Updates for teaching materials

SAGT's Scottish Geographical News arrived today, complete with CD of useful resources, especially power point presentations, including a lot of very interesting, eye catching presentations by the Geography department at Balfron, lookking at the varous topics of Higher courses such as Rural Land Resources and S1/2 units such as Scotland and Climate change.

The SAGT website contains plenty of helpful links.

This month's National Geographic includes a feature on Dharavi, one of Mumbai's slum areas-it complements the case study on Mumbai that appears in Calvin Clarke's Intermediate textbook, and is a helpful reminder to pupils revising urbanisation and rural-urban migration.

The Independent which has been giving prominance to climate change carries a story about Australia's current drought crisis, "the most crippling drought on record". Many of the problems are alleged to stem from inadequate planning in areas where the population has grown too fast, eg around Brisbane, meaning that demand for water far outstrips availability.

I-pods and learning

A report on the BBC website today highlights the fact that the Department for Education and Skills is making Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" available to download as MP3 format to help pupils revise the set text. Several geography colleagues already make MP3 evision material, notably Ollie Bray who has produced some very helpful casts on physical geogrpahy, for example. I wonder how such projects are evaluated and what research has been done, or could be done, to identify the effectiveness and "market penetration" of podcasting, wikis and blogs as educational tools in Scottish schools?

Wikipedia Picture of the Day

Browsing through wikipedia, this clear block diagram of glacial deposition features jumped out.It was selected as the wikipedia Picture of the Day.

Kelvin Cycle Path

Cycled along Kelvin walkway from Kelvingrove art gallery, past the Botanic Gardens and on to the Forth and Clyde canal at Lock 25. Followed the canal eastwards, before taking the Speirs wharf spur. Lot of renovation and renewal along this stretch, with new housing and warehouse conversions creating a fairly upmarket look, contrasting with some of the wasteground and vacant areas nearby. More developments are proposed with the building of New Rotterdam due to get underway soon. Returned to Kelvingrove via Woodside and the Great Western Road, taking in Park Circus. The whole route makes an excellent transect of the varied architecture and urban/industrial change in this area of Glasgow.

Check out the Geograph website for some good photos of this area.

Bad Bird Watcher

Have just finished Simon Barnes' excellent book "How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher". Barnes, chief sports writer of the Times is an enthusiast who writes with elegance and passion about his love of birds-"bad birdwatchers" are those of us who appreciate birds without knowing too much about their finer points. The book was lent to me by family friends who are inveterate "birders". Living in Wooler, nestling in the Cheviots, they have access to a wide variety of bird habitats-arable land, conifer plantations, open moorland and nearby Northumberland coast.
Took a walk behind their house, giving excellent views over the Coquet Valley and, just on the horizon, a thin sliver of the North Sea beyond the Millfield Plain, an extensive flat area once part of a post glacial lake. A brief introduction to the area can be found by clicking here.

Will be using this blog to record bird activity in Clarkston and the surrounding area over the summer. Wonder when the first swallows will be sighted?

Google Earth have brought out a new site called World Sunlight./ It shows how the sun rises and sets all over the world on a real-time, computer-generated illustration of the earth's patterns of sunlight, darkness, and cloud cover based on current weather satellite data.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.