Mission:Explore Summer Camp is coming....

At Mission:Explore, we're planning a range of activities through the summer, and the webpage for our SUMMER CAMP has just gone live.

The Mission:Explore online Summer Camp is going to be 100 days of warped adventures, wild activities and daring challenges. Join the Summer Camp community and from June 1st you will be sent daily missions to explore the great outdoors, no matter where in the world you are.

Carefully crafted by our camp challengers, you will be sent missions to attempt by National Geographic, National Parks, the RSPB, Scouts, John Muir and other exploration experts.

Complete the daring missions outdoors and you will develop your expertise in Mission:Exploring and discover new things about yourself and the world around you. You'll have some random fun and be able to pick up some rewards too.

Visit the page, and see our awesome countdown clock, and check out the Summer Camp challengers that have been confirmed so far...

It's going to be a summer to remember...

Dan Raven Ellison's TEDx Talk

Dan Raven Ellison, my friend and Geography Collective / Mission:Explore / Explorer HQ colleague was in Switzerland last month doing a TEDx talk on the theme of exploring...

This is well worth watching... Several ideas to use straight away.... particularly the idea of 'polar exploration'.

Geography Awareness Week 2013 - Mission:Explore section...

The Geography Awareness Week, which is organised by the Geographical Association takes place in June 2013.
The materials have now been made available on the GA website as a PDF download (click the link to download the materials as a PDF)

There's a useful MISSION EXPLORE section at the end of the booklet which I wrote, and I've also written some Webwatch links for each of the other sections.

John Muir Trust Mission Booklet

For the last few months we've been working with the amazing folks at the John Muir Trust to put together a booklet of missions which marries the Mission:Explore style of missions to the aims of the trust, which are to encourage young people to experience the landscape, and care for wild places.
John Muir was the father figure of nature conservation, and quotes from him have been included to connect the missions with some of the ideas that he had over a century ago.
The resource is part of the celebrations for the Year of Natural Scotland, 2013

You can get to see the missions on this GRAPHICLY page. It will be available in other locations shortly, and I'll add the links to those as they emerge.

Here's a slide that I've used in many of my presentations...

Get out and about this Easter... and don't forget to take the opportunity to Mission:Explore...

Discover the World with Mission:Explore

Over the last few months, we've been working hard to put together a deal which will connect The Geography Collective, creators of Mission:Explore with Discover the World, the leading school travel company to destinations such as Iceland.
We're going to be writing missions which will be available for students and teachers who book a tour with Discover the World...

The first place that we've visited is one of the great places in the world: ICELAND.

I'm working with geography teacher John Sayers, and our editor and illustrator Helen and Tom, along with other Geography Collective colleagues, to put together a booklet which will available to all those schools that book a trip with Discover the World. It will contain missions, and ideas for linking the experience of visiting Iceland and completing the missions with the curriculum, and exam specifications.

We've created a whole load of missions which we're now editing down and preparing to be released into the wild in early 2013.

I'll let you know more about how things are developing with the project over the next couple of months, and look forward to seeing some of you soon on a windswept sandur, or cramponing over a crevasse-strewn glacier...

Alan Hubertsson (my special Iceland-Explorer name...)

Breaking the mould...

One of the companies that I'm currently working with is ESRI UK.
It's good to see more cross-overs with projects as Mission Explore is featured in ESRI's Fall newsletter, with a nice article written by Daniel Edelson of the National Geographic Education team.

Some nice quotes:

There are a small number of people out there, however, who summon up very different images when they think about geography learning. Maybe they never experienced traditional geography education, or maybe they experienced it and have completely rejected it as a model for learning. They envision activities that feel both relevant and enjoyable. These are the people we need to find and listen to, because they don't think about improving geography education by incrementally improving traditional approaches. They think about completely new approaches to geography teaching and learning.

One place where you can find people like that is in the Geography Collective, a group of innovative thinkers in the United Kingdom. They describe themselves in the following way: "We are a collective of geography activists, teachers, therapists, academics, artists, and guerrillas. We've come together to encourage [young] people to see our world in new ways."

The Geography Collective is one of the most creative groups in geography education today, and every time I learn more about its work, I get more excited about it.....

I can't help feeling that truly creative approaches to geography learning are discouragingly few and far between right now. Too few people are even thinking about geography education, and those who are still focus too much on incremental improvements rather than entirely new approaches. We should take the Geography Collective members and others like them as inspiration. We must challenge ourselves to think more creatively and seek out and promote the creative ideas of others.

Thanks Daniel :)

Please 'pre-order' a copy by supporting the production of MISSION EXPLORE FOOD.
This is the FINAL DAY to fund us.
If we don't get just over a thousand pounds by 11 tonight we don't get the funding to make what will be a superb book for young and old alike...

MissionExplore.net now LIVE !

I've just completed my first mission on the relaunched Mission Explore.net which is now live in BETA
It's called the DEAD EASY MISSION
Come and login and find out what it involves...

It's worth it to go and see Tom Morgan Jones' latest wonderful illustrations...

Just going to do some missions at home...

Coincidentally my EARTH SANDWICH Mission Explore t-shirt arrived today - it's cool.

Why not order your own MISSION EXPLORE shirt to wear while completing the MISSION EXPLORE missions ?

New Mission Explore books

In just over a month's time, there are two new Mission:Explore books launched on the world by The Geography Collective and Can of Worms Press.
Here are the front covers for those who are interested. They are already available to pre-order on Amazon so make sure you buy at least one copy....

There will be launch events in London on the 1st and 2nd of April, but if you are around in London on the evening of the 31st of March, you can join us at the Old Explorer, just a short walk from Oxford Circus.

Sign up to join us....

Plenty more to come in a month's time...