GeoJuice Newsletter Autumn 2009

Apologies! Bit late with the newsletter – so let’s catch up.

The skeins of geese flying south each day have been reminding me that it is time for the autumn newsletter. I’ve finally got ahead with the wallpaper calendars and I’ll try to stay ahead so that people with two monitors can run two months at a time. Handy. China CD4 is now complete and at the printers, now ready. It was a very tight squeeze and I had to remove all the Hong Kong images and one of the presentations to get it to fit the 700Mb available. The HK stuff will appear on the website and the presentation - “Change in China” - will be available to download from Slideshare until the end of November.

http://www.slideshare.net/aland/change-in-china

CD4 is now ready. Work on CD5, “Glaciated Scenery”, is well underway and I hope to have it ready about Easter next year. GA conference time perhaps! Who knows?

Mapping the Way We Live
The University of Sheffield’s geography department has been (deservedly) getting a lot of good press recently with their alternative world maps appearing in The Times (Oct 3rd, 2009) and Sky News. (see example on right)

http://www.worldmapper.org/

“At first glance the maps could be mistaken for distorted creepy-crawlies - bloated body parts with randomly placed antennae and spindly legs, their gridlines looking much like the compound eyes and variegated wings of an insect (see on right). In fact, each image is a country map - reinterpreted by a pair of Sheffield University geographers. The result is a remarkable series of cartographic designs that cast the world in an entirely new light.” (BBC News Magazine)

The world maps have been about for a while now and are not particularly accessible to young kids but what is new is a series of country maps, nearly all of which are highly accessible to our students. Great stuff! There is also an atlas being published, The Atlas of the Real World, a review of which will appear in the next edition of “The Geographer”

Marketing Geography
The 2009 Student Essay Competition run by the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) has produced a fine crop of essays on “Why Study Geography, Earth or Environmental Sciences?” Congratulations to Ross Clark of Glasgow University who was second runner-up. There are loads of good marketing quotes for your departmental publications in the winning essays, all of which can be downloaded from

http://www.gees.ac.uk/projtheme/sawards/2009/sawards09.htm

“Environmental science is a relatively new and relevant discipline and this is what makes it so exciting. You’ll soon find that dynamic issues covered in lectures appear in newspapers the next week, whilst lecturers are so passionate about their speciality you feel compelled to actually do the extra reading. Indeed, studying environmental science will allow any student to compile the perfect CV, in a way that not just ticks the right boxes, but also allows personal growth and fulfilment.”

Emma Hargrave, studying Environmental Science at the University of Leeds.
“Geography provides a unique perspective, bridging the supposed gaps between society and the environment, and between social science, science and the humanities. My experiences in undergraduate-level geography have shown me the essential role that space and place play in human development and interactions, and how to analyse society, culture and politics from this perspective. Geography is impossible to classify, as it draws on such a wide variety of realms of knowledge, from the hardest of physical sciences to the most profound of philosophies. This admixture gives its student the impressive ability to understand concepts from a wide range of topics, and to integrate them in a manner not seen in other academic fields.”
Ross Clark, majoring in Earth Science at Glasgow University
Staying on the marketing theme the The American Geological Institute (AGI) has a neat video on YouTube - apart from the earth spinning in the wrong direction in the opening sequence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tvWDPBNiD4&feature=player_embedded#

The best graphic I’ve seen yet on CO2 capture and storage underground is available at

http://www.co2captureproject.org/media/3_CCP_infographic.jpg

A programme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is currently being discussed in the negotiations for a global climate deal. REDD aims to make it worthwhile for developing countries to maintain their forests, as opposed to cutting them down.

http://www.panda.org/wwf_news/news/?uNewsID=176141

Digital World? Analogue World? - It’s One World!
I had a shot on a whiteboard the other day. It was great fun but it was the only screen in the classroom. I always had two screens in my classrooms (or sometimes a screen, a blackboard and a bit of wall, painted white. The point was that you could leave a diagram or image on the overhead projector for reflection, consideration, reinforcement, while moving on to the next part of the lesson on a different delivery vehicle. Some kids needed that extra time. I sometimes needed that extra time! The overhead projectors are disappearing which is incredibly short sighted (It does save money, but it never pays to rely on a solitary delivery system). The digital projector is now god, which is great, if the screen / whiteboard is big enough for the room and also for the task. A lot of them are not. Digital delivery should complement analogue delivery - not replace it. The best seminar I ever attended was led by Peter Haggett at Mansfield College, Oxford, in June, 1994.

