Statetris!

Just spent rather longer than I should have playing on this...

Enjoy!!

Wet and windy Edinburgh...

Spent this weekend in Edinburgh for the SAGT Conference... An interesting lecture from Iain Stewart - "Unnatural Hazards: Creating Cultures of Catastrophe":


Two excellent workshops by Ollie Bray and Alan Parkinson - some great ideas coming soon to a classroom near you!

Lots of freebies including a fab notebook made from obsolete geological maps... Interesting conversations about the possibilities of trips to Norway or Switzerland... Excellent demonstrations of a twister in a jar and a clever way to show how warm and cold fronts move...

And a fascinating talk from "The Man Who Cycled The World":

The atrocious weather for most of the rest of the weekend meant that there wasn't much photography other than a quick snap of the Castle this morning:

Looking forward to next year!

360 Cities

If you have some time on your hands, have a look at this fantastic website which I had heard about before but hadn't explored until Ollie Bray reminded us about it yesterday...


360 Cities has some stunning panoramic photography from all over the world, and - despite the name - not all of it is city-based... This one, for example, is the beautiful Landmannalaugur in Iceland:

You can also use the little Google Earth icon in the bottom right hand corner of the image to view it in Google Earth...

More Earth as Art!

8CDr's turn this time, and some fantastic work which you can have a look at on Geogtastic's Flickr page. This one was my favourite today... Well done Liam!

If you want to make your own:
- find yourself a beautiful view in Google Earth
- save it as a png or jpeg file
- go here

Have fun!

Blog Action Day

By now you will have seen the fantastic World Mapper maps... As today is Blog Action Day, here's one for you to think about that links to this year's Blog Action Day theme:

How can YOU make a difference??

Our day out!

Lovely day out yesterday planning fieldwork along the River Dove for Year 12...

Earth as Art...

8KJe spent their lesson this morning using Google Earth to create some superb art work... My personal favourite is Kieran's "Fjord Claws" below, but you can check out some of the others on Geogtastic's new Flickr pages.


If you want to create your own, have a look at Big Huge Labs Motivator tool.

Cold Photo...

As promised Year 8, Laurel McFadden's fantastic blog about her adventures north of the Arctic Circle is here:

Plenty more about the Northern Lights here...

And for those of you who were interested in setting up your own blogs, go to www.blogger.com and click Create Blog!

You will need to have a Google account to do it - you can do that either through Blogger, or by going to www.google.com and then clicking Sign In in the top right hand corner - you will then be put in your password or create an account... (Even if you decide not to set up a blog, having a Google account is a good idea because it will allow you to use all sorts of excellent applications!)

Have fun!

South Georgia

Whilst it's getting colder here, things are warming up in South Georgia, and the seals are enjoying the sunshine on the beach...


This is the view from Webcam 2 at the moment:

And Webcam 1:

And this is what it looked like on 4th October last year:
Who will spot the first penguin?!

Volcano World and Montserrat

My Year 9 group will need to be having a look at the Volcano World website as part of their homework this week:

Well worth a look for everyone else as well though - information about volcanoes all over the world, details of current volcanic activity, photos, virtual volcano tours, games, etc.

Year 9 might also like to have a look at the website of the Montserrat Volcanic Observatory where there is detail of current volcanic activity on Montserrat, lots of excellent photos, and details of the new Hazard Level System.

Map Jigsaws...

Lots of interesting things on the National Geographic website, including a choice of 24 map jigsaws...

Shouldn't be too much of a challenge for you to beat my time of 10 mins 22 seconds for the Europe Political map!!

Thanks to Tony Cassidy for the tip-off.

More on The Box...

You can join the Facebook group... check out Follow The Container, and see photos of the Box in this Flickr pool...

Britain's Favourite View

A while back, ITV ran a series called Britain's Favourite View, where minor celebrities waxed lyrical about their favourite view in Britain, and tried to convince the public to phone in and vote for them... The winner was Wastwater in the Lake District:



The series has been the focus of some of the work that Year 8 have been doing this week - looking at the 16 views that the public voted for and making their own adverts. You can find out more about the series and the views from the ITV website here and on the Guardian website here. 8CDr had some interesting discussions about whether they should choose to promote a view that was famous and that they knew lots about already, or whether they should be encouraging people to find out more about places that were less well-known, and about whether "our" favourite view should be a natural one or a man-made one (or indeed if the "natural" views were really natural!). We also wondered about whether we should be basing our decisions solely on the photographs - we all agreed that Blackpool looked rather nicer in its photograph than any of us who'd visited Blackpool had experienced!

