

Discovering Britain's landscape...

A week or so after the new refreshed Discovering Antarctica website was launched, another RGS-IBG has had a refresh… This time it's the Discovering Britain website , which has a range of walks and resources to help people appreciate Britain's landscape. Every landscape has a story to tell Perhaps use this to plan a Boxing Day or New Years Day walk...

Coast inspired stamps

In my KS3 Toolkit book for the GA, "Look at it this Way", there was an activity called 'First Class Landscapes' which explored the design of stamps to show a future landscape. Since then, plenty of stamp sets have emerged, and we are now about to have a really nice looking set of coastal landscapes.

New Bryson

“Nothing gives the British more pleasure than discussing how to get from here to somewhere else". New Bill Bryson has been getting a few good reviews. I enjoyed reading it too. It's got some good insights into Britain, and its landscape and culture. This Guardian article , which I read earlier in the print version is good too. I'm with Bryson on the topic of dogs as well...

Sad topographies

Via Twitter, I love this set of snapshots from Google Maps (?) Depressing place names snipped out of the map and taken out of context. Also reminds me of a tweet from last night of this location. How about a set of happy places, or toponyms, or people's names, or .....

On order

Thanks to Sharon Witt for the tipoff to this book, which I have now ordered. It's about the Norfolk Broads, and offers a range of interesting short pieces on the nature of the landscape in that area. Written by David Matless. Scope for using the approach to explore other regions with students... The introduction discusses an injunction by Georges Perec to ‘see more flatly’ (wryly apt considering the landscape being seen), and the pieces do try to look beyond official accounts of place to draw on tiny concrete details, lived experience, historical perspective, technical boating matters, economics, and so on and so forth. Of course, unless you note  everything , the very act of selecting details unflattens them, making (to mix my spatial metaphors horribly) salient features out of what had been background trifles. Similarly, the alphabetical ordering of the pieces is a way of insisting on the ‘non-hierarchical’ approach; I think Matless wouldn’t object if you read them in a r

Landscape survey - a chance to help with some research

I've been sent a link to a survey which I hope you might be able to help with. My name is Kate Wayland and I'm currently studying Geography (BSc) at Staffordshire University. As part of my degree I have designed my own dissertation project which equates to 1/4 of my final year. My passion for Geography greatly influences the areas I visit in my spare time. I prefer to visit landscapes that are geologically diverse (landscapes with lots of cool rocks in!).  I am interested in what people like about the landscapes they visit and in particular the general public appreciation of geodiverse landscapes.  Amongst other things I've designed this survey to figure out: - what things attract people to a landscape? - do people appreciate geodiverse landscapes?  - what sort of people like geodiverse landscapes? Hopefully with this information I can suggest suitable ways to encourage  people to enjoy Britain's geodiverse landscapes even more. If you wish to lend me a hand and cont

Here comes summer...

Summer holidays are here, when I will be getting ready for the next year, when we will be teaching the Adventure Landscapes topic again. This is a great topic, and will offer a lot of options for us to teach about landscapes and our relationships with them. Which landscapes are you going to visit over the summer?

The yellowing....

Every year about this time, I get a reminder of the resource I wrote as part of the KS3 Toolkit on the yellowing of the English countryside... This is the newly flowering rape near Swaffham, Norfolk... Image: Alan Parkinson

Robert MacFarlane on BBC Radio 4

Book of the Week 5 extracts from 'Landmarks' Available for the next month

GA Conference Beermeet

I met with my HoD: Claire Kyndt this lunchtime to talk through the lecture that we are doing at the Geographical Association Conference on the 10th of April. Here's the details for you: Date :  Friday 10 April         Time: 13.50-14.40           Session number : Lecture 6 Title of session :  The impact of the ordinary: the story of a geography department Room type:  Lecture Theatre        Room allocated: D7 Once that's over I have to head over to do the plenary for the double workshop being organised by the  GA's Secondary Phase Committee  and led by  Bethan Harries.  Then I have a meeting of folks from the  GeoCapabilities project. In the evening there's the 4th or 5th annual BeerMeet. Here's this year's poster, designed by  Richard Allaway , with an original illustration by the redoubtable  Tom Morgan Jones. See you there....

Landscapes

Some images from the last few days...

Robert MacFarlane at the Norwich Literacy Festival

I went to UEA earlier in the week to see Robert MacFarlane in conversation, discussing and reading from his book Landmarks. It was part of the Norwich Literacy Festival. I've blogged about the book previously with an early review, and also the long association with Robert's work and Geography since 2003 and ' Mountains of the Mind '. I've used it as inspiration for a number of projects over the years. It was a chance to hear Robert read from the book, and talk about his personal inspirations and the process of creating it, starting with a trip to Lewis and the discovery of a glossary of peat moorland terms. The section he read has an important message about landscape and the difficulty of writing about it, particularly when it was so apparently uniform. There was also a reminder of the phrase mamba , which I've used before ... I didn't take notes but preferred to listen. As Robert said, if he was to take notes while on trips that would be a barr

First look at 'Landmarks'....

An initial ‘review’ of a book I've been looking forward to for some time... Robert MacFarlane’s books have appeared on this blog regularly since it started, and featured in numerous teacher CPD sessions, and lessons with my students. I’ve been looking forward to the latest book as it continues the exploration of landscape and the way that it is described in words that was a feature of previous books. Regular readers will know that I used ‘The Old Ways’ and ‘The Living Mountain’ as a way of exploring the Cairngorms and developing mapskills using Digimap for Schools at the SAGT Conference a few years ago.  I’ve also referenced books such as ‘Mountains of the Mind’ in my KS3 landscapes toolkit book ‘Look at it this Way’. Landmarks starts by explaining that it is a book about “ the power of language…. to shape our sense of place”. Chapters on different types of ‘lands’ are interspersed with entries from what is called the ‘word hoard’: a collection of dialect words

Alan Garner lecture

Sadly unable to go, but would be great to hear one of the great landscape authors speaking...

New KS2 resource on Mountains

Anna Brace has produced a very useful resource for KS2 for those teaching about mountain landscapes. There is a scheme of work, with a series of fully resourced lessons, aimed at thinking geographically about mountains. Download or view the resources from the RGS-IBG website.