#TMPompey -getting better every time:-)

Meet and Greet on board HMS Victory

So last night saw the relaunch of TeachMeet Pompey for the new academic year, set up by David Rogers and myself. And what a way to kick off the new term! Phewf! For David’s write up check his blog.

The evening began with an incredibly civilised and fancy meet and greet on board HMS Victory, courtesy of our ever helpful host and organiser Phil Wright over at the Historic Dockyard. Ok, so there was a torrential downpour but it didn’t dampen spirits. We were welcomed on board by the Royal Navy serving refreshments (pleased to say the homemade cupcakes went down well in the end!) and then relocated to the National Museum of the Royal Navy for the meet itself.

The hosts enjoying the event

We had a packed evening with cracking presentations. What makes TeachMeet so great, in my opinion, is that it is simply teachers sharing stories in a relaxed way. No pretence, no bragging, no ‘we should all do it this way’. Just simple honesty and some great ideas of what could work if you just have a go. All of the presentations are available on my slideshare . Here is the list of what we enjoyed:

Charlotte Assomo – using video feedback

Julia Skinner – 100 word challenge and improving literacy

Rachel Jones – public outcomes enquiry

Nik Doran – beautiful graphing (making maths artistic!)

Shorny Morgan – 7 ideas in 7 minutes (and well done for your first TM presenting!)

Ian Addison – messing about with photo editing

Danielle Kohlman – Purple pages of progress (AfL)

Phil Wright – different places and using the Historic Dockyard resource

Nic Boardman – Using Socrative

Naomi Ward – turning poetry into video games

Charlotte Hamilton – A bag full of bits

Louise Boston-Mannah – the Global Learning Programme

@priorygeography Digital Leaders / Curriculum Hackers Robbie and Jon

Everyone who shared brought something new, something useful. A rapid fire 2 or 7minute insight into an innovative teacher’s mind that gave you food for thought. So thank you! Plus all the resources were my favourite price – FREE! The presentations give you some clues into the action, but for more information get in touch with each speaker personally. Email or DM me on twitter if you do not know how to contact.

We ended with a fantastic and inspiring keynote from Tim Rylands who shared a whole realm of interesting links and ideas, in a brilliant and humorous fashion. It was hard to keep up, and the twittersphere hashtag went unusually quiet at this moment as we were all gripped and avidly listening. Loving the look of Tag Galaxy – especially as a geographer – this looks a great resource to visualise the world and compare places, cultures, etc,. I already use If This Then That and recommend this as a great way of linking media / social media / resources etc such as dropbox, twitter, facebook, etc,. Clevr looks an interesting tool to make panoramas, and I agree with him in sharing the utility of Photosynth – dead easy and available on multi-platform / devices. Far too many fantastic links for me to share and do justice to, so check out his blog for his own discussion on them. So thank you Tim, it was a privilege to have you join us. Sarah also rushed around taking fantastic photos, such as a few seen here, and putting all the cogs in place so thank you as well. For Tim’s write-up and all the images, head over to his inspiring blog here . Also all the links that he mentioned in his talk are very kindly being shared via this link.

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Thank you to everyone who came and participated – we had a 100 people taking part as presenters or ‘enthusiastic lurkers’ and even had others from afar joining in via twitter to get involved. Thank you also to two of the @priorygeography Digital Leaders and Curriculum Hackers, Robbie and Jon, who came along voluntarily in their own time to simply listen, and then went round the room during breaks networking like pros! They are a credit to the school and I’m proud to work with them.

It was great to see new presenters who have never spoken before, and all did a fantastic job. I shall certainly be trialling lots of the ideas shared. Particularly keen to get school involved with the 100 Words Challenge (see @theheadsoffice or 100wc.net) and can see this having a very beneficial impact on our need to improve literacy and embed this whole school. I also loved some of the photo editing tools shared by Ian Addison such as picmonkey.com, 5 card flickr, or Animoto. Some great ideas from newbie presenter Shorny Morgan such as #poundlandpedagogy – awesome idea for starters to lessons, for inspiring literacy responses to stimuli, for enquiry. Also liked the idea of ‘paint chart literacy’ – having a paint colour swatch chart and asking students to start with one adjective at the bottom and then having to think of a simile / synonym for the other colours above. Great stuff 🙂 Oh, and she also has a ton of Snakes and Ladders boards if anyone wants some! The elegant and enthusiastic Rachel Jones shared great enquiry and ‘public outcomes’ resources – to encourage student projects by making their work visible to the outside world, giving students an audience. I already loved Hackasaurus from her presentation last TM but do recommend it again – create ‘hacked’ websites like your very own BBC page or fake CIA page! Nik Doran shared how to make Maths artistic and pretty using Desmos to visualise graphs; could be a great tool to enable access to analysis – possibly something to try for the old controlled assessment enquiry in future. And Louise Boston-Mannah spoke briefly to introduce everyone to the Global Learning Programme – a project that Priory Geography will be taking part in. The idea is for schools to collaborate to share resources, teaching and learning ideas, and have cross-theme and cross-curricular links designed to improve young people’s access to ‘the global dimension’ (topics that have a global aspect, e.g. development, human rights, climate change, democracy, politics, poverty, trade, culture, etc,.). @priorygeography will be the leading Expert Centre school for this programme for the Hampshire area and if you are interested in taking part then please get in touch. You can be from any school or college, any age range, any subject. There is funding available from the GLP for schools that participate in order to free up teacher time / visits to other schools / trips. I’ll be sending out requests to participate soon!

Congratulations to the lucky four who won the vouchers from  – you should get your confirmed e-voucher soon! And thank you to Rising Stars for agreeing to donate the prizes and sponsor refreshments. It really helped.

