"Look at it this way"

In early November  (later this week in fact), I'm going to be heading down to Somerset for the Somerset Geography Conference. I'm doing a session on my KS3 Toolkit book on landscapes (with updates) and ideas about teaching about landscapes. This will include mentions of the White Cliffs of Dover, Ash dieback, Brave and other Pixar films, burger boxes, Google Earth and other things.... The conference has been developed with a lot of work from Noel Jenkins, who has put together a great line-up for the conference. Sadly, like the SAGT conference at the weekend (see separate blog post), Iain Stewart was unable to attend as he had been allowed permission to film in Turkmenistan, which apparently is rare, but had to be this week. Don't forget that this award-winning Toolkit book has a blog to support it - as with many of my books, such as the Badger GCSE book which has its own blog HERE. If you can't make that event, you now have the option to join me for a virtu...

A landscape feature in Wiltshire is going to be turned into a giant breast by an artwork. The aim is to raise awareness of breast cancer, as well as being an artwork in itself involving special illuminations.... Long Knoll will be transformed by the artwork. Read the story on the BBC NEWS website here. Another similar illuminated experience happens locally to where I live. It's called Electric Forest , and involves special lighting of Thetford Forest ... I'm about to book some tickets for the family to experience it in December...

A flaneur is a wanderer: the term is linked to the idea of psychogeography.... The ROBOT FLANEUR wanders randomly through a city of your choice and displays Street View images... Made by James Bridle Explore the following cities: London San Francisco Manhattan Sao Paulo Paris Berlin Johannesburg Tokyo City Mexico Via Urban Photo Blog on Twitter I can think of lots of ways of using this to explore urban geography and comparisons between cities in different parts of the world... A sort of slighty redacted and randomised version of MAPCRUNCH , my session starter of choice...

One link in a piece that I read this morning led me to a blog, which led me to another and so on... Came across plenty of blogs out there on the theme of LANDSCAPES , which may provide some ideas for possible classroom activities. Landscapism  by Eddie Procter  has some interesting postings... There's a useful gazetteer of landscape sites and resources... and a list of landcape reading. Also a good post on the differences between rural and urban. One of the most useful features of the blog is down the left hand column, where there are links to a wide range of further blogs and websites with a good chunk of geography in there... These would reward further exploration...

"Every hour spent reading is an hour spent learning to write". Robert MacFarlane - author of 'The Wild Places' and 'The Old Ways'

In a month's time I'm going to be heading down to the Somerset Geography Conference. As it happens I'm going to be taking the Geography Collective Spaceship as my mode of transport as Dan Raven Ellison and I are involved in the afternoon session. I shall also be talking about teaching about landscapes. This is based on my KS3 Toolkit book, which is still available to purchase from the GA shop of course, and for which this blog was set up. If you want to find out more about how I developed the book and put it together and ideas for teaching about landscapes with the latest ideas thrown in, please get in touch. Noel Jenkins has put together a cracking line-up for the event. Head to the Somerset Geography Posterous pag e for more details. Hope to see some of you there...