Santa Tracking....

Don't forget to keep track of Santa's progress on Christmas Eve...

Highlights from last year here:



Merry Christmas!

Philippine volcano fears....

I still remember Mr Munday, one of my A Level Geography teachers, telling us that whenever he taught natural hazards/plate tectonics, he could pretty much guarantee that there would be an earthquake or a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world, and I have certainly found that to be the case every time that I have taught hazards/tectonics.

The most recent news is that more than 20,000 people have had to evacuate their homes in the area around Mayon in the Philippines, following a series of ash explosions and lava flows.

More from the BBC here...

Copenhagen...

I'd be surprised if you were not aware by now that today was the first day of the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.

About 100 world leaders are meeting to discuss climate change and try to reach an agreement about what can be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change that they are experiencing already.

There are lots and lots of news articles I could post, but I'd be here all night so....

- do a Google News search for Copenhagen
- check out COP15's YouTube channel
- have a look at the BBC's Copenhagen Summit pages
- visit the official COP15 page

AND.... do your bit - how can you help???

Pompeii...

Most of you will know about Pompeii, which was destroyed by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79AD. What you might not know, however, is that you can explore the ruins of Pompeii in Google Streetview... Click on the picture below!

Switzerland!

Time is running out to get your money and permission slips in for the Switzerland trip in Summer 2010. We will be leaving school on Monday 26th July, and returning on Sunday 1st August, and the trip is open to geographers currently in Years 10-13. Travel will be by coach, and we'll be staying at the Hotel Le Relais Alpin, in the village of Les Mosses. Excursions during the week will include cheese and chocolate factories, thermal baths and Chamonix and the Mer de Glace. The cost of the trip will be confirmed once the itinerary has been finalised, but will not be more than £600.

The photos below show Les Diablerets and the Mer de Glace, and were taken by Val Vannet when she took a group from the High School of Dundee on this trip a couple of years ago.

If you want to come on the trip, you need to get your permission slip and a £40 deposit to me as soon as possible. If you didn't get a letter, or you've lost yours, come and see me for a new one.

It promises to be an excellent trip - make sure that you don't miss out!!

Penguin!

Well done to Tanith who spotted a penguin last Saturday morning...

None about this morning, but a fair few seals on the beach...

South Georgia!

It's been far too long since I've had a look at the fantastic South Georgia webcams... It's looking pretty cold and miserable there today, but there are plenty of seals about! Prize for the first SHS person to spot a penguin and send me a copy of the image with the date and time....



For those of you who've not yet seen the South Georgia webcams (why not?!), click on the South Georgia tag at the bottom of this post to find out more...

Happy Halloween

Celebrate Halloween by turning Google Earth into a giant pumpkin.... Click here to go to the GE Blog, and download the .kmz file from the link in the first paragraph. Thanks to Kenny O'Donnell for the tipoff.


This is also fun, though not especially geographical...

8BL - Earth as Art challenge...

Good morning 8BL! Your challenge for today is to use Google Earth to produce a fantastic piece of art work... Below are two of my favourite examples from last year's Year 8 groups, and you can see some of the others by clicking here.

To make your own...

1. Open Google Earth (Start, Swanwick Hall, Humanities, Google Earth).

2. Spend some time exploring, and find yourself a beautiful view.

3. Open a new Ppt presentation.

4. Back in Google Earth, make sure you are happy with your view (do you want to zoom in or out, or tilt it?), then take a screenshot (hold down Ctrl + press PrtScn).

5. Paste your screenshot into your Ppt slide.

6. Crop your screenshot until you are happy with it.

7. Right-click on your picture, and select "Save as picture..." Give your picture a sensible name, and save it in your user area (preferably in a Geography folder!). Check that the filetype (in the dropdown box below where you type the filename) is .png or .jpg.

8. Go to the Big Huge Labs website. Upload your picture, and then experiment with colours, etc. and give your work a caption.

9. When you are completely happy with it, click Create. Once your finished poster appears, you can either go back and edit it, or click Save. Save the file to your computer, giving it a filename that includes your name.