I thought all the presenters did a fantastic job, and there is too much to write for here so apologise if I haven’t mentioned you personally – it’s not judgement! Just have a look at the resources on slideshare and any questions get in touch with them or come through me.

I’ll finish with a beautiful quote shared by Julia and just say thank you again, and roll on next time! Bigger and better!

“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” (Ursula K. LeGuin)

TeachMeet Pompey 17th September

Final bit of plugging for #tmpompey happening on the 17th September. TeachMeet Pompey has been growing for the last couple of years and is a great event for networking and sharing ideas. We are lucky to have the hospitality of the Historic Dockyard through Phil Wright at Action Stations which is a great venue.

This event we are being greeted with refreshments on the gundeck of HMS Victory to start, and then the event will kick off properly soon after in the Princess Royal Gallery of the National Museum of the Royal Navy which is a first for us. If you have never been to a teachmeet then the format is a very relaxed affair as far as we are concerned. Teachers / educators / enthusiasts can sign up to just come and have a listen or to provide a presentation on any topic they feel can benefit others. Presentations are informal and either 2 or 7 minutes long. It is a way of sharing ideas, tools and resources for any subject and any age range. Whether you are primary or secondary regardless you will find something useful to adapt to your own situation.

And this time we are very excited to have Tim Rylands providing a keynote talk which is fantastic and something to look forward to.

I seem to have been cajoled into providing cupcakes somehow, and there will be other refreshments available during the evening. Following the event there is the chance to take part in Laser Tag at Action Stations if you wish (and to try to knock David Rogers off his pedestal) and then go for some follow-up food at Gunwharf Quays. All very informal and casual (no dress code he he) but a good chance to meet others and chat.

Finally we are pleased to be being supported by Rising Stars who are kindly donating prizes which can be won in the evening – so get there! These will be vouchers that can be used for their resources.

 If you are interested then sign up on the wiki, no pressure to do anything other than come and listen! Sign up here

Prince’s Teaching Institute Day 3 lectures

Jonathan Darling : population & migration

I wasn’t always the keenest on ‘human geography’ but there are so many interesting topics that are relevant for our students. We teach migration in KS3 as well as for GCSE and it can lead to great discussions and debates on politics, population control, democracy, human rights, geopolitical boundaries, quality of life – and to challenging misconceptions and potential racism / discrimination.

Darling commented on the rising number of international migrants – approx 3.1% of world population is migrant – but that the dispersal is uneven throughout the globe. Immigration accounts for 40% of population growth in OECD countries during 2001-2011, but the impact on their GDP was negligible therefore going against those who argue migrants can have negative impact on economy. Migrants are disproportionately affected by financial crisis / recession so there is a geography here. He stated most refugees remain within their region of origin, that only 17% of refugees will make asylum requests outside of origin (due to lack of resources etc,) so those who do make it further are likely to be better educated / better resource. In fact refugees to the UK tend to be disproportionately better skilled relative to the wider UK population (23% skilled vs 12% of pre-existing residents).

He stated that migration is likely to continue to rise due to continued global inequalities, political disturbances, unpredictable conflict, resource depletion and climate change, and that as the global south develops it provides resources to enable those populations to then be more mobile and migrate – therefore relocating.

Interestingly there are future climate refugees in Alaska. Many settlements in Alaska are built near rivers and coastlines to enable access to resources, but these areas are at risk of climate change and therefore future is uncertain. So while migration units often focus on LEDCs as examples, why not focus on modern day and alternative refugee situations? Decision making scenarios?

There is apparently an increasing death toll annually for Mexican to USA migrants as the routes have become increasingly more dangerous ; the natural geography of the area has been exploited as a geopolitical tool, ie. officials can police key areas which then forces migrants to attempt other routes which are geographically more difficult (mountainous, rivers, etc,.) What I found fascinating is that there is an emergence of resistance groups, e.g. Humane Borders, No More Deaths, Brinco trainers, etc,. The Brinco trainers is a great potential resource for migration decision making exercises / debates / the role of social enterprise action as they can be bought as ‘charity’ to be given out to migrants and they include a map of the area, compass, etc,.! Love it. See here for details.

Klaus Dodds : polar scrambles

A great topic for looking at resource management, environmental responsibility, conflict, etc,. contesting the sovereignty and governance of Arctic and Antarctic regions and all the geopolitical issues involved with this.

Dodds noted how the Arctic had been seen as a ‘last frontier’ but it is increasingly accessible and is also a resource treasure chest. This has therefore led to geopolitical scrambles to claim territory / rights to resources and governance. With rapid environmental change in Arctic regions, particularly the decline of Greenland ice sheet and Northern Europe glaciers, and the impact of increasing freshwater, this is a cross-theme topic. There are concerns about resource exploitation & tourism: potential for becoming the ‘Polar Mediterranean’ with all the potential knock-on consequences. There are also implications that other nations (eg. UK, China, etc.) will be able to stake a claim to these Arctic areas if it becomes a thoroughfare; with increasing accessibility and increasing awareness of this ‘global commons’ there is a debate about whether the area ‘belongs’ to the Arctic states or who owns the ocean (and its resources) etc,. So this leads to an interesting sociopolitical discourse on the rights of indigenous populations. There is also the issue of contesting sovereignty in coastal states : that sovereignty doesn’t end at the beach, there are claims for resources and access to oceans off-coast which go beyond the traditional political boundaries. There are also disputes over access to transport routes such as North West Passage and Northern Trade Route; with Russia becoming increasingly concerned about security if increasing shipping through these routes.

Dodds commented on the considerable potential resources still to be realised in these areas (e.g. Gas and oil deposits off shore in Greenland, etc). These resources are essential to Greenland’s aim to become independent. Again a political-environmental topic. Furthermore there is conflict between Greenpeace and Arctic communities. To many, the Arctic is a global space because of its intrinsic links to global issues (such as freshwater, sea level change, climate change, resource potential, etc,.) but Arctic communities such as in Greenland do not like outside agencies / NGOs coming in and saying what should or should not happen in their backyard.

