Twitter for news...

I talked about the use of Twitter as a way of communicating, collecting information, crowdsourcing and other things at the NQT event...

There were 3 or 4 "urban-related" tweets in my overnight feed that I caught up with earlier 'today' while having my breakfast...
Part of my daily routine now is to look at what has happened while I slept, and e-mail any interesting tweets to my e-mail account, so that I have a record of the links, and can follow them up when I have a moment...

This weekend, there has been an urban theme to many of the updates. Several of them were from the excellent @urbanphoto_blog stream... You need to follow them if you don't already.

One led me to the Twisted Sifter blog, from which I got this remarkable image, which apparently shows the suburbs of Mexico City marching into the distance, irrespective of topography.

The images were from Pablo Lopez Luz

I haven't explored the site further, but it seems to have a range of interesting images and other content.
The second site, which was equally arresting is a description of the development of a new (or perhaps not so new it seems) 'city' stretching out into the Caspian Sea from Baku, and called Oily Rocks.

The Liquid Infrastructure blog has the story and more amazing pictures of this complex structure.

Next was the news of a fire in the Garib Nagar slum in Mumbai. One of the houses affected was the home of an actress who featured in the film "Slumdog Millionaire". Of course there were thousands of other people affected too...
This was followed up by another newspaper article on the slums of Mumbai, and plans to bulldoze Dharavi. One to extend into the idea of local politics and ownership of land...

This was followed by a tip-off from Bob Digby to an article on the increased threat that coastal settlements in the UK are likely to face
A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation relates to the idea of Social Justice, and looks at the impact on disadvantaged UK coastal communities.
Click HERE to download the report as a 1.4 Mb PDF file

The possible impacts on East Anglia (as featured in the report) are summarised below...

•  Weakening and collapse of cliffs due to desiccation as a result of higher summer temperatures and lower precipitation; also cliff destabilisation as a result of decreasing vegetation cover.
•  Weakening and collapse of cliffs due to increased precipitation in winter, which causes more water to penetrate into desiccated cracks.
•  Higher rates of coastal erosion from higher sea levels, more frequent storm surges and weakened cliffs.
•  High erosion will cause enhanced rates of longshore drift which may pose threats to the major ports of Great Yarmouth, Felixstowe and Harwich.

And finally, was an article by Rick Poynor on the book "Edgelands", which I am reading via Kindle app at the moment, along with some images of these peripheral areas.

So basically, Twitter - thanks to the Flipbook app - has replaced the need for me to buy a Sunday newspaper...

I am #OneOfOneThousandGeographers - are you ?

If you're a geographer, and are reading this, and also use Twitter, you need to send a tweet with the hashtag here: #OneOfOneThousandGeographers.
This will then be picked up by Dan from the Geography Collective, and we'll add you to the list... We're well over 100 now, and next stop, 1000 !

FrozenUK

Started a new Twitter stream yesterday to collate stories of the Big Freeze...

Follow @FrozenUK for the cold weather geographical digest... or add #FrozenUK to your tweets and I'll pick it up and add it when I get the chance...

There is more snow falling as I type this...

More on Teachers TV

As part of the Better Learning with ICT series on Teachers TV, there is another excellent geography example which I recommend that you watch.

David Rogers, a GA Secondary Phase Committee member, who teaches at Priory School, Portsmouth was filmed teaching a lesson using social media: Facebook and Twitter to teach about the problem of piracy with a Year 8 class. Unfortunately, the tweets I sent didn't make the cut, but I recognised a few of the avatars from my own PLN.

To access the clip, go to the main video page.

Once the main clip is underway, you will notice a series of icons along the time line. Go to the very end of the clip, and if you mouse over the icon you will see that it says:

"Online Communities: KS3 examples"

This will give you access to two case studies.

David's is the second of the two case studies, but both are worth watching.

David's session starts 2 minutes and 46 seconds in. Give it a watch !