What is your favourite view in Britain? And why?

The Box

Various geobloggers have been writing about this over the past week or so...

Click on the picture to find out more about the project, watch some video clips, track The Box, and even make your own model of it!

Welcome!

Well, we are now two days into the new school year, and if you are an SHS student reading this you have probably been told or reminded about the blog by your Geography teacher... so welcome, or welcome back!

A very big welcome also to Miss Thurston and Miss Bradford, who joined us in the Geography Department this week. Hopefully they will soon be making contributions to Geogtastic.

The purpose of this blog is enthuse, inspire and support SHS students studying Geography - there will be geographical news stories, interesting websites, resources that might help with homework, competitions, and lots of other bits and pieces.

If you're a 6th form geographer, remember to look at Geogtastic6 as well, and for those of you in Yr10 or 11, there's the new GeogtasticGCSE.

I hope that you all had a fantastic summer, and look forward to some comments about the stories and websites on the blog soon.

Oh, and Geogtastic has now passed the 21,000 visits mark! Yay!

Where's your favourite place?

Had an interesting afternoon yesterday... Took myself to Phoenix Park where I left my car, and then hopped on the tram. Free parking and then £2.70 for a day pass is rather more reasonable than the £8 or £9 it would probably have cost me to park in the car park of a fairly well-known Nottingham shopping centre! And I didn't have the hassle of driving into Nottingham... Not quite sure why it's taken me so long to catch on!

Got off at The Forest and went to meet Mrs Kambalu at the New Art Exchange - where Mr Kambalu has some work displayed as part of the Next We Change Earth exhibition...

Then went into the city centre for a wander round the shops, and was interested to see an alternative to the usual "hello" in the pen-testing area of the shop that sells my favourite pens! And the apostrophe in the right place as well! Thanks to Mrs K for the photo.

While we're on the subject - where is your favourite place? And why?

Geography on TV

Thanks to Val Vannet for pointing out that Iain Stewart returns this Sunday (7th September) at 9.00pm on BBC2 with "Earth - The Climate Wars". The BBC don't seem to have pages for the programme at the moment, but you can read an interview with Iain Stewart about the series here.

At the same time on BBC1, Joanna Lumley is "In the Land of the Northern Lights"...

And on Monday 15th September, Bruce Parry is back!!! This time, he is travelling the length of the Amazon, meeting some of the people who live along the river, discovering their stories, and exploring some of the issues that they face... The picture below shows Bruce with one of the Kayapo - a tribe from the Central Brazilian Plateau, whose name means "the men from the water place". If you click on the picture, it will take you to the BBC's Amazon pages where you can read the blog from the journey, look at some photos (including Bruce in drag ready for a football match... hmm... not sure about that one...) and maps, and watch various video clips.

Hurricane Gustav

The Mayor of New Orleans has ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city - including emergency services - in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Gustav, which he called "the storm of the century". The BBC has a video clip of the press conference, where Mr Nagin urged people to take the situation seriously, and warned them that if they did choose to be "stubborn" and ride out the storm, they would be on their own.

Hurricane Gustav has already wrought havoc in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Cuba, and is forecast to hit the Gulf coast of the USA tomorrow.

The BBC has an In Pictures here and there is more information about Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna from the US National Hurricane Center.

The Tinsley Towers are no more...

One of the many videos already on YouTube of the demolition of the towers which took place at 3am today... BBC story here...



Very sad...

GEOGTASTIC GCSE RESULTS!!!

A little message for you if you received your GCSE results this morning...

I am very very pleased with you all and look forward to seeing lots of you in the new AS group in September! Good luck to those of you who are going off to do other things elsewhere... don't forget to keep coming back to visit Geogtastic!

Coasts may be "abandonded to sea"

That's according to Lord Smith, the new chairman of the Environment Agency, who says that coastal erosion is the most difficult issue that the Agency have to deal with, but that some parts of the coastline are so badly eroded that they are not worth protecting.


The picture shows part of the Holderness Coast (East Yorkshire), but large parts of Norfolk and Suffolk are under threat as well. Read the full article from the BBC here.

Google Maps Streetview

There's been a lot of talk of late about Google Streetview - mainly because Google and their Streetview cameras have arrived in the UK.