The issues are similar for the Antarctic and Southern Ocean regions managed by the Antarctic Treaty, i.e. concerns about environmental change, particularly uncertainty on scale and rate of ice melt, and resource exploitation, the regulation of Antarctic tourism in response to increasing accessibility & mobility, resource use and rights, etc,.
There is potential for activities regarding Greenpeace involvement on whaling, protecting the ‘park’ status of the wilderness, illegal fishing, arguments over fishing rights, e.g. ‘Illegal’ whaling by Japan vs Australia , and over mineral rights.

Dodds conclusions:

– Polar regions remain an ironic hotbed of geopolitical scrambles for knowledge, access, governance, and resources
– the contesting and confusing issue of sovereignty, security and stewardship is likely to increase

Prince’s Teaching Institute: Day 2 lectures

Day 2 dawned with an excellent buffet breakfast in the dining hall – great way to set yourself up for a hard day using those little grey cells!

Alan Kinder : Curriculum change

Alan, Geography Association Chief Executive, was commenting on the forthcoming KS3 and KS4 curriculum changes and the debate surrounding this. He was able to provide the latest news on this as well as how the GA has been involved in the consultation. First came the stats : nationally, History uptake at GCSE has approximately 35’000 more students, and at A level ~20’000 more students choosing the option compared to Geography. He noted that the decline has plateaued out and there is evidence of some increase but still has concerns ; that there are some signs of growth but we shouldn’t sit still yet. So as Geography teachers who love our subject (and want to keep our jobs!) there is even more need to ensure we adapt and modify the curriculum to make it engaging and relevant to our students – what suits one school is different to another. And don’t forget the up side : Geography is still one of the recommended subjects preferred by Russell Group top universities and one of the most employable subjects for graduates because it is a facilitating subject.

So, following the curriculum reviews, the GA is arguing for renewed focus on subject rigour : improved locational knowledge, a better balance between physical and human Geog, a sound understanding of the how and the why of processes and how these link to people and place at different scales. Those involved in converting the curriculum into working schemes of work must bear in mind that (as ever) the framework is still skeletal and it is our responsibility as teachers to subvert and use professional judgment to make it appropriate.

At KS4 Alan suggested the 2015 GCSE changes will see greater emphasis on extended writing within the programme, and on the application of knowledge, i.e. students will learn about an example coastline and then be assessed on a different area, therefore will be examined in terms of applying their knowledge to an unknown place and not using rote memory 🙂 There are lots of concerns about the format that fieldwork and the examination of fieldwork skills will take with the move to terminal exams : that the proposed terminal fieldwork skills exam is not a good or thorough enough tool for demonstrating field skills compared to extended controlled assessments.

So the message sparked debate, of course, and is essentially that of business as usual ; teachers to take and subvert the new KS3 curriculum to suit, but that this will always be driven by the requirements of the KS4 curriculum since this is what we are preparing for

Christian Nold : Emotional Mapping

This was one of the main highlights of the whole residential. Christian was speaking about emotional mapping, producing sensory maps based on perceptions and human emotional response to places based on senses / feelings / thoughts. He mentioned an activity I’ve used before and found really useful and insightful: maps from memory. The idea is you are blindfolded (safely, in pairs!) and explore a place so you can focus on your other senses only, then create a map from memory. E.g. make a sketch road map and then write descriptions over it to demonstrate not only what the physical features are but how you respond to them (e.g. ‘Fast cars keep zooming past on the dual carriageway, I feel nervous, I smell coffee’).

Christian has adapted a GPS unit to include bio sensors / neurophysiological sensors to map physical reactions as you move through an environment. He then uses this to create a bio map after uploading the information to Google Earth and producing polygons / graph overlays from the sensor information. You then have a conversation to interpret this afterwards; e.g. where spikes on the graph occur you can unpick what happened there, or why you felt that way and how the place made you feel.

Christian has used to create an emotional topography for Greenwich peninsula, Paris, etc,. And also the sensory journeys project with schools www.sensoryjourneys.net

It is all about relationships between individuals and places, which you can scale up to include large numbers of respondents and then have enough data to assess patterns – then this may lead to rethinking how places / spaces are actually perceived (could then inform built environment & area planning). You can find more information in Alan Parkinson and Paul Cornish’s review book.

During the lecture I was introduced to the Fieldnotes app for recording data which is geolocated. This app is quite expensive (and you could use the alternative Maverick app for adding placemarks to GE instead which is free) but basically means you can add text, code, photos, videos and they are tagged to a geographical location. This information can then be exported (along with images) as a .kmz file to Google Earth and then used with GE graphs to produce graphs and then overlay graphs onto the GE file. This is great for showing relationships between factors, e.g. The perception of place compared to traffic congestion etc,.

We then followed this up with another highlight : field trip! As good geographers we were very happy to get outside. And it helped that it was sunny. We visited Cambourne and were set a GCSE enquiry style project to test how distinctive the place is. Some members of the team had the adapted GPS unit (which measured pulse and sweat production through a fingertip attachment) while others used Fieldnotes or good old paper to record things like traffic/pedestrian surveys, quality of infrastructure, how the place made you feel, etc,. We had an hour or so wandering around in a haphazard manner (including the obligatory coffee shop) and the information was then uploaded later to the GE files and discussed. Funny how every participant noted that their mood / sense of place improved significantly when coffee and cake was nearby 😉

The follow-up challenge for me as far as I’m concerned is to see if we can hack a GPS unit to do this ourselves – and this is a project for the autumn with the help of the twitter community of hackers! We have done sense of place mapping just on paper in the past, but we have a keen group of digital leaders who would love to have a go at making an actual piece of tech we could use in school – but with a budget of course.