10. Open your school emails. Type vel into the address bar, and then attach your finished work (not the screenshot from your ppt). Send!

I am expecting two brilliant pieces of work from each pair, and we will have a look at everyone's work on Friday morning. Have fun!

Blog Action Day - Climate Change Conference

Today is Blog Action Day - where bloggers across the world blog about the same big issue... This year, it is climate change... So a good time to write about the Oxfam Climate Change Conference that I went to on Monday with two Yr11 and two Yr12 geographers.

Oxfam are running a series of conferences for young people in the run up to the Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December, and we were lucky enough to get places at the Birmingham Conference.

After an introduction to some of the impacts of climate change on communities in Malawi from Elvis (yes, really), the day was spent taking part in various workshops - looking at how to take action and plan events in the community, understanding some of the politics of climate change, and putting together a message for Gordon Brown to take to Copenhagen.

We all had an excellent day, and the girls came back with lots of ideas about "blue days", mini-Oxjam events and an eco-fest... Watch this space for more!

This is the fantastic collage that the girls put together to take to the conference (which was most definitely the best piece of work in the exhibition!):


And the "photo shoot" for the Derby Telegraph and Ripley & Heanor News...

People Powered Maps...

Most of you will, by now, have seen the fantastic Worldmapper maps, put together by a team of geographers from Sheffield University. (If you haven't, you should go and have a look now... And even if you have, go and have another look, as there are now almost 700 maps available.)

However, Professor Danny Dorling has been busy producing a new set of cartograms showing population density for various different countries. This is the UK one, and you can find out more about the project and look at some of the other maps in this BBC article, or view the full set of maps on the Worldmapper website:

Indonesian earthquake and Samoan tsunami

Lots of you have come into lessons over the past couple of days talking about the tsunami that struck Samoa and American Samoa and the series of earthquakes around the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.

The events are still in the news, with international relief teams being flown in to help in the rescue and clean-up efforts.

The BBC has lots of information, images and video clips about both - with In Pictures series here for the tsunami and here for the earthquakes.

We picked up all the activity on our seismometer - I haven't managed to get screenshots of the seismographs yet, but when I do, I'll post them on the Swanwick Seismology blog here.

Svalbard

Some reminders for 8BL...

Laurel McFadden's Cold Photo blog...

Flickr

More Svalbard stuff here:

www.svalbard.net/
www.svalbard.com/

Dancing Matt...

I've posted about Dancing Matt before, but this is for the benefit of Year 8, especially 8BL, who enjoyed watching Matt's 2008 video this morning...



If you want to have a look at the other videos, including out-takes, and also check out maps and Google Earth files of where Matt has danced, they're all on his website here. (I have not read all of the comments on the website, or posted on the YouTube videos, and so I cannot guarantee that there aren't any rude words there.... If there are, I am very sorry!)

Journey Sticks...

My Nature Explorers group spent their first Enrichment session last week making some journey sticks... This was another great idea that I picked up from Twitter, and seems to be well-used in primary schools as a way of introducing maps. I've since found out though, that journey sticks began with aboriginal people who put them together when they went on long journeys, and then used them on their return as prompts when telling the rest of the tribe about their journeys.

Our journey was not so long - 40 minutes or so in the school grounds - but we were amazed at the number of interesting objects we managed to find...

Thanks to Miss Breider (former SHS student and prospective Geography teacher) for putting this brilliant display together!

The Climate Mystery...

Have a look at this and see if you can work out what's going on!

www.climatemystery.com

More congratulations!!

More congratulations - this time to the Year 11 geographers who achieved a FANTASTIC set of results... A*-C grades for 73% of the group... Very very well done!!

Photo ChrisIrmo (Flickr)

Good luck to those of you going elsewhere, and I look forward to seeing lots of you again in the AS Geography group in September!!

I hope you'd be able to do better than this...

I have made a point of avoiding Big Brother, but a fellow geography teacher has just pointed this out... (Click on the A Wonder of the World link)... And if you can't do better, get the globe or the atlas out and spend the last week of your holidays practising, if only so that you don't show yourself up on a reality TV show!!

Congratulations!