Streetview Camera in Birmingham (Image: Flickr user 'thornj')

The Streetview feature has been available for a number of US cities for a while now, the route of this year's Tour de France was 'done' in Streetview, and imagery is now available for some Japanese and Australian cities. From a geographical point-of-view, this has huge potential - but not everybody is happy...

If you haven't yet investigated Streetview, go to www.google.com/maps and click on the Streetview box in the top right corner of the map... If you then zoom in on the US, France, Australia or Japan, and click on one of the cameras, you will be able to explore in 3D!

Geogtastic GCSE

There is nothing much to look at yet, but those of you who are going into Year 10 or Year 11 in September will want to be keeping an eye on the new Geogtastic GCSE blog - www.geogtasticgcse.blogspot.com...

(And don't forget about Geogtastic6 for AS and A2 geographers!)

A month without plastic... update...

Just catching up with Chris Jeavans' "Month without plastic" challenge... She's about halfway though now, and has come across a fair few difficulties - bin liners, toothbrushes and beer-can 'widgets' amongst them - but she is doing far better than I imagine I could do!

Have a read here... How do you think you'd do?

Strong tea for heroes!

It seems that I am a little behind on this one as it has been about since September last year, but I have just spotted Captain Scott's Strong Expedition Tea in Tesco...

5p from each box of tea purchased will go to the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) and be used to help to preserve Captain Scott's hut on Ross Island. More here...

Have you had any? Did you like it?

Blog Action Day

Blog Action Day 2008 is on October 15th - click here for more details... and if you have a blog, make sure you sign up!

The Man Who Cycled The World...

You might well remember me posting about Mark Beaumont's record-breaking round-the-world cycle... 18,000 miles in 194 days! Well, as well reading Val's epic blog which explored the geography of Mark's journey, you can now see the BBC documentaries - Monday 18th-Thursday 21st August, BBC1, 10.35pm.

You might also have seen a new Orange advert in the past week or so - featuring Mark... If you haven't, check it out here together with a short documentary about Mark and his journey.

And if you are a new Geogtastic visitor and don't know what I'm talking about, click on Mark Beaumont at the bottom of this post, or check out Mark's website.

Murphy's World Tour...

This news story amused me today... Murphy - a gnome from Gloucestershire - was stolen from his home seven months ago, but has returned today... together with an album full of photos of his world tour!

Ugly beautiful??

If, as I do, you make regular journeys up and down the M1, then these will be a familiar sight:

Image: Flickr user 'bits of rubble'

The Tinsley Towers' days are numbered, however. The 250ft high cooling towers are all that remains of the Blackburn Meadows Power Station which helped to power the famous Sheffield steel industry, and are the oldest of their type in the world.

The towers, nicknamed "Salt and Pepper" have been described as "important post-industrial icons"; "an imposing indicator to drivers, letting them know they've arrived in the North"; "living art" and "the most beautiful pieces of urban landscape I have ever seen" (more comments and pictures of the towers here), some locals have set up a campaign to save the towers and The One Show visited the towers as part of their Ugly Beautiful series last week...

It seems the the owners of the towers, EOn, disagree though - the demolition is set to go ahead in the early hours of Sunday 24th August, closing the M1 and bringing dozens of people to a special viewing area in the Meadowhall car park... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7555945.stm

EOn have been given permission to build a £60 million biomass power plant on the site, which will provide enough renewable energy to supply 40,000 homes.

What do you think??

Geography on TV

Hopefully you will have been watching Lost Land of the Jaguar - looking at the rainforests of Guyana... First programme was fantastic, I didn't see the second one but will watch it on iPlayer before it disappears, and the third one will be on next week... More here.

Tonight though, sees the start of a new series - Britain from Above... Unsurprisingly, this being the BBC, I have not seen or heard the G-word on the website or trailers, but it has the potential, nonetheless, to be a superb series... BBC1, 9pm.

Derbyshire Online Information Resource

Some of you may already know about this, but I didn't until recently - and it is well worth knowing about!

Derbyshire County Council have an Online Information Resource Database and if you have either a DCC library card OR a B-Line card, you can access various Oxford dictionaries and reference databases, Grove Art and Grove Music, Encyclopaedia Britannica, World Book Encyclopaedia, "Who's Who and Who was Who", and Infotrac Newspapers (an archive of national newspapers, journals and periodicals - including Geographical - back to 1985, and The Times Digital Archive back to 1785!)... Lots and lots of useful and interesting information - check it out now if you haven't already!