Professor Jonathan Bamber : Climate Change

One of the things I liked most about the PTI residential was that the lectures were like going back to Uni! Reminding us that we are intelligent individuals. Or that’s how I felt anyway. It’s easy to only think in terms of school curriculum, and it’s important to keep ourselves fresh and challenge ourselves with up-to-date developments in our subject and to keep being learners ourselves.

Bamber updated us on the scientific community’s concerns regarding the increase in ocean acidification as well as ocean salinity, and the impact of reduced permafrost and polar warming (and the potential impact of these combined). He commented on the increase in biological activity following melting of permafrost, which causes an increase in methane production which is one of highest contributing greenhouse gases.

The influence of the Arctic ice melt is much more significant than that of the Antarctic and yet this remains a common misconception. The Arctic is melting more rapidly and having more severe potential consequences (in terms of affecting the thermohaline conveyor and more rapid Northern European glacial melt). There are approximately 250million people living within 5m of the sea worldwide, including major cities like NYC, and many marginal native communities as well as important resources found in Arctic regions that are at risk of the impact of melting.

Bamber noted that of the two main contributors to sea level rise it is a 50/50 balance in terms of impact: the thermal expansion of existing seas, and the influence of freshwater melt with subsequent influx to oceans. With 90% of all freshwater stored in Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets it is clear why scientists are concerned about ice melt (and remember that freshwater has a different salinity and density to oceans which has implications for the conveyor system globally).

His concluding concerns were:
– predicted risk of there being no Arctic sea ice in summers by 2020
– that Alpine glaciers will largely be gone by 2100
– the risk of permafrost methane ‘bomb’
– a relative sea level rise of approx 1m possible by 2100

So it was a really intense day! Full of mind-bending thinking as well as how we can embed these issues within the relevant curriculum. It’s about us being able to remain cutting edge and then adapt this to suit.

‘Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few people engage in it often’ (Henry Ford)

Prince’s Teaching Institute: Day 1 lectures

The summer school lectures saw a mix of physical and human Geography being shared. These lectures were taught / presented at the academic level. This wasn’t about pedagogy and ‘here’s something to try back in school’. The lecture series was designed to, and aimed at, reinvigorate and re-enthuse teachers by making us think like learners ourselves again. Being back in the feel of undergraduate years maybe. It is then up to teachers to take what they had heard and adapt it to use in schools, but it gave us up-to-date insight into different topics.

Professor Iain Stewart: ’50 shales of grey or Meet the Frackers’

Professor Stewart gave an insightful and charismatic presentation that had us all listening avidly and scribbling / tapping away making notes.The focus was on the physical-social interaction involved with hydraulic fracturing (aka ‘fracking‘) and how this is a socio-phyical issue to be managed. It could make an excellent contemporary Decision Making Exercise (DME) for either KS3 or KS4, linking to resource use and management, conflict, environmental impacts of economic development, etc,. Many layers of potential interest with a view to debates, role plays, DME simulation scenarios, etc,.

Stewart noted that in the UK we now have too high a gas consumption to meet supply, therefore we rely on foreign liquid gas important. The UK being hugely vulnerable in this sense because of its reliance on energy imports. The greatest imports being from Russia, Algeria, Finland. There is therefore a vast political arena to be contended with, with emerging strong politico-economic  ties between provider and consumer nations. Potential for a bit of political geography debate then, considering interdependence.

There is also the issue of water resource use. Huge quantities of water are use in fracking, involving trucks being in water / sand / chemicals to shale areas under fracking and the subsequent congestion and fuel emission issues in these areas. There is an ecological and environmental footprint left afterwards (as with all fossil fuel areas) of abandoned buildings and infrastructure, this being an unsustainable process and non-renewable. There are also knock-on consequences of leaching chemicals from the process into water sources or local soils and potential contamination. Again, something to weigh up in a DME / energy resource management debate or role play?

Finally there is the local social impact. for example, in areas like Man Tor, the local residents are not debating the finer politics and environmental issues such as climate change ; they are debating the impact of fracking on their own local area. The potential boom and bust scenario. In the UK, landowners do not own the rights to what is beneath their feet. You may own the land itself but you do not own what is underneath and have no right to drill, the Queen and government owns these rights. There is a conflict in terms of rights, decision makers, conflicting views of interested parties, etc,. So local residents have no real benefit to drilling going on in their back yard, they are not going to become rich from it. So in order to convince residents to go ahead, companies must be able to offer local communities some kind of beneficial package that makes it worth their while.

This was an incredibly interesting presentation, and this coming from a girl that doesn’t know much about rocks or get excited about soils. But the potential for various learning activities is clear. And with the new KS3 curriculum including resource management….bonus?

Dr Kendra Strauss: ‘Geographies of labour’

Now I admit it, I am not a huge fan of economic geography. And the room was very hot and by this point we had had back-to-back lectures for some time. But Dr Strauss did present some interesting concepts and was very animated by her topic.

Geographies of labour, and how this links to migration and demographics could be useful to consider for KS4 economic development topics. Dr Strauss commented on the fact that more and more people work part-time, in informal, temporary, or agency related employment – as well as changing their employment more often throughout their working life than we used to in the past. She noted that this has an impact on working demographics and geographic divides. That labour patterns vary regionally due to gender, race, ethnicity, age, etc,. As a result the recent recession has had varying severity of impact in different regions. Geographically speaking, London has recovered more quickly from the recession than areas reliant on heavy industry or having a high population of temporary or part-time workers.

