Digimap - your views wanted

The service is run through the University of Edinburgh, and there is now a project underway to assess the overall impact of the mapping service across those schools which make use of it.

I'm going to be sharing my views, and there is an opportunity for you to share yours.

You can contact Michael Gallagher here if you'd like to be involved in adding your views to the review of the service.
There are now over 2700 schools using the service, which is a real success compared to the numbers when I first got involved, and was asked to write some of the resources for secondary teachers.
Here's Michael's request - you'll notice it is not just Geography teachers that he is interested in speaking to.

I would love to speak to any and all teachers in the UK interested in ICT use as part of their teaching. Not a geography teacher? Not a problem. I want to speak to teachers across the curriculum. History, literature, science, math, and geography. This evaluation is not only about Digimap, but also about ICT use broadly. Not confident in your ICT use? Not a problem. Never used Digimap? Truly not a problem. I want to learn more about your teaching and how ICT enters into that (or not, depending). I want to learn about your teaching approaches, want to know what you think are barriers to attainment and satisfaction, what you see are some of the larger issues surrounding incorporating these types of applications into your teaching.

Remember that the service is updated with new features regularly.
Most recently, there is the chance to view GeoGraph photos through the Digimap service.

ArcGIS Online now free to all UK schools

We have been using ArcGIS Online in school for several years now, and ESRI UK have kindly given us a free subscription for the last few years so that we can share our work.

At the end of the Awards presentation at this week's GA Conference Stuart Bonthrone, the MD of Esri UK stood up and made an announcement which was in some ways inevitable after events previously in the USA, and also very welcome.

Stuart announced that from immediate effect, ArcGIS Online will be free to all UK schools.

Under the heading of "The Science of Where", Stuart then played a short video featuring the inspirational work of Thierry Torres and colleagues at Dover Grammar School.


If you want to know more, and sign up your school, head for the ESRI UK Schools page.



I also had the chance to meet Steve Richardson, who is being employed to produce new resources and materials for teachers to encourage more use of the tool in classes.
There are already over 60 resources available, with plenty more to come.



Finally, check out the GeoMentors programme, which pairs up schools with GIS professionals.

Sign up your school now

Vouchercloud: top tourist destinations

Vouchercloud has produced a map to show the top tourist destination in each country in the world.

This is a large map - click on the map following the link to see the whole thing and download it if you want a copy.

Place Based Research

One of the sessions at the recent GTE Conference that I most wanted to see was Emma Rawlings-Smith's presentation on her research so far into how place is represented in textbooks. I was interviewed by Emma last year as part of this research, with respect to how we wrote the AQA 'A' Level textbook for CUP and the OCR 'A' and 'B' books for Hodder.

Emma has a blog which is used to show her progress in her research.

The blog is called GeoPlaces and is on the Weebly platform.

The blog is connected with her PhD research. It's also very useful to connect the academic ideas on place with the teaching that is involved in the new 'A' level Changing Places topic. Emma interviewed me on my decision-making process when writing and editing the draft of this chapter in the Cambridge University Press textbook.
There is a useful set of resources here.

Finally on Changing Places, you may want to see an article by Richard Phillips in the latest Geography Review magazine, which looks at Changing Places in the context of Hackney. You can follow him on Twitter too.

You could also usefully watch Alan Smith's TED talk below:

A Plastic Ocean

Now available to stream (fee required) on Vimeo...

A Plastic Ocean from Brainstorm Media on Vimeo.

New Costa for Schools resources

A few years ago now (about 4 I think), I wrote three sets of resources for Costa Coffee, based on the work of the Costa Foundation.

They asked me earlier in the year to produce another set of 3 resources, based around the experience of buying a coffee. I was interested to see that in the end, quite a lot of the Costa specific references were taken out, so this is very much about the 'value' that is generated by our love for coffee. There are of course lots of independent coffee shops as well as the chain names.

You'll need to register (for free) with an e-mail and password to download the resources.

They have been really nicely designed up, and I'm going to make use of them in the coming term as part of a multi-choice curriculum section that I'm currently working on, as part of our unit on consumption and 'stuff' for Year 8.

Thanks to Jennifer Ferreira for her help with some of the links here, and those other colleagues who shared ideas or gave permission to use their ideas. Thanks to Hannah at EdComs for liaison...

The use of textbooks

Two seminar presentations that are worth watching, particularly David Gardner....

Explore the textbook debate held at the 2016 GEReCo seminar. Videos now available at https://t.co/90wenCsEqZ and https://t.co/joPHUh21lB

— GEReCo (@GEReCo_1) November 18, 2016