Flood Sim

Unfortunately I have not managed to get Flood Sim to load properly yet, but it looks interesting and I've heard good reports from various "virtual colleagues"... The game was developed by Norwich Union and PlayGen in order to raise awareness about flooding and get people to take action to protect themselves against flooding in the future.

Have a go and then leave a comment here to let us know how you got on!

Also have a look at Flood Resilient Home to find out what you could do to protect your home from flooding...

Mexico City...

I mentioned the other day about Dan Raven-Ellison's Urban Earth project, in which he is walking across - and photographing - three major world cities...

His journey across Mexico City is now complete, and some of the photographs and stories from the walk are on the Urban Earth blog... I particularly liked this picture:

Next week is London...

Tornado in France

Three people were killed, nine people injured, and serious damage caused in the town of Hautmont in northern France last night.

More from the BBC here.

A month without plastic...

Regular readers will know that plastic packaging is a bit of a bugbear of mine, and I do make an effort to avoid it where I can... but I am not sure that I could manage this!

Christine Jeavans is attempting to live for a month without plastic - her rules will allow her to keep the plastic she already has, but she is not going to buy or accept anything containing or packaged in plastic... She is keeping a blog of her experiences here - it will be interesting to see how she gets on!

Could you do it??

Happy Yorkshire Day!

Image: Flickr user kosta.v

Earthquake in California

Just seen (via a non-Geography friend on Facebook, of all places) that there has been an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter Scale in California - the epicentre was 29 miles from downtown Los Angeles.

This is the latest USGS map:

Brief report from the BBC here and several links on the Geography Newsroom website. No reports of the damage as yet, but there have been several aftershocks already.

Books...

Tried to avoid spending too much money during my wander around Borders today, so didn't buy these two books, but thought they looked interesting... Both have good reviews on Amazon...

Derby

Just seen on the BBC website that the Tesco that was planned for Derby City Centre is not going to go ahead. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/7517757.stm

The store was going to be on the site of the old Debenhams, which has been empty since Debenhams moved to the new Westfield Centre in October. The article also mentions the impact of the Westfield Centre on other city centre shops - a significant number are now empty - and the effect that this is having on the city centre as a whole... Particularly interesting when you consider this alongside Derby Cityscape Ltd's Masterplan.

What do you think?

Urban Earth

I am looking forward to seeing the results of Dan Raven-Ellison's new project - Urban Earth.

"For the first time in human history more people are living in urban than rural places. Over the summer of 2008 URBAN EARTH will be travelling on foot across Mexico City, London and Mumbai to witness our increasingly URBAN EARTH."

Check out the Urban Earth website and follow the progress of the project on the Urban Earth blog.

Why not take your camera and go on your own Urban Earth Adventure?

Happy Holidays!

At long last...

I didn't get round to launching a proper postcard competition this year... but if you are going somewhere, send us a postcard and we will have a little prize draw! And don't forget to take some geographical photos...

If you are sitting at home wondering what to do with yourself for six weeks:

- check out Mission: Explore

- do some GeoSquishing

- don't forget about Geograph - as well as going out to take some photos of your local area, you could look for pictures of interesting places near you and go and visit them! I've discovered various interesting new places not far from home via Geograph!

Let us know how you get on - leave a comment and send some photos!

And don't forget to keep checking Geogtastic - I will still be updating the blog over the holidays.

20,000 visits!

The title says it all.... 20,000 visits (actually, 20,005) since the start of Geogtastic in December 2006!

Thank you all and keep reading!

Mission: Explore

Fantastic!! Leave a comment and let us know how you get on...

Competition - Young People in a Changing Climate

How do you fancy being at the World Youth Congress in Quebec, and seeing YOUR artwork displayed?

"Shoot Nations 2008 is addressing the theme of ‘Young People in a Changing Climate’. We want to build a global picture of how climate change is affecting young people worldwide, how they can act now to slow the change and how they can adapt to the inevitable changes in the future."

All you have to do is take three photographs to show your feelings ins response to:
1. How is climate change affecting your life?
2. Act now - be the change!
3. Your world in the future.

If you prefer, you can enter drawings, rather than photographs.

The closing date is 31st July...

For more information, go here: http://www.shootnations.org/competition/info

GOOD LUCK!

Make Trade Fair!

Chatting with Liam this morning reminded me of the fab Fair Trade movie he and Danny made a couple of years back...



Nice work boys!!