Eleanor Rawling had organised a wonderful Council of British Geography (COBRIG) event to debate the advancement of British geography. It was Peter Haggett’s swansong. The paper derived from this seminar is to be found in Geography into the Twenty-First Century, edited by Eleanor Rawling and Richard Daugherty (Wiley, 1996). The paper is interesting enough but it gives no indication of the enthusiasm, skill and humour of a teacher at the height of his powers. Peter worked his way between two flip-charts, about twenty feet apart. Each point was illustrated and a conversation took place as he travelled from one flip-chart to the next. The drawings ranged from the abstract to fine line drawings of people. I particularly liked the geo-political musings, illustrated by a globe which then became Richard Chorley’s stomach in the course of a couple of sentences. (For our younger readers - Chorley and Haggett were joint editors / authors of the seminal work, Models in Geography (1967) which led to the quantitative revolution in geography in the UK and beyond).

Afterwards, I complimented Professor Haggett on his delivery and his provision of time for reflection on each diagram. With a twinkle in his eye he added that teachers should also always present a moving target to their students - “for health and safety reasons, you understand.” Well, some things haven’t changed.

I’ve never seen a “digital” presentation which has come even close to Peter’s presentation that evening. Conference centres, I notice, are increasingly adopting twin and multiple projector systems. Too expensive for most classrooms but the twin set-up should be adopted wherever possible. Peter Haggett also called upon COBRIG that evening to facilitate / oversee agreement about the geographic fundamentals at both school and university level. Sixteen years later, it is a challenge (or chalice?) which COBRIG has pointedly refused to pick up. COBRIG was established in 1988 to “to co-ordinate and, where appropriate, to initiate and act on behalf of geography over matters concerning the status of geography in education, research and public policy and affairs, and over issues where the view of geographers ought to be made known”.

Geography is a bit like the television. It was OK when there were only two channels, but once the subject had disaggregated into a myriad of different strands, we were always going to have viewer numbers problems. If our subject is to have any credibility, there has to be agreement on what should be covered in schools and universities. Our continental colleagues in the IGU CGE did grasp the nettle with The Lucerne Declaration in 2007, but the ensuing debate was largely contained within the Commission for Geographical Education. We’ve still got it all to do.

Further Reading

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/intellectual_property
_who_owns_green_tech/#Caprotti

http://www.geography.org.uk/resources/earthquakes

Spring 2009

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!

December 08

The Long Silence
I apologise to our subscribers and visitors for the recent inactivity on the GeoJuice site. My mother died in July after a long period of deterioration and it is only now that the numbness is beginning to lift. I thank my friends and colleagues for their kind condolences. Much appreciated.

Work in Progress
The first thing I’ve done is fix the subscription pdf download (or rather I got Chris to do so! Thanks Chris). I’ve also started preparing the remaining Japan images for upload and I’m still hoping to get most of the China images online by Christmas. The CD won’t be ready until February 2009 – at the earliest. My trip to Iceland with Ivan had been planned for almost a year and we were just on the point of cancelling when my mum, God bless her, departed. Her timing was always great! The Iceland trip produced a rich vein of images which I’m just beginning to mine.

Iceland Just Ice

Svinafellsjokull

One of the benefits of the recent credit crunch crisis is that the price of beer in Iceland has halved. Good news for Malcolm McDonald and the SAGT cohort visiting there next year, although I think that most of them will stay dry like me …. Well, maybe not the two Malcolms. I was horrified to see that paying for drink in Reykjavik using the dreaded “plastic” was the norm. You also pay for on the spot traffic fines using a credit card (so I’m told!). Tourists get a 20% discount and its still a fortune!

A copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 has presented a whole new range of challenges and opportunities. GeoJUICE can now produce contact sheets of all the images on the CDs so would-be subscribers will be able to preview the images that are not included on the web site. The contact sheets can also be used for search and browsing purposes. I’m still working on how best to incorporate the contact sheets into the web site. The site is going to metamorphose into something even better. The more I learn, the more I can teach. Some things don’t change. The url of the site, however, will change eventually to www.earth-e.org where the “e” stands for “education” (or maybe even “ecstacy”?)
The series of articles on “visual education” which I have contributed to SAGT’s newsletters and journals is also now available on-line. Go to articles in the navigation bar on the left.

