Sunday 22 February 2009

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!

Saturday 21 February 2009

Is it going to rain?

Rather liked this - another new discovery via Twitter (@coolkiddo).

Sunday 15 February 2009

Thursday 12 February 2009

Spot the difference!

Both Sydney... But one's in Australia and one's in Canada...

And as this article from the BBC illustrates, it's all too easy end up in the wrong place when you're booking your holidays...

Geography Matters!! ;-)

Sunday 8 February 2009

Because of Geography...

Conversations in a variety of contexts with a variety of students about Dubai over the past week or so, so I was interested to see the Fly Emirates advert:



Also interesting, in my planning for the AS Geography taster lessons, to read about Xeritown... More links later, but don't want to spoil Tuesday!!

More and more people realising the importance of Geography...

Twitter Snow Map

I mentioned the other day about Twitter and the UK snow map, and also about the arrival of Google Earth 5. The two have been rather neatly combined to produce this nice animation:



And there's more snow on the way, according to the Met Office... (Although still actually rather sunny outside at the moment here.)

Australian wildfires

With the crazy snow dominating the headlines this week, there hasn't been as much attention as there might have been focused on the wildfires that are causing huge destruction across the Australian state of Victoria.

At least 65 people have been killed, and entire towns have been destroyed in the fires which are said to be the worst in the area since 1983.

The BBC has a horrifying In Pictures series together with various articles and videos from the past couple of weeks:

Friday 6 February 2009

GCSE Geography

I have spoken to all Year 9 geographers this week about GCSE Geography... As a reminder and for those who were too busy playing in the snow to come to school today, here's the presentation I used. Many thanks to Liz Smith and Jo Blackmore as several of the slides were borrowed from their presentations.



And the Geography Matters video here:


Don't forget, if you have any questions about the course, or about GCSE Geography in general, speak to your Geography teacher or come and see me...

Thursday 5 February 2009

Snow!! And a competition...

Lots more snow in the early hours of this morning... And a day off! Plenty of photos and videos, news articles about the lack of grit, etc. on the BBC website, and an explanation here of what's causing this weather...

My slightly lop-sided snowman:

And I think that it's about time for another Geogtastic photo competition. So, SHS students and staff - send your best snow photo to me via email (if you send from your school email, you just need to type vel into the address bar) before Tuesday 10th Feb...

Tuesday 3 February 2009

And more snow...

Actually, not more snow in our neck of the woods, just very cold so that the snow we had yesterday and last night was nicely frozen and dangerous... It looked very pretty though:


Lots and lots of stories, videos, photos, etc. on the BBC website, and a nice set of photos by Twitter users on Flickr (including mine from Smalley Dam yesterday)...

I particularly like this though...

Monday 2 February 2009

Google Earth 5

Just exploring Google Earth 5 which features a new Oceans layer, historical imagery and simplified touring...
Exciting stuff!!

More snow....

Plenty of updates to the Twitter snow map throughout the day...

Rather more snow here today than there was yesterday, but still not enough for a snow day...

Photos (and maybe a video for Callum's benefit) from my walk to Smalley Dam this afternoon to follow...

Snow...

You will probably have noticed the weather forecasts over the weekend, with Met Office warnings for "heavy snow", and, depending where in the country you are, you might also have noticed some snow...

The East Midlands was meant to be one of the worst hit areas... There was nothing, however, til the middle of this afternoon - then a sudden flurry that lasted all of five minutes. I was going to go out and video it but on opening the front door, I changed my mind. Instead, here's the view from the bedroom window:


Snow in Smalley... from victoria ellis on Vimeo.


All that's left now is a fine scattering, nicely frozen and slippy ready to cause mayhem in the morning...

You will also, most likely, have heard of Twitter in the news of late. Like many other people, I didn't "get it" at first, but it's grown on me and I've discovered lots of interesting things - especially, though not exclusively, about ICT in education... Anyway, across the "TwitterVerse", people are "tweeting" snow reports, which are being incorporated into this Google Maps mashup:
I suspect that it says more about the locations of Twitter users who are still up and about than it does about where it's snowing most, but either way, it's interesting from a geographical point-of-view.

Is it snowing where you are?