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!

Is it going to rain?

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

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day Google Earth style! Thanks to Liz Smith and Google Earth Blog

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!! ;-)

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:

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.

GCSE Geography

View more presentations from vikellis.

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...

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...

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...

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?

Gumboot Dancing...

Josh C's stamping about in the Hums corridor at breaktime the other day reminded me of the "gumboot dancing" that some of the boys at the school I worked in in South Africa used to do.

Gumboot dancing originated in the gold mines of South Africa during the Apartheid years, when the mine workers - forbidden to speak - slapped their gumboots and rattled their ankle chains to send messages to each other. It has since developed into a "working class art form with universal appeal".



This is one of the many gumboot dancing videos on YouTube - none of them are quite as spectacular as "the real thing", but will give you a taste of what it's all about...

Explore: Patagonia to the Pampas

Those of you who liked Tropic of Capricorn (and/or Simon Reeve!) will be pleased to know that he is back this evening with a new series - Explore... Detail about the first programme is here:

Simon Reeve leads a team of presenters on a journey through the spectacular landscapes of Argentina, from the vast ice fields of Patagonia to the wide-open plains of the pampas.

In the south, a group of indigenous people are locked in a historic dispute with the area's biggest landowners, Italian clothing giants Benetton; in Buenos Aires, the children of the disappeared are seeking to find out the truth of what happened to their parents at the hands of Argentina's generals; and in the pampas we meet one of the last true gauchos, whose way of life is being destroyed by an argricultural revolution.

On the way, we take in one of the greatest matches in world football, visit a penguin colony on the edge, and meet a bishop with a rather unorthodox interest in Evita.

BBC2, 9.00pm

Very useful map generator

Just discovered, via Noel Jenkins' Digital Geography blog, a really useful website that allows you to custom colour a map of the world (the one below shows where in the world I've been... think I need to get travelling a bit more!):

Aneki.com also has a wealth of facts, figures and superlatives, and there is a handy little tool to compare two countries.

Get exploring!

You think it's cold here?

Some great pictures from Hannah, whose cousin lives in Canada... -25oC there at the moment...

Fancy yourself as a travel photographer?

The Guardian are running a travel photography competition for under-16s... All you have to do is to send them a photograph of a place that you love that will make people want to go there...

Prizes up for grabs include a family ticket to Alton Towers and a £50 book token... More details here.

Slumdog Millionaire

If you haven't already, it is well worth going to see Slumdog Millionaire...



This audio slideshow from the Observer, looking at Dharavi - the Mumbai slum where the film was made - makes for interesting viewing, and there are some great descriptions of Dharavi and what life is like there in this article.

Changing Derbyshire

Nice resource from the BBC looking at how Derby is changing with developments such as Westfield and Derby Cityscape... Lots of photos, artists' impressions of future developments, and some interesting discussions about the impact that all this will have on the city.

Are you the Young Geographer of the Year 2009??

It is Young Geographer of the Year time again - and there are some fantastic prizes up for grabs! For the 16-18 year old category, the prize is a place on a month-long BSES expedition to East Greenland, and for the 13-15 category and the 12 and under category, you could win a 5-day "Arctic Ice Adventure" - both are fantastic opportunities and you'd be daft not to enter!! (Oh, and you can win some fab Geography goodies for school as well!)

What you need to do:

"We want you to carry out a project that involves a journey to the Arctic. What would you take with you and why? What would ensure your journey’s success? Your project should reflect a thorough investigation into the geography of the Arctic and a realistic portrayal of a journey to the North Pole. We would also like you to include one luxury item for your journey and an explanation of your item of choice and your reasons for choosing it.Your entry can take whatever form you think is most appropriate – be it a written report, a short video film, a photographic essay, an audio file or a mix of all of these. The most important thing is that you plan and research accordingly for your Arctic journey and most of all – make sure to be creative and have fun!"

If you want more information, click on the picture below to link, or come and speak to me...

Some historical Geography!

I have mentioned the brilliant-ness of Flickr before, but I have just discovered an amazing set of images of Norway, Sweden and Denmark from 1890-1910...


This one shows the Supphellebreen Glacier in Sognefjord, Norway:

The 169 images have been added by the Library of Congress (the national library of the USA) and are part of a set of 6500 "photochrom prints" ("Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches.") of Europe and the Middle East.

Click here to go to the Photochrom Travel Views set on the Library of Congress Flickr page.

Even more interesting is the "Then and Now" project that has been set up by Flickr users, comparing the LoC images with recent ones of the same views. Unfortunately none of the "nows" are Creative Commons images, but if you click on the screenshot below it will take you to the Then and Now page.