Congratulations to the Year 12 and 13 geographers who received some very good exam results today, as a result of lots of hard work.

Photo ChrisIrmo (Flickr)

The very best of luck to Year 13... even those of you who are not doing Geography at uni ;-) Keep in touch, come back and visit (the blog and the dept!) and don't forget to send me some good geographical photos from all your adventures!

Weather....

Not the greatest of weather for this time of year at the moment, but what is quite great is this new Met Office/Google Maps mashup...

The "Weather Visualisation" is part of Invent, which is the Met Office's showcase of some of their plans for new ways to present weather information and forecasts, and allows you to turn a variety of layers (the one above shows the rainfall forecast for 10.00am today) on and off, and also to view forecast and weather warning information for specific regions.

Thanks to Ollie Bray for the tipoff.

An experiment...

I've been thinking for a while about the potential for using mobile phones in lessons, and planning to try out some ideas next year... One of which, is getting you to use mobile phones to respond to polls/answer questions, using something like Poll Everywhere (thanks Ollie Bray).

Good idea?? Text your response to the number below. (It will cost your usual text message rate... which might be nothing, depending on your contract, etc.)

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

Google Timeline

I think that this feature has been about for a while now, but I have only just discovered (via Tom Barrett on Twitter) Google Timeline... Essentially, you type in your search term as usual, but can then view a timeline of the results...

This was my first try... What do you think the search term was??

Happy Yorkshire Day!

(Image: Flickr user The Killer Biscuit)

Should the Met Office be sued?

Yes, according to the author of this article from The Times. Earlier this year, the Met Office announced that we were in for a "barbecue summer"... But there has not been much evidence of that so far - in fact, it's been quite the opposite!

The Met Office revised their forecast earlier this week, claiming that they had only said that there was a 65% chance of a hot summer, and that the media had mis-reported the seasonal forecast. Here is their response to the recent criticism they've received...

Nice article here, with some excellent photos.... Kayaking round a campsite anyone?

Disappearing Derby shops...

Some of the many boarded up shops in Derby which, according to a new report out today, has a retail vacancy rate of 22%. 19,000 independent shops and 7000 branches of chains have closed this year across the country, with Margate in Kent being worst affected, and Derby second. Although the recession is a major factor, the Westfield Centre - which opened in 2007 - has played its part.

More from the BBC here.

Buy local?

Year 8 have had some interesting discussions over the last term about food miles and the surrounding issues... including whether it's really always as straightforward as "the further it's travelled, the worse it is..." so I was interested to read this article about strawberries and tomatoes from Spain perhaps being better from an environmental point-of-view than local ones...

What do you think?

Nottingham 2018?

FA inspectors were in Nottingham today, finding out more about the proposals for new stadium which is at the centre of the bid to bring the 2018 World Cup to the city.

Nottingham is one of 15 cities (together with Birmingham, Bristol, Derby, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Sunderland) bidding to be a host city... Find out more about Nottingham's bid here.

Eco Towns

You might well have heard in the news that the go-ahead has been given for four new "eco-towns" in England. The idea is that the four new towns will provide an extra 10,000 homes by 2016, and will "showcase environmentally-friendly living" - with charging points for electric cars, zero-carbon buildings, new public transport links, and solar and wind energy.

Full story from the Guardian here, with a nice interactive to show the locations of the four new eco-towns (and the other proposed sites that were rejected).

Nottingham Riviera

Fancy a trip to the seaside? Well, as of next Wednesday, you will not have to travel quite so far... Watch the transformation of Nottingham's Market Square below!

Your neighbourhood?

Thanks to Ian Murray for pointing out this really interesting set of "mental maps" created by teenagers in cities around Britain. The maps were part of a research project by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, looking at young people and territoriality.



Click on the picture above to look at the maps properly, and here for the full research report.

What would your map look like? Are there areas of your neighbourhood where you feel particularly safe or unsafe? Why do you think this is?

A day in the life in logos...

Another nice discovery via Twitter... This is part of 'A day in the life in logos...' Click on the image for the full version. Why not have a go at making your own? Who uses the most - or the fewest - "logos" in a day?

SWAN!!

Exciting news!!!