Carsington Pasture Windfarm?

Those of you in Year 10 will hopefully be able to recall your Year 8 Geography days - and in particular your visit to Carsington Pasture and Harborough Rocks to decide where the best place to build a windfarm would be... At the time, it was all hypothetical... But not any more!!

In February last year, a Welsh company called West Coast Energy proposed the building of 4 wind turbines at Carsington Pasture. The plans were unanimously defeated by Derbyshire Dales District Council, but the company have appealed against the decision and a public inquiry begins at the council offices in Matlock on Tuesday.


Derby Evening Telegraph
Ashbourne News Telegraph

Unfortunately, the website set up by the local people who are protesting against the turbines (www.protectcarsingtonandhopton.co.uk) doesn't seem to be working as I type this...

Lots more info if you Google [carsington wind farm]... Will be interesting to see how things progress...

South Georgia webcam...

Not had a look at the South Georgia site for a while... There are now two webcams - and it's looking pretty wintery there!

Wordle

Love this!! Thanks Alan and Tony.

Like this (even though I can't seem to manage to copy the html properly)!! Spell with flickr...

Thanks Mrs K!

A message for Year 11!

GOOD LUCK!!

Remember... read those questions carefully... choose wisely... and make sure you know your case studies inside out!!

Year 11 - DME

Those of you resitting the DME might like to have a look at the resources that Mr Rackley from Framingham Earl High School has put together http://geoggers.x10hosting.com/dme/.

(Remember, as with the mock paper you did in January, the practice paper is only a suggestion of what MIGHT come up - NOT a copy of the paper you will get on 12th June!!)

Little Boxes!!

My dad used to sing this song to us on the way to visit my grandparents...



I don't think I realised the geographical significance at the time!

Thanks to Alan P for the trip down memory lane...

CAP Health Check

Yr11 might like to have a look at the "health check" of the Common Agricultural Policy and also this related article from the BBC.

The Amazon in Graphics

Those of you resitting the DME might like to have a look at The Amazon in Graphics - an excellent set of maps, graphs, etc. from the BBC, looking at the Amazon Rainforest, deforestation, and the future.

There's also a number of articles worth looking at, including the Amazon Paradox Q&A and a lot of links on the right hand side of this page.

Eco-tourism in Benidorm?

Benidorm might not be the obvious choice if you are looking for an environmentally-friendly holiday...

But according to this rather interesting article from the BBC, it might be better than you think! Particularly useful reading for Yr11!

China earthquake toll could reach 50,000

The rescue efforts in China are still continuing, and the latest reports suggest that the death toll might now reach 50,000.

The BBC have lots of updated reports, and also an interactive map showing the areas affected by the earthquake:

Yr11 - DME and Sustainable Development

The blog post I mentioned earlier, with the link to the story about the logging company using GPS technology and working with tribes in the Congo is here.

There's also a story from the BBC about the Amazon which is useful reading for those of you resitting the DME.

The website of Excellent Development - the organisation we looked at in the morning's lesson - is here and is well worth you having a look at.

China Earthquake

You will, I imagine, have heard about the earthquake in China. Large areas were devastated by the 7.8 earthquake, which was felt over 900 miles away from the epicentre, and the death toll currently stands at 12,000. Rescue efforts are ongoing - hindered by heavy rainfall, and it is thought that there are a further 18,000 people trapped in one town.

The BBC have a Special Report which has lots of up-to-date information, video footage, etc..

Burma Cyclone

I've not seen much in the way of news since my last post on Sunday afternoon, so I've just been horrified to see that since then the death toll has now risen to more than 20,000.

This is the worst natural disaster to hit the area since the 2004 tsunami, and there are suggestions that the extent of the damage might be on a similar scale.

Also worrying is that Burma's military rulers said initially that they did not need - and would not accept - international aid. They do now seem to have accepted that they will not be able to cope without overseas help.

The latest report from the BBC is here and there are lots of links from the report to maps, photographs, video clips and other reports.

243 people killed in Burma cyclone...

More from the BBC here.

Volcanic eruption in Chile

More from the BBC here... And "In Pictures"...

MapTube

I haven't explored this properly yet, but MapTube looks interesting...

Thanks to Mrs K for the link!

Multi-lingual Animaniacs!

Most of you will have seen the Animaniacs "Nations of the World" by now... For those of you who've finished learning the song in English and need a new challenge, try the German, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian or 5 Languages versions!

Crazy!!