There are precarious work positions in terms of jobs not being ‘jobs for life’ and that recessions and financial crises will have differing impacts across society in terms of geographic and demographic divides. For example, areas that have higher reliance on temporary or informal work will be the worst hit areas since these are the jobs that are threatened or removed first. And this kind of flexible work can affect some social groups more than others, those that are already ‘marginalised’ such as lower skilled areas, migrants, women, part-time workers, etc,.

She also commented on the link between labour geography and conflict, for example the Arab Spring turmoil.

Although this topic could be difficult with lower years, perhaps there is scope for some discussion at KS4 (and KS5) level in terms of looking at patterns, disparity, comparing social groups?

Professor Hazel Barrett: HIV/Aids Pandemic in the 21st century

Professor Barrett was querying the claim made by mass media and UNAids that the HIV/Aids pandemic is coming to an end, that ‘the world has turned a corner and begun to reverse the spread of HIV’. She gave us up-to-the-minute statistics and left us to interpret. I won’t go into all the detail, but in essence the claim is that HIV infections and deaths are in decline. Yet currently 30.4 million people gobally are living with HIV, with 2.5million new infections in 2011-2012 and 1.7million deaths. So mathematically speaking, there are more people living with HIV then before. There is still a positive trend.

2/3rds of all HIV/Aids is within sub-Saharan Africa, so this is a spatially very uneven disease. Also, the worst affected age group is 15-24 and particular women within this age bracket. So it is a disease of the young ; having socio-economic impacts in terms of workforce, families, etc,.

HIV reduction was a Millennium Goal, and by 1997 the growth in annual new infections peaked and has since been decreasing by 20%. Deaths from HIV peaked in 2004 (there is a lag time between peak infection and peak deaths due to incubation time for the disease) at 2.1million deaths, and has been in decline since. Therefore fewer people are dying from HIV/Aids – but this decline is not uniform globally. In fact, while the disease is stable or in decline in many areas it is actually on the increase in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Many areas still have an increase in infection rate (e.g. Bangladesh, Morocco, Indonesia, Georgia). So maybe the disease is simply moving geographically and there will be another boom in peak infection again in the future in some other locality.

So how has the decline been caused? Two main reasons. Firstly, eliminating transmission from mother-to-child, and secondly changing behaviours (e.g. sexual health, hygiene, etc,.) Barrett comments on the huge success in terms of reducing transmission to children through use of AntiRetroViral drugs. However, she also comments that she has witnessed some areas where the attempts to challenge and change behaviours has been more problematic. The some people may now think ‘why bother changing my habits, I’ll just get a pill’ – changing attitudes is difficult. Also, she noted there is a confusion at times with people thinking ARVs are a cure while they are not, they merely treat and reduce symptoms. So people are living longer, but are still living with HIV. She is also considered about potential future disease mutation to become ARV resistant since these drugs are now so commonly used.

Barrett concluded that the number of people living with HIV will continue to rise (in her opinion) until behaviours and attitudes change, that there is a risk of future ARV resistance and perhaps we are just postponing another boom, and that the geographic disparities of the prevalence of the disease as well as access to treatment will still continue to grow – especially since 97% of all infections are still found in low & middle income countries.

So it is an interesting topic. One that could be moulded to provide context for data manipulation (in terms of synthesising data, producing or interpreting graphs, plotting and analysing map distributions, etc,.) as well as debate and discussion as to the future and the management of a disease. It would also be an interesting / useful topic to include (in a unit about geographies of disease perhaps) if you were wanting to consider Human Rights, the right to health and who is responsible for this (i.e. disparity of treatment) and looking at socio-economic divides.

Thank you to the presenters, it was an insightful day.

“The study of geography is about more than just memorizing places on a map. It’s about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exists across continents. And in the end, it’s about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together.” (President Obama)

Prince’s Teaching Institute – The Pupil Panel Discussion

Following the Opening Keynote, as part of the start of the summer school, we were treated to a pupil panel discussion. Four students aged 16-17 from local comprehensive schools gave a brief summary of themselves, their GCSE or A-level choices, and why they chose them. They then responded to questions from the audience. These learners were impressively articulate, composed (in front of an audience of 150 teachers!) and passionate. They knew what they liked, what they need, and what they wanted. What came across over and over was how much they trust their teachers.

Since they presented so well themselves, I shall just put their direct comments down for you to consider.

Why do you like Geography?

– “If you think about it, the world is quite a big place and has a lot of people in it (!) – I want to know about how I fit into this, where my place is”

– “Geography helps me to learn about cultures, to break down ignorance, consider and compare different situations ; just makes me think ‘I’d like to make a difference to help others in the world'”

– “Geography helps empower me, makes me more creative and expressive. It challenges me.”

– “Geography doesn’t restrict our individuality or curiosity, there are no bars on what you are interested in or good at because it is not like one single subject.”

– “If you don’t know Geography you don’t know your own home [world]”

– “Geography is real and realistic to our lives, it is essential because it balances factual with opinion and interpretation, enquiry and independence.”

What are your views on teaching and learning?

– “We will choose subjects if our teachers inspired us and encouraged us, if they make us feel like we can actually succeed”

– “It’s not just about a teacher standing at the front and giving us the fact we ‘need’ to know, it’s down to the teacher to engage us to WANT to acquire that knowledge ourselves and to help us gain the SKILLS we need in order to do so…at the end of the day we as students need to do the work”

– “We want the skills and confidence we need for future work”

– “Knowledge alone isn’t power, but knowledge with the ability to interpret this and be practical with it is the power”

– “The abstract and different lessons are the ones you remember most”

– “I can be engaged and succeed more if I enjoy my lessons, and I trust my teachers to be professionals and know what is best for me for how to learn”

– “Technology can be hugely beneficial, if used the right way, but not if it is just a powerpoint display on a wall with words that we have to read through. Then it may as well be a book. And we can tell if a teacher has just copied from wikipedia or downloaded the lesson from somewhere else – it’s clear if it’s not their own or coming from their own enjoyment of the topic”

– “Avoid unnecessary repetition – it kills the interest”

– “Teachers should show they are confident with their knowledge and teaching style, whatever that style might be. That’s what gets us and we will respect this and engage more. It is clear if a teacher tries some new buzz thing after a training day that they’ve been told to do but aren’t confident or comfortable with. I’d rather be taught in black and white, in the dark, from no resources but by somebody who could engage me and show enthusiasm and confidence”

– “Sometimes taking a break from what we normally do is needed; we get used to seeing certain styles of lessons and sometimes just having space to just have discussions is needed for deeper learning”

What feedback do you find more effective?