SWAN is our new seismometer, and will be appearing in the Science Block later this week.... Find out more on the new Swanwick Seismology blog...

A mystery for you...

This computer-generated image shows something that could be coming to a city near you in the next few years... What is it? What will it do? And is it a good idea??

A new type of cloud?

Some fantastic images here, with some interesting ideas from the Cloud Appreciation Society about how clouds should be classified...

How fast is your broadband?

You might well have seen reports in the news over the past couple of days about the speed - or lack of - of broadband in various parts of the country. This "heatmap" shows broadband speeds across the UK... Is there a pattern to it?? Surprises?

Honduras earthquake

Four people were killed and tsunami warnings were issued this morning when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Honduras.

More from the BBC, including some reader accounts, here.

Cycling the Americas

I posted the other day about Mark Beaumont's new adventure, and you can find links to his blog and Twitter feed there.

Some more good news though is that Mark's former Geography teacher, Val Vannet, will be writing a parallel blog, looking at the geography of the places Mark visits on his journey from Anchorage to Ushuaia. You can follow the blog here and if you missed the blog that Val wrote as Mark cycled around the world then you can catch up with that one here.

Climate Change Competition...

Care about climate change? Fancy a trip to Copenhagen? Then watch this video and enter the competition!! Come and see me if you want more details or help with your entry...

Is it raining?

Miserable weather here all weekend, and elsewhere in the UK too, according to Twitter. So, as a little experiments/investigation, I set up a wiki map which can be edited by anyone - add a marker with details of what the weather is like where you are...



Oh, and if you haven't already seen it, check out the brilliant Is it going to rain? which I discovered a while back but had forgotten about until it appeared in the latest GA Magazine...

J'aime la Tour

Thanks to my sister for this video... Brilliant!

The Man Who Cycled The World...

Those of you who enjoyed following Mark Beaumont's progress as he cycled the world will be pleased to hear that his book, The Man Who Cycled The World, is out now...

And... even more exciting is that Mark is about to embark on his next adventure - on 27th May, Mark will set off from Anchorage in Alaska - on his way to Ushuaia, 15000 miles away in southern Argentina.

The BBC will be filming Mark's journey for a documentary series, The Man Who Cycled The Americas, and you can follow Mark's progress here.

Editing to add a link to an interview with Mark for The Scotsman.

If the Earth were a sandwich...

Have you ever wondered where you would end up if you dug a hole all the way through the earth?? Some of you will have seen Holey Moley before, but this new Google Maps mashup is a more recent discovery (yes... via Twitter!) and is fab...

Swine Flu

Nice BrainPop video explaining swine flu...

A Visual Dictionary

Just discovered Shahi, which is a dictionary that comes up with definitions but also Flickr (or Google or Yahoo) images tagged with your search term... Fab!!

Earthquake!

The screenshot below shows the earthquakes that have struck central Italy over the past day or so, courtesy of a new Google Maps mashup pointed out by Alan Parkinson (aka GeoBlogs):


Also interesting (and perhaps somewhat worrying) are news reports such as this one from the Times, suggesting that the earthquake was predicted, but warnings were ignored...

Latest reports suggest that the death toll is now nearing 150. There've been lots of updates to the coverage on the BBC website, and a Google News search will bring up lots of articles.

Earthquake in Italy and Chilean volcano

I was reminded when I switched the news on this morning of my A Level Geography teacher, who used to say that every time he taught plate tectonics, he could almost guarantee there'd be an earthquake or a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world. That's certainly seemed to be the case every time I've taught it, and just the other day I told Yr13 to watch the news over the holidays.

Sadly, the first news item I saw this morning was that an earthquake in Italy had killed at least 16 people. According to the BBC website, the death toll is now 27. The magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck the medieval city of L'Aquila in the early hours of this morning, causing many of the city's 70,000 residents to run out into the streets in panic. The age of the buildings meant that many of them were unable to withstand the quake, and the narrow mountainous roads are making rescue attempts more difficult.

The Google Earth screenshot below shows the area, with the USGS earthquakes layer enabled.

More from the BBC here.

