100 up...

The 100th post on the blog will mention the best way to support you if you are a geography teachers: membership of the Geographical Association...

There have been further additional changes to the GA website.... and not just the addition of a new FLOODING section responding to the floods in Brisbane, Rio de Janeiro, Sri Lanka and many other areas (and torrential rain falling in Scotland and the NW this weekend...)

This is what one of the new changes looks like. If you mouse over any of the headings on the top navigation bar, you will now see a large drop-down box appear, which will provide information about what that will connect you with, and links to all the main sections. This means that almost all the sections of the website are now just a mouse gesture and click away...

Don't forget that you can now comment on most of the pages on the website as well. If you scroll to the bottom of any page, you will see the form that you need to fill in. If you do not log in, these comments will be sent to the web admin for approval, and you will be labelled as a Guest. If you log in, you can change your profile and an image will then appear next to your comments....
The PROFILE option is part of the new members page which appears when you log in to the website. Here's mine, complete with profile image...

You can also comment on purchases that you have made from the GA shop.

'What if...there were no borders ?'

That is the title of an event being organised by Act Global.


It's taking place on January 25th at the Royal Commonwealth Society, London from 6-8.30pm.

Are national borders meaningful? In an increasingly globalised world, we rely on goods and information moving 'freely' across borders. However, due to global inequalities, freedom of movement is a luxury for most people. In the world that we live in today, is it right that a banana moves more freely than a person? Is it fair to restrict movement of people? And to what extent is it actually possible?

Act Global Talks offer a space for teachers and NGOs to think, talk and come up with solutions to global issues of migration. The talks are being filmed and will be available after the event, along with a series of lessons and accompanying resources, which examine the causes and effects of migration, alongside critical connections and solutions.

Speakers include Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, Director, the Royal Commonwealth Society; Ian Gordon, Professor of Human Geography, LSE; James Hampshire, Lecturer of Politics, Sussex Centre for Migration Research and Nathalie Rothschild, Commissioning Editor, Spiked. There will also be the opportunity to hear from organisations who actively engage young people in global issues, including iceandfire theatre company and education charity WORLDwrite. 

The panel discussion will be chaired by Sarah Spencer CBE, Deputy Director, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford (COMPAS).

Act Global connects teachers and students in taking action on global poverty-related issues. The project is run jointly by the Citizenship Foundation and Relief International UK. The Citizenship Foundation is an independent education and participation charity that aims to encourage and enable citizens to engage in democratic society. Relief International is a humanitarian non-profit agency that provides emergency relief, rehabilitation, development assistance, and programme services to vulnerable communities worldwide. 

Get your FREE TICKET here.

Commercial break

You deserve to get one of these for yourself, or your wife or husband or partner, or a friend, or as a prize....just buy one...

Now available from the GA's online merchandise store...

iPhone 3G / 3GS case, which has been given a GA makeover...
Show your support for Geography and the GA wherever you go, and protect your iPhone at the same time..

Can't wait for mine to arrive :)

Dr. Rex Walford - geographer...

Earlier this week, one of the first e-mails to be received by GA staff after the Christmas break was the sad news that Dr Rex Walford, OBE & President of the GA in 1983-4 was missing after a boat accident in the Thames over the Christmas period.

Rex was one of the most influential post-war geographers and few teachers will have been unaware of his work, or gone through their career without encountering his huge contribution to geography education.

Image copyright Bryan Ledgard - Rex and Fred Martin at the official opening of Solly Street

My first introduction was in the form of the idea of Games in Geography, guided by my PGCE tutor, the late Vincent Tidswell. As a gamer myself, I enjoyed developing some of my own variations on Rex's ideas, and remember the contributions that Rex made to Teaching Geography.
I met Rex numerous times as he visited Cambridge University PGCE colleagues who had their placement in my school through the 1990s.
More recently, we met again at Madingley Hall for the 2010 Geography Teacher Educators' Conference, where I was privileged to hear him talk through his involvement in the famous lecture series in the 1960s, and showed documents from his remarkable archive. He was also present at the recent official opening of Solly Street, and can be seen on the front cover of the most recent issue of GA Magazine. He was also one of the many influential faces from Geography's past (and future) who attended a recent seminar at the Institute of Education.
Yesterday, I went down into the GA warehouse, and read through the issues of Teaching Geography from the time of Rex's GA presidency. One of the articles was by Rex himself on the issue of Marking in geography, and contained useful advice, written back in 1984, which still holds true today...

Article by Rex from Teaching Geography, 1984

A brief message by Professor David Lambert has been added to the GA website - there will be a fuller remembrance in future GA journals and events.

You can comment on the message on the GA website if you want to add your own messages to remember Rex. There are already plenty of messages on the website.

Day 1 of 365

I've followed quite a few of these projects. The idea is that you post something each day for a whole year.
I've never done one before, mostly because I forget to start one on the 1st of January, and then decide to wait until the next time round.

This year I remembered...

Different people post different things: images, videos, song lyrics, poems, quotations... you can basically add what you want.
I'm going to use POSTEROUS for my 365 as I can post to it from my iPhone using the POSTEROUS app, but also have the option to e-mail posts to the blog as well. Never used it for more than the odd blog post either...

Visit the 2011x365 BLOG HERE, and feel free to subscribe...


This could be a good discipline for teachers to take a moment each day to reflect and share something with colleagues...