ICT in the Humanities and Geography Classroom
Each week a new image is added to the homepage of geographyalltheway.com. If you can name the country from the image enter the competition!
The competition is open to everybody – the winner being chosen from all the correct answers received. The winner receives a unique certificate via email.
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Over the last week I have been playing with widgetbox.com.
Widgetbox is a service that enables people to “find, make and distribute web widgets for blogging, social networking services, and personal websites”. I have been doing some very simple things by turning RSS feeds into widgets. The reason to make widgets is to make content easier to access for my students and virtual colleagues.
Here is an example taking the feed from this site:
The more ’serious’ ones I have done are for my IB Geography and IGCSE Geography students. I have created feeds of recent, relevant news stories. The widgets can be seen on the following pages of this blog: IB Geography Widgets and IGCSE Geography Widgets – which can be accessed by clicking on the tabs at the top of the page.
They have been created by taking feeds from my delicious tags:
The widgets can be embedded into blogs, webpages, iGoogle pages, myspace, facebook etc – which means they can be very accessible for students.
Here is a final (for today) widget that took just 90 seconds to produce – you should recognise it – it’s the feed from Alan’s Living Geography blog:
If you have any questions about these – or you would like me to create a widget for you – just ask via the comments box.
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Do you use the IB Geography Paper 1 revision guide?
The publishers are after some quotes about it’s use for their website.
So if you would like to leave a comment here or send me a quote via email (Contact Me button in the top right hand corner of the page) that would be great. I’m sure their could be a geographyalltheway.com pen for the best quote used!
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geogalot is back up for all those who noticed it was down due to ‘technical’ issues.
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I have had a go at creating a widget using widgetbox.com.
You can grab the code here to add the widget to you blog/website. The idea being that it should up date each week with the new Where in the World? image.
There is a wide version:
and a narrow version:
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The BBC docudrama ‘If The Oil Runs Out‘ is currently on available on YouTube, cut into 6 sections. I have added them all together to using playlist – see below. There is a good chance that it will not be on YouTube for ever!
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Each week a new image is added to the homepage of geographyalltheway.com. If you can name the country from the image enter the competition!
The competition is open to everybody – the winner being chosen from all the correct answers received. The winner receives a unique certificate via email.
Popularity: 4% [?]
If you found this post useful, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! and follow @geogalot on Twitter.
So this is the second ‘Last Week > Next Week’ post. The last one is here.
Last Week
Year 7 Geography
The new Year 7s have had a positive start. They are all currently deciding upon at least 8 places that are important for them as part of ‘Where Geography?‘.
Year 9 Geography
Again a positive start – hitting the floor running. The revision of Energy Resources went well. I have really tried to focus their presentations with the skills of giving presentations and constructing effective slides. This video clip has helped discussions:
Life After Death by PowerPoint
Year 10 IGCSE Geography
Having just eight students in this group this year means I have the ability to really focus upon each student. I went straight into the Population Structure unit and the atmosphere has been very productive.
Year 11 IGCSE Geography
Trying to get the River Processes unit finished. Two sections completed as planned.
Year 12 IB Geography
Induction unit has progressed with a couple of hiccups due to the network firewall etc. All students now using delicious to help then research a disease for their case studies.
Year 13 IB Geography
A steady start to the finial section of the Core – Development. Some really interesting discussions about what development is and global disparities in wealth when looking at the Millennium Development Goals.
Next Week
Year 7 Geography
Will be using a lesson to complete their ‘Where Geography‘ Google Earth Tours and then a lesson looking at ‘When and Who Geography‘ and the research skills associated with the set tasks.
Year 9 Geography
One lesson will be spent watching the student’s Energy Resource presentations. I will be using ClassTools.net’s excellent Random Name Picker to select the order of the students. I will also be uploading the presentations to slideshare.net for feedback. The second lesson of the week will look at Peak Oil and the ‘running out’ of fossil fuels. This lesson is still under-development!
Year 10 IGCSE Geography
We will be looking at the Demographic Transition Model and then I haven’t decided whether to do ‘Jelly Baby Geography‘ now or at the end of the unit as revision. If we don’t have any Jelly Baby or Smarties based fun we will be looking at Ageing Populations.
Year 11 IGCSE Geography
We are still looking at the Lower Course of the river. Levées and Floodplains and a MEDC Flooding case study this week. Students have completed a LEDC Flooding case study as their summer work.
Year 12 IB Geography
The Induction unit continues with the students having their disease case studies completed by the end of the week. I will also add some skills associated with organising their tasks and time – the use of RSS feeds, Remember the Milk, Google Alerts etc – this will require the students to have Google accounts.
Year 13 IB Geography
Poverty, Development Indicators and maybe even a start on Patterns in Development will mean a busy week for Year 13. They are also doing a timed exam question – just a single 10 mark question – so about 23 to 25 minutes of writing during Wednesday’s lesson. They will do one of these every fortnight – with me telling them the area of the course the question will be taken from a week before.
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I am trialing a new way of entering the Where in the World? competition using Google Forms.
Previously I was using jotform but I was having some issues with it being blocked by school firewalls etc.
Please test it for me! Does anybody have issues entering the Where in the World? competition from school?
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As part of ‘Curriculum Extension Activities’ I am running a session called ‘Fun and Games with Google Earth’. The ‘Curriculum Extension Activities’ run for six or seven weeks before the students choose a new activity. Starting tomorrow I have 12 students (mixed from Years 7, 8 and 9) for 50 minutes a week to entertain and educate with Google Earth.
I requested some ideas from the geography community using the SLN forum and this is the first session. Future sessions will include the use of the geography department’s Garmin Geko GPS units.
Session One – Google Earth Treasure Hunt and Earth Art
We will start with the Google Earth Treasure Hunt – this will allow me time to assess what Google Earth skills the students already have and therefore plan future sessions.
The Google Earth Treasure Hunt file can be downloaded from the link below. I also have an answer sheet for those teachers/educators who want it!
Those who finish the Treasure Hunt will be looking at ‘Earth Art‘.
There is more info about Earth Art in the Google Earth Unit I created for the International School of Toulouse Summer School in 2007.
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