"Look at it this way"

Look at it this Way is very much about the concept of PLACE. We can now announce a new PLACE based project that I'm involved in... One of the things I'm proudest of in the last few years is my involvement with the Geography Collective , and our Mission:Explore books, iPhone app and other activities... We can now announce our latest project, thanks to the project leadership of Daniel Raven Ellison. We are very pleased to say that we will be delivering a major project for the Cultural Olympiad as part of the Discovering Places programme called  Discover Explore . Discovering Places is funded by a grant from Olympic Lottery Distributor (OLD) through the London Organising Committee of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG). It is delivered by The Heritage Alliance with the support of key partners.. one of which is us. We will be working closely with  The Workshop  to create something very beautiful and cool which will be launched this sum...

During my lunch-time at the Education Show I took the opportunity to do a quick trip up and down the aisles to make sure that I saw as many of the stands as possible and have a chat to anyone who had a geographical connection, or who caught my eye. One stand I particularly wanted to see was the CREATIVITY HUB stand, where RORY's STORY CUBES were available. I have these cubes as an iPhone app and also as the infinitely preferable 'real thing', and have used them with many teachers over the last few years to explore the ideas of geography as "writing the earth". I have used my cubes with hundreds of teachers as a way of exploring creative writing, including my sessions at various conferences. By using a net for creating a cube such as the one below, taken from MATHS ISFUN  with thanks, you can also add your own cubes... Cut out the shapes and add your own words or instructions on the six sides relevant to the subject that you are using them for. If yo...

My earlier blog post about the Christchurch memorial service was a reminder of the many connections that exist between the UK and New Zealand. My friend Simon Hathaway , who now lives in Wellington (which is a major improvement on Rotherham) sent me a pack of newspaper and magazine articles this week to add to the other resources that I have gathered to help teach about the resilience of a major city following an earthquake. I was interested to read the 'North and South New Zealander of the Year' piece, which awarded the Supreme Winner to the people of Christchurch... and that was following the earlier September 2010 quake... There was also a really useful piece from the Dominion Post by Chris Kalderimis on the most useful items to have in a home emergency survival kit, and lots of personal stories. The  #blog4nz campaign  is encouraging bloggers the world over to focus on New Zealand for a while, and this post is part of the effort. Although my work involves me in tran...

There were 3 or 4 "urban-related" tweets in my overnight feed that I caught up with earlier 'today' while having my breakfast... Part of my daily routine now is to look at what has happened while I slept, and e-mail any interesting tweets to my e-mail account, so that I have a record of the links, and can follow them up when I have a moment... This weekend, there has been an urban theme to many of the updates. Several of them were from the excellent @urbanphoto_blog stream... You need to follow them if you don't already. One led me to the Twisted Sifter blog, from which I got this remarkable image , which apparently shows the suburbs of Mexico City marching into the distance, irrespective of topography. The images were from Pablo Lopez Luz I haven't explored the site further, but it seems to have a range of interesting images and other content. The second site, which was equally arresting is a description of the development of a new (or perhaps not...

As featured in Lesson 3 in the book... There are plans for more pylons in East Anglia to connect proposed power stations to the National Grid to improve infrastructure. The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has been opposing these developments in some areas of Norfolk. My local paper has some more on this issue... It costs 10 times as much to place cables underground as it does to put it over ground. Check the plans and have your say here . And don't forget you can also join the Pylon Appreciation Society