Also on the same news bulletin was that the Llaima volcano in Chile has been "spewing lava, ash and gas" overnight, causing many people from the surrounding area to be evacuated. As well as the danger from the eruption itself, melting snow is increasing the risk of mudslides, and volcanic ash has caused river levels in the area to increase. More here.

Mobile Phone Revision Quizzes...

I've been intending for a while to have a go at this, and decided this afternoon that it would be far more fun than cleaning the bathroom... This folder contains a GCSE Coasts Revision Quiz - ten simple multiple choice questions, in the form of .jpegs. The idea is that you download the pictures to your mobile, and then view them in slideshow mode on your phone... Geography revision, wherever, whenever!

How you get the pictures onto your phone will vary from phone to phone, and although I have got them to the right size so that they display properly on my phone, I am not sure whether or not they will work properly on other phones...

So, have a go at downloading them and then leave a comment telling me:

- how easy it was to get the quiz onto your phone
- whether it displays properly on your phone
- whether you think revision quizzes like this are a good idea
- any suggestions for improvements

Enjoy!!

Young Geographer of the Year

Not long until the closing date for the Young Geographer of the Year competition - the theme is Arctic Journey and the prizes are fantastic!

More details about what's involved here - closing date is Wednesday 15th April... get your skates on!!

Mt Redoubt

Although the alert level has been reduced, there's ongoing Mt Redoubt activity... And a fantastic panoramic image (view full size):

London Futures

An interesting set of images showing how climate change could affect London...

In the footsteps of Shackleton

In 1908, Ernest Shackleton and his team set off to explore the Antarctic "terra incognita"... Towards the end of last year, some of their descendants embarked on an expedition to retrace Shackleton's footsteps.

There is a nice arcticle and video clips from the BBC here and their expedition is the subject of this evening's Timewatch at 8.40pm on BBC2.

Mt Redoubt

Lots of volcanic activity over the past week or so at Mt Redoubt in Alaska... Nice image from the webcam here:Plenty of stories if you do a Google News search, and you can follow the ongoing activity via the Alaska Volcano Observatory site and on Twitter.

QR codes...

The "experiment" in yesterday's post was more for my benefit than yours - I spent some time researching QR codes and thinking about the possibilities for use in teaching, and more specifically, in teaching Geography...

I have various ideas, at various stages of development, but they will fall flat on their faces if the "target audience" - ie you - doesn't know what QR codes are, and doesn't know what to do with them. And the response from Yr11 today, when one person had seen something similar on a Pepsi can but didn't really know much about it, suggests that some work is needed on my part!

Reluctant though I am to post a Wikipedia link, this explains a bit more about QR codes and what they are... QR codes are appearing everywhere in Japan... including - bizarrely - on tombstones, allowing visitors to view photos and videos of the deceased!!

The idea is that with a mobile phone which has a camera, you can scan a QR code, and be taken to a website, or be given a phone number or piece of text. If you are lucky enough to have an iPhone, you will be able to choose from a variety of QR code readers to download - I've tried Snappr and Neoreader (both free) but particularly impressed with Optiscan (£2.99). If you have a relatively recent Nokia phone, you might well find that you have a QR code reader pre-installed - check in the Office bit of your phone menu... With many other relatively new phones (as long as they have a camera), you can download a reader - type "QR code reader" and the model of your mobile phone into Google (or any other search engine!).

Once you've got your QR code reader sorted, check this one out....

OS map overlays for Google Earth

Very impressed with Gavin Brock's OS map overlays for Google Earth... (Thanks to Noel Jenkins for the tip-off.) Like the fabulous Where's the Path?, which I have posted about before, there is a limit of 30,000 map tiles per day, but it will be very useful nonetheless.

The screenshot (showing Llyn Ogwen, Cwm Idwal and the Nant Ffrancon valley, where Yr12 are headed on Wednesday) was taken with the overlay set to semi-transparent so you can see clearly how the terrain links to the contours on the map...

More volcanoes...

Twitter (@geologynews) strikes again - 8 Hot Volcanic Eruptions from Wired Science is a collection of pretty impressive photos of volcanic eruptions including Mt St Helen's. My particular favourite is this satellite image (courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory) of Mt Cleveland, in Alaska...