– “I need to know what I did well, and be given praise to build my confidence

– “Knowing a specific target to aim for, not just a grade”

– “The grade is not so important, sometimes it is a distraction”

– “Setting own targets is so beneficial; we might not feel we need or want to work on the same target as someone else, or even the same as what the teacher says, so if we set our own targets they are personal and it forces us to look closely at what we need to do”

– “I prefer one-on-one conversations with my teacher face to face, with the teacher showing they know me personally and can explain to me what I did well and what I need to do next”

– “I feel disappointed if I have no feedback from staff, feels like I’m not important. But that feedback can just as happily be verbal in class and doesn’t have to always be written down. I just need to know where I am and where I’m aiming for”

What do students think about Ofsted?

– “We benefit from inspections as well because we can know how we can improve, how our school is perceived and how it can be improved”

– “We feel a sense of pride in our school knowing our teachers are being recognised for their hard work”

– “It’s a chance to showcase what we’re good at”

So there you have it, out of the mouths of babes and all that. The panel were fantastic and should be proud of themselves. No way I would have been able to do that and hold my own in front of 150 teachers when I was 16!

“The fact is, we have the most to gain from our education working right, and the most to lose if it doesn’t. So we should have a say. And teachers should have a say. And we trust teachers to know how best to help us.” (Pupil Panel)

 

Prince’s Teaching Institute : The Opening Keynote

The summer school residential was opened and introduced by Bernice McCabe, the course Co-Director and Headmistress of North London Collegiate School. She explained that the aim of the PTI is that of ‘inspiration and empowerment’ – and I imagine quite a few of us in the auditorium inwardly smiled. She also mentioned that the PTI, amongst other official teaching organisations, are pushing government for the creation of an autonomous Royal College of Teaching akin to the other colleges that other professions already have, something to represent the people. If you are interested in sharing your views on this, take part in the consultation here

After outlining the plan for the course we were handed over to Lord Peter Hennessy, an Historian and journalist who also teaches at the University of London. As such, he  described himself as ‘one of us’.  The title of his talk was ‘Never lose a holy curiosity : Or how to get out of bed on a wet Monday in February’. To be honest, he could have said ‘in June’ judging by the weather that morning.

The phrase ‘Never lose a holy curiosity‘ was spoken by Einstein. Hennessy suggested it could be a call to arms for teachers, a banner to unite under. I would have to agree with a lot of what he said, after all, if we lose our initial enthusiasm and love for our subject, for learners and for learning then we lose our ability to enthuse others surely? Isn’t it easier if students can learn by example? Be inspired by osmosis? There is a danger that is we do lose our holy curiosity that those that we seek to inspire will notice, and will be the poorer served by us because of it.

Hennessy set us a question : What does get you out of bed? It’s worth thinking of this often. And if it’s not that you love your job then maybe something needs to change. Some say that we work in order to pay the bills. Now while this is true (we all have to live!) I would suggest that if your only intention is to earn money, possibly teaching isn’t the best way forward! I took a pay cut when I first started, and it was because I love the job that I stayed. Far too much hard work, long hours, and emotional investment otherwise! Anyway, I digress. But I do think it is something to ponder. How to keep your curiosity and how to pass it on.

“In the cycle in which we travel, we can only ever see one fraction of the curve”. The trick for educators, and for the next generation, is how to be able to get ahead of the curve and to be able to cope with whatever unknown is found beyond it. There is a danger otherwise of being overly present-centred. Our curriculum, teaching style and schools need to bring the best of the past, blended with the present, and looking to the future. We often say how we are educating children for jobs that don’t even exist yet, and that in learners’ lifetimes these jobs and environments are likely to change even more – meaning it is essential that we can be flexible; can adapt ourselves, our teaching and our curriculum to suit, that we encourage and seek to engender skills and understanding as well as knowledge, that whole life soft skills are developed. The whole package. After all (to quote a friend), I’m a teacher of children, not just Geography 😉

It was pointed out that university teaching expects that students will be able to not just have knowledge, but be able to think critically, to form opinions and justify, to reason logically and argue a case, to collect and synthesise information – and to be able to do all this independently or work collaboratively. Now I’m not saying every student should go to university, definitely not. But I would challenge you to find an employer who wouldn’t also like their workers to possess this skills, and these skills are also essential for building positive relationships, being a responsible citizen.

Finally, Hennessy made a brief foray into the turbulent discussion on the role and format of assessment. And after airing his views on this ended with a thoughtful comment: that the best way to measure the success of learning is not a formative exam (this perhaps only measuring the success of short-term memory), but the sustained desire to learn. That if in years to come our students still have a desire to devote their time, money and effort to still learning then we will know we have been a success. If they still have their holy curiosity.

“History never repeats itself, but sometimes it rhymes” (Mark Twain)

Prince’s Teaching Institute Summer School – Introduction

This week I was fortunate enough to take part in the Prince’s Teaching Institute summer school residential for Geography, History, English and Languages. The PTI first started in 2006 to continue the work of the Prince of Wales’ Education Summer Schools and perform a CPD role. The focus is very much on reinvigorating teachers through experiencing academic lectures, keynotes, workshops…and providing amazing food in the beautiful setting of Homerton College, University of Cambridge.

