"Look at it this way"

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. ...

Some images from the last few days...

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...

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 ...