Spring is now certainly
in the air. The snow has melted and the garden is burgeoning.
It has been a long winter but hopefully it is over. Work on
the China CD is progressing - the diagrams are taking forever
I’m afraid, but the end result will be worth it. I’m
not so happy with the quality of the limestone scenery images.
It rained the whole time I was in Guilin and Yangshuo so I’ve
got some very moody art photography but not a lot of good
teaching images, so I’m using this as an excuse to return
to China after the Easter holidays when the fares become reasonable
again and hopefully before the rains start in May. It’s
about time my wife tasted China anyway! We’ll also be
able to drop in and say hello to Chris Durbin in Hong Kong,
which will be great. I’ve started putting up the 600x400
China archive on the web so you can get a flavour of what
is coming.
Directories
The directories for CD1, 2 and 3 are now available as pdfs
under the “News and Features” heading in the navigation
column. You can also, if you wish, print off a copy for your
departmental resources file.
GeoNews
Over the winter, subscribers should have received “GeoNews”
items (960x720 slides) on the fluctuating price of oil, the
Russian gas crisis, the Aussie drought and bush fires, the
London snowfall and the current global financial crisis. Slides
on the effects of this recession on developing countries and
on the “carnage in the car industry”, as well
as recent earthquake and volcanic eruption events have also
been e-mailed to subscribers. Some subscribers haven’t
supplied their e-mail addresses so I’m sorry but I can’t
supply them with GeoNews. Please e-mail me to remedy this.
Everyone takes time off to keep the kids up to date with world
events but it is often difficult to provide decent visual
aids. Hopefully the GeoNews items will be helpful. Some examples
are shown on the right. Nearly every school that I visit these
days has a LCD display in the foyer. Find out who controls
what gets shown on this monitor and offer to supply a GeoNews
powerpoint loop or video loop to show on the monitor. Salt
in some pictures of your students’ recent work / fieldwork
and make sure that your loop is running when parents’
nights are on!
The double page spread image in the centre of the Guardian
continues to provide the best ammunition for static “Geography
in the News” displays in the corridor. Aerial views
of Koubigou refugee camp in eastern Chad, the Abruzzo earthquake
and the Laxiwa Dam on the Yellow River (Huang He) were the
pick of the recent offerings. The Guardian must pay a fortune
for these pictures and yet they rarely figure on their website.
I have suggested to them that they institute an “image
of the day” slot, similar to NASA’s excellent
“Earth Observatory” or even the Chicago Tribune’s
image of the day, but to no avail so far. Even a 600x400 would
be useful to have. The best exemplar of digital “geonews”
to date is at the Boston Globe – simply wonderful!
www.boston.com/bigpicture/
China - Resources
Note also that some slides from the China presentations that
have been completed so far - “population change”,
“economic growth” and the “Three Gorges
Reservoir area” - are also on the GeoJuice site now,
and geographers may also find the abbreviated, composite presentation
on Slideshare quite useful. There are 123 presentation slides
(960x720s) in the vault on CD4 so far.
www.slideshare.net/aland/slideshows/
Staying with China, the best images on the Olympic Games in
China probably are to be found on the Newsweek site. I particularly
like the shot of the cloud seeding armoury. They don’t
look like silver iodide shells to me! Great for “Weather
and Climate” with S3.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/148844
One of the widest range of graphs and diagrams on China is
to be found on the IIASA website.
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/
ChinaFood/data/t_data_1.htm
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis is
a unique non-governmental, non-profit, global change research
institute. At the present time the institute is researching
China’s food supply and provide a plethora of tables,
charts, diagrams, maps and animations on China’s Population,
Diet Change, Urbanization, Cultivated Land, Water and Technology.
The animations have already “popped up” on several
geography sites and blogs. This is where they came from. The
maps and animations are the work of G K Heilig. A CD of the
in-depth analyses, detailed maps, and many of the larger tables
and figures is available for order ($39).
More “Free” Resources
The Planet Earth site has put up more “copyright free”
presentations for teachers to improve our earth science teaching.
The new themes are: Oil and Gas; Geological Time; Ice Ages;
The History of Life; and Evolution. First class.
www.earth4567.com
I was fortunate enough to be invited to give talks to the
Ayr and Helensburgh RSGS centres during the winter. It was
magic to meet up with so many “well-kent” faces
- Jim Stewart, Ian Geddes and Margaret Neville to name but
three. The welcoming atmosphere in both venues was superb
and the “craik” in the pub in Ayr was brilliant
(Swapping info about mountains, short-eared owls and creosote
plants!). Jim had fallen off his bike earlier that day but
he still looked good. The fees from the two talks also mean
that I’ve got enough money to print CD4 professionally,
so thank you guys.
Congratulations are in order for Nicolina Georgieva from Bulgaria.
She was the winner of the Geography Poster Competition which
SAGT ran for the IGU conference in Glasgow in 2004. Nicolina
enjoyed Scotland so much that she has decided to come and
take her degree here. Well, it was Malcolm McAskill who showed
her round Glasgow! Thanks Malcolm. (You did us all proud -
as ever. ) So I’m looking forward to meeting Nicolina
again in the autumn.
Congratulations are also in order for Gordon Lobban. Last
year, he and his wife, Helen led a joint excursion from Trinity
Academy and Beeslack HS to Japan. The kids had a great time
and made such an impression on their teachers upon their return
that Gordon had a delegation from them asking if he would
organise a similar trip for them. So he and Helen are off
to Japan again for the sakura. It was Gordon who introduced
me to Japan back in 1990, so this must be about his sixth
visit. Geography in action! Well done, sir.
Congratulations also to the team of four Spanish teenage students
and their teacher from IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia who
launched a weather probe they designed and built themselves.
Their helium-filled balloon carried a payload of electronics
and a camera to take atmospheric measurements and photographs
throughout the trip. After getting permission from aviation
officials and getting good weather, they released the probe
on a trip that took it over 30,000 meters (19 miles) above
sea level, through winds gusting up to 100 kph, and temperatures
reaching -54C (-65.2F), and traveling 38 kilometers overland
in a time of 2 hours and 10 minutes. The Meteotek08 team has
collected their images and data on both their blog and flickr
page. Well done lads!
Congratulations finally to RSGS on the “refreshing”
of their newsletter / magazine - “The Geographer”
(Great title!). Twenty pages, full colour, a bit of design,
competently desktop published and some cracking articles.
I particularly liked the “What Geography Means to Me”
column and the Greenland article. Relevant and useful. Jim
Hansom and his team have also done a great job with “The
Scottish Geographical Journal” as well. Well done, RSGS.
Enjoy!
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