Homerton College, Cambridge

The three day summer school (which runs for various subjects at different times of year) is very much run for teacher, by teachers. High profile, contemporary, leading edge academic lecturers provide a reminder of why we fell in love with our subjects and wanted to teach them in the first place – taking us back to the undergraduate days. Workshops provide time in smaller groups chaired by Teacher Leaders (subject specialist teachers who have taken part in the work of the PTI before and are coming back to offer expertise and facilitate / host). During these sessions (which were sadly, in my opinion, too brief) we had some time to share best practice which was excellent and insightful, and to reflect a little on the sessions we had seen and consider ways to utilise in school. We also had a field trip day (it is Geography after all). The days were very intensive; packed, insightful and intellectually stimulating, and each ended with a formal meal in the college Hall (with pre-dinner cocktails on the lawn of course) including an after-dinner speech by celebrity speakers – in our case Michael Wood & David Aaronovitch.

I came away from the event feeling uplifted and enthusiastic. Don’t get me wrong – I hadn’t been feeling ‘in a rut’ or forgotten my love of the job before, but I had been feeling overwhelmed by the day-to-day and increasingly apprehensive about taking over the department. So this was refreshing, a total immersion in just good positive learning. And you know how sometimes on courses you get the feeling that some colleagues don’t really want to be there (“Oh, I just got sent by my boss”), or you hear the cynicism in their tone (“It’s a lovely idea but that would never work in my school”)? Well there was none of that. Everyone I met was positive, excited, keen. They loved their subject but more importantly they loved teaching and learning. They were lifelong learners themselves. They were keen to try something different. Yes, we had differing opinions on the curriculum or the role of technology or what is the most important thing in school etc., but we all had a common purpose. The vibe was fantastic. It was cathartic for me personally as, having recently suffered a bereavement that has shaken me, being submersed in this delightful bubble for a time was great. So all that needs to happen now is for all those little bubbles of individual teachers, and the bigger bubbles of their departments, to all coalesce so that great teaching and learning is occurring consistently throughout. Not much to ask for huh? 😉

Ok, this post has already become longer than planned and I haven’t really said much. What I planned is to outline what I shall cover. There is simply too much to say in one post, and I need to get it all out. So I plan to break up the three days into separate posts.

1) The opening keynote by Lord Hennessy

2) The Pupil Panel discussion

3) Day 1 lectures: Professor Iain Stewart, Dr Kendra Strauss, Professor Hazel Barrett

4) Day 2 lectures: Alan Kinder, Christian Nold, Professor Jonathan Bamber

5) Day 3 lectures: Dr Jonathan Darling, Professor Klaus Dodds

6) The group workshops & reflections

7) The fieldwork activity & follow-up

8) The closing Educators questioning panel

Quite a lot to tackle then, so I better get started. I’ll finish with a quote from Prince Charles in the opening of the delegate pack:

“If the world in which our children will live is to be one in which truly civilised values can flourish it will need a breadth of knowledge and understanding of the kind that only a good, rounded education can provide”

TLA Berkhamsted – TeachMeet

The Herts Beds Bucks TeachMeet was the pre-event to the TLA conference Berkhamsted. The first thing I liked was that it felt as if Nick Dennis had been waiting for our arrival before kicking off. Greeted at the door, ushered in for refreshments, sat down, then click. On. Very efficient. After an overly long journey it would have been easy to not quite focus, but there were so many different presentations and nano-presentations that I was happily engaged. At some TMs I’ve been to, it’s felt like there hasn’t been a balance in terms of subject / pedagogy / topic – sometimes they feel too primary focused for me (a secondary teacher) or sometimes they are only about using a new piece of kit/tech. So it was refreshing to have a balance.

The one thing I will be trying asap from #TMHBB is the Sentence Auction idea. It was explained from point of view of an MFL teacher trying to improve grammar/vocab use through peer assessment but I see no reason why it couldn’t apply to other subjects. This is the premise:

1) Before lesson. When marking books, teacher copies out an example sentence from a variety of books. Some sentences are correct, others are incorrect.

2) In lesson. Group students, and give each group a set of each of the sentences you copied out (a mixture of right&wrong examples). The group then has to debate which answers are correct or not, and choose which ones they wish to ‘bid’ on in the ‘auction’.

3) Each group is given a budget of x amount (say £500) and they can allocate this budget to bid on different sentences.

4) Show the sentences one-by-one (e.g. on the board / on screen) as if exhibiting items at an auction. Groups then have to decide whether they wish to bid to ‘purchase’ said sentence. (You could even take this up a notch and link to MFL if you like by asking students to bid in a foreign language 😉 .)

5) At the end of the auction, once each group has purchased their sentences at whatever cost, you then reveal which ones are correct. Depending on how difficult it is to determine the correct ones you could actually assign a value to each sentence. Then reveal whether the groups had bid correctly for the right sentences, and decide whether they would have made a profit or a loss had this actually been real.  The team to make the most money from having correctly identified and purchased the right sentences is the winner.

I think this could be a great tool for GCSE, perhaps especially for picking out key facts / processes / place-specific detail for learning case studies. And I will be trialling it as such in revision sessions with Year 11 after Easter. It will be time-consuming, and we were warned that it can take the whole lesson doing this, but it is AfL and reinforcing. So I liked the sound of it. Something to try, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” Vincent van Gogh

Review of TLA Berkhamsted conference – Geography workshops

As mentioned in the first #TLAB13 post, I appreciated the format of the day and found that having workshops grouped by subjects was useful for encouraging networking. Being around the same group of people but with three different inputs meant you had longer to share ideas and discuss them. The sessions were also informal and relaxed which was good. So who & what were they?