Streetview UK

I'd be surprised if you haven't heard by now about the arrival of Streetview to the UK. Streetview, which has been about in the States for a while now, allows you to explore panoramic ground-level images in pretty impressive detail.

At the moment, Streetview is available for 26 UK towns and cities, including Nottingham and Derby... This is where I lived in Nottingham when I was training to be a teacher!


View Larger Map

Exploring Bradford City Centre (including the "regeneration"!!) was also interesting...

If you want to have a play, you need to go to www.google.co.uk/maps - drag the little yellow man at the top of the zoom slider onto any of the streets that are highlighted in blue - and get exploring!!

Hunga Ha'apai

Lots of you were asking yesterday about the eruption of Hunga Ha'apai, the underwater volcano near Tonga, in the Pacific Ocean.

The Google Earth screenshot below shows the area, with the USGS earthquake overlay and the Smithsonian Global Volcanism overlay turned on...


A Google News search will bring up lots of articles, videos and photos... More here from the Times Online, and some superb images from The Big Picture.

An experiment...

Saudi Sandstorm

An excellent (though rather scary) set of images from the BBC of "one of the most powerful sandstorms in decades" which hit Riyadh - the Saudi Arabian capital - on Monday.

Tube Map...

For some strange reason, I still have a fascination with the Tube and the Tube map, so love this video from Digital Urban showing the lines laid out according to their geographical locations, rather than the traditional Tube map layout...


London Tube Map Geography:Visualisation Draft from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Breathing Earth and Plug into Now...

Two fab new discoveries via Twitter (thanks @HelenNurton and @mbarrow)...

Breathing Earth

Plug into Now (also a Plug into Now widget at the bottom of the page...)

Switzerland!!!

If you are a Yr10, 11, 12 or 13 geographer, you will already know about the fantastic opportunity that is the proposed Geography visit to Switzerland in summer...

We will be leaving school on the 29th July (returning on the 4th August) and travelling by coach (and ferry!) to Les Mosses, a beautiful little hamlet in the heart of the Alps.

The itinerary will be finalised once we have confirmed the booking, but it will include a wide variety of physical and human geography - avalanches, tourism, glaciers, mountains, the cheese and chocolate industries... The photos below (of Les Diablerets, the Aiguille du Midi cable car and the famous Mer de Glace) were taken by Val Vannet from the High School of Dundee when she took some of her students on a similar visit a few years back.


The cost of the visit will be approximately £550 (this will be confirmed once the itinerary is confirmed), and if you want to come, you need to get a deposit of £40 (cash is fine, or a cheque payable to Swanwick Hall School) and a parental consent slip to me as soon as possible...

If you have any questions, need more information, or didn't get a letter, come and see me in Humanities as soon as possible.

Polar Journeys...

Digital Explorer's Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop is currently en route to Antarctica... He is headed for Bellingshausen and the E-Base - a permanent educational base "to share the beauty of this continent with students and leaders around the world". During their time in Antarctica, Jamie and the team he is with will be only be using renewable energy - to demonstrate that if it's possible in Antarctica, it's possible here in the UK too.

Lots to investigate on the E-Base website and if you've been bitten by the Twitter bug, you could follow Jamie's journey there too.


You might well have heard in the news about the Catlin Arctic Survey team, who are now 5 days into their expedition to measure and map the Arctic sea ice. They too have a website and can be followed on Twitter and Facebook...

Fairtrade Fortnight...

Tomorrow sees the start of this year's Fairtrade Fortnight...

Click on the logo to link to the Fairtrade Foundation website where you can find out more about why Fairtrade is important and about how you can get involved.
New for this year is Go Bananas - the aim being to get as many people as possible eating Fairtrade bananas between noon on 6th March and noon on 7th March... Click on the picture below to find out more.

And if you're that way inclined, you can become a fan of Fairtrade on Facebook or follow the Fairtrade Foundation on Twitter.

Why not leave a comment to let us know what you're doing for Fairtrade Fortnight? Better still, send a picture!