Planet Earth
The “free” NERC magazine surpassed even its own high standards with the autumn 2008 issue. The usual insights and summaries on a whole range of environmental issues were accompanied by DVD on Rapid Climate Change. The DVD emphasises the importance of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and demonstrates the latest attempt to understand this phenomenon by placing sensors in the Atlantic Ocean along the 26.5°N line of latitude. The most interesting finding so far is the realisation of just how volatile or fragile, this circulation is. For example, 8,200 years ago the overturning circulation was disrupted for a period of 150 years by a rush of fresh water from receding ice sheets. Rapid Climate change took place and temperatures in Greenland dropped by 60C for the duration of the disruption. Preliminary results from the sensors also reveal a surprisingly high variation on a day-to-day basis. (Marta Sebestyen’s soundtrack for the DVD is superb as well, although it’s a bit too good for the kids probably.) Order your copy at http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/

Viral Expansion Loops
Some jargon, such as the ‘Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation’ has to be taken onboard and added to the kids’ vocabulary. Other examples of jargon are superfluous to our curriculum but interesting none the less. ‘Viral Expansion Loops’ is classic assembly fodder. Well, S5 and S6 assemblies at any rate. “Viral loops have emerged as perhaps the most significant business accelerant to hit Silicon Valley since the search engine. They power many of the icons of Web 2.0, including Google, PayPal, YouTube, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Flickr.”

Ning's Infinite Ambition

Kids need to understand how these sites work and it’s easy to work it in to our geography curriculum (networks, nodes, spacial awareness, socio-economic developments, group dynamics, defensible space et al!) The important question to ask is “Who benefits from this?” If you (and your students) understand the processes involved it’s easier to set up and organize your online space to your own benefit rather than be organized into something of benefit to a corporation.
I love the parallels being drawn between Ning and Tupperware parties in the fastcompany article above. Just shows you that there is nothing new under the sun. Instead of supporting Ning, however, why not support a Scottish site that provides exactly the same (free) service and is run by two really nice Scottish guys?

Click here to view (login required)

Although for them to succeed and influence the zeitgeist they will probably have to come up with some catchy jargon instead of calling themselves ‘Community in a Box’. Far too obvious and clear for the technoprats, my boys. Maybe “Ying” would do the trick?

The Ying Tong Song - The Goons

Our younger readers should just chill and go with the flow. This is bank full discharge music kids.

Congratulations
Finally congratulations are in order. Firstly to my old friend, Jim Carson, who is going to receive the RSGS’ first medal for excellence. It really couldn’t be more appropriate, nor could it happen to a nicer chap. Jim was SAGT’s first president and has been our most stalwart supporter and astute critic ever since. I remember once failing to mention the Glasgow Panel in an article for SGN. The eloquent letter was on my doorstep the day after publication! Constructive criticism is always welcome Jim. All the best!

Secondly, I wish to congratulate my young friend from Beijing, Chen Hong. Hong is a geography teacher trainer who helped me out on my visit to Beijing in 2005. I even cracked the bus service thanks to Hong. Hong was awarded her doctorate recently. I know how hard she has had to work and how high the quality of that work will be. Hong has contributed articles to the Geographical Association’s ‘Teaching Geography’. I do hope that we will see an article based on her doctorate at some time in the future. Well done Hong.

10 April 2007
GeoJuice launched on Tuesday 10th April 2007 after a gestation period which would make even an elephant blanche. However we did make it just in time for the GA conference in Derby. A bit close for comfort but we made it.

Several geography teachers have been providing us with encouragement and advice. The “next” button is on its way as are more graphics, annotations and title pages. CD1 is now ready for delivery and CD2 is well on the way. GA and SAGT members are entitled to an introductory “two for the price of one” offer.

Watch us grow! Help us to grow!
Chris from “preciseWebSolutions” has borne the bulk of the hassle in his own inimitable, unflappable style and deserves a special thank you, as do Liz, Malcolm, Barbara, Malcolm, Mary, Jack, Gavin, Alasdair, Mary, John, Michael, Liz and Paul. Thanks guys! Brian McMorrow and David Jarman were our first two contributors and also deserve a special mention. It was so long ago that they have probably forgotten! Thank you all for your patience and constructive criticism. Much appreciated! I will get your stuff posted as soon as possible! Honest!

Finally GeoJuice must thank Len Brown and John Briggs who both said (separately but vehemently) that any educational images must be accompanied by a narrative description at the very least. I hope you like the fruits of your advice. They also said that it helps if your images are up to Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s standard! (Sorry guys.)
(GeoJuice News: 10th April 2007)