1) Carmel Greene – Letting Go of the Reins of Geography

Carmel spoke about moving her teaching, and classes, from being teacher-directed to learner-directed and shared a great range of simple and effective ideas to encourage more independence. She shared how she’d moved from feeling exhausted at the end of each lesson to now finding that both she and her students enjoy the lessons more. And that’s the point isn’t it, teachers as facilitators to guide but that students should be doing the hard work? If the teacher is feeling more exhausted at the end than the students, then the balance of effort is skewed and we are allowing students to sit back and be passive – linking to Bill Rankin’s brain activity graphs mentioned previously.

Carmel shared the common fears of ‘letting go of the reins’ and suggested ways to overcome. e.g. “If I leave them to work independently, they are more likely to misbehave” – this is a common fear for many of us, particularly for new teachers. Solution? “Well structured lessons with timings, planned transitions and a range of learning tasks”. Simple. The link to Carmel’s presentation is HERE and includes a variety of different well structured activities so have a browse. I especially like her phrasing for differentiated resources / activity – e.g. ‘Spicy / Mild’. Clearly she has put a huge amount of time and effort into creating resources which should, in time, mean less teacher energy / input during class and more student-directed learning. However, it is also quite resource heavy/intense and would take a lot of time to prepare the first time BUT the end result should be “less teacher talk, more learner progress” – which is the right aim.

2) John Sayers – Personal Geographies

I was intrigued in advance about John’s presentation because it involved the setting up of various jenga sets and the alluring promise of a prize at the end. So that got my attention. I was also happy to be the person keeping track of time and given permission to throw something at him if he went over. Happy days. Having said that, I was so taken up with all the myriad ideas he suggested that I actually lost track of time myself. John’s blog is HERE and if you check through this and his twitter feed you will be able to find links to all he shared. It was a whistle-stop tour from AfL to questioning strategies, literacy to sensory learning. I wish he’d had more time as it there just wasn’t enough to go into it all. But there were a couple of things I shall definitely be trying.

The first thing I really loved was his idea of the ‘Superstars board’. In essence a display board showcasing quality work but taken up a level. Basically you can have the name / image of the superstar student for that week, and then a QR code linking to the work they had produced. Means you can share quality work that is in a digital format as well, or take pictures of work and share this online then link to it – hopefully encouraging a bit more peer learning and pride. Love it. I will definitely be looking to do this at school soon and will show what gets produced.

John is an advocate of the ‘messy learning’ / ‘guerrilla geography’ / mission:explore type activities and I particularly liked the idea of making displays with a message from waste. He shared how he wanted to show how much waste the school produced by collecting all the rubbish bins from each classroom then gathering it all together to make ‘art’ as a display, making the message of recycling/waste a bit more real. Sounds like something from Art Attack but I imagine would be very hard-hitting. I also loved the idea of making maps out of waste, e.g. creating world maps from spilled drinks or orange peel (see image)! Just a bit more tangible perhaps.

The other thing that really interested me (there were LOTS of things) was the introduction to the Floodlines app. I hadn’t seen this before. It’s basically an augmented reality app to demonstrate the Brisbane floods, and as such is really useful for KS4 case studies on flooding, risk and management. Check HERE to find out more. What I liked? The fact that it is a visual representation of real flooding overlaying maps, and the timeline bar that means you can see the onset > peak > recession of the flood. Great visual learning tool.

The jenga I mentioned? An AfL tool. You write on each piece of jenga wood, could be a keyword or anything, then once it is removed you could quiz on it. Games based learning with the added element of fear from causing structural collapse 😉

John also shared some great ideas on planning questioning, and on evaluating / assessing how well children work in groups. Once I have a go trialling these I’ll write some more. Check HERE for his presentation.

Finally, I was very excited to get the prize at the end of the session – a set of Thinking Dice that each have a different question to pose. Again, just a way of adding game/chance into activities – similar to using dice and the learning grids perhaps in that sense. But it could be useful for revision/group activities where students have to develop questioning styles. Or for the teacher themselves to ensure variety of questioning. Will have a play with those.

3) David Rogers – Inspirational Geography

With a title as grand as that, and coming after two really great workshops and two inspiring keynotes, and being after lunch David was up against it to maintain the quality. But as usual he delivered. You can see all the details of his session HERE but the focus was on guerilla learning and ‘un-planning.

David shared a variety of ideas, including:

– The Geography/EAL mash-up project that Sam Atkins in our department put together – students using upside down world maps, orienteering maps, QR codes and a tablet/smartphone to conduct an entire lesson in a foreign language.

– Geocaching & BBC Report (mostly the work of myself and Sam) ; how to get projects having a wider impact, raising engagement & getting in the news 🙂 This always makes me smile on account of one student who, when the BBC arrived to film, stated ‘it’s ok, I’m media trained’…he’d been appearing on Super Nanny!

– Simple un-planning tools; e.g. using the Bing homepage as your starter activity. Could be to do with links to industry, environment, country-specific, etc,.

– Using RSA style animations / Bob Dylan ‘esque’ posters to increase literacy and case study knowledge at GCSE

And many more. The message was about taking risks, having a go. And importantly, it was not about tech. Sometimes David (and @priorygeography) gets stereotyped into being ‘the high tech one’ or ‘you’re the one about mobile devices’, but creativity and risk-taking isn’t always about using a new piece of kit. Sometimes it’s as simple as a piece of paper and a felt pen. As ever, he was funny and practical, sharing a range of experiences and giving credit where due to whomever else was involved. I’ve mentioned before being lucky to be in my department, and it’s true. He’s the visionary one that has the great ideas that Sam and I then put into practice. That’s what makes us a good team.

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”