Using Twitter to learn about the Haiti earthquake

In my lessons this week, Year 9 will be continuing with their tectonics unit of work. Over the past two years we have looked at the Sichuan earthquakes in China to identify how people are affected by and respond to earthquakes.

Clearly the devastating earthquake that stuck Haiti earlier in the week will be in the minds of students, therefore we will be looking into the causes, effects and responses to the Haiti earthquake in lessons this week.

Below is a quick activity to help pupils learn about the earthquake in ‘real time’ using twitter. A twitter colleague of mine highlighted this news report in the Guardian which shows a resident of Haiti (Richard Morse) tweeting through the days after the earthquake struck. This got me thinking about how I could use this information with my pupils?

I have placed the tweets into a presentation that is available to download from slideshare. The presentation is timed to move forward after a set amount of time after each slide. This will then act as a twitter ‘feed’ of events. I have then adapted a piece of work by Tony Cassidy to use alongside the tweets. The Haiti Emotion Line asks pupils to graph the emotions of Richard Morse at the end of each day and to then explain their decisions related to his emotional state.

I feel that using live information from a source such as Twitter allows students to gain a real purpose to studying world events such as the Haiti earthquake.

NSCL Leading from the Middle

I’ve been pretty absent from this blog for quite a while now, so really needed an event to encourage me to start blogging again. This evening I attended my first twilight session to begin the 9 month journey on the NCSL leading from the Middle program. My aim now will be to reflect using my blog as I progress through the program and maybe this will support my thinking of how my leadership changes over the coming months.

A strong element of the session this evening focused upon how ‘we’ will change as leaders as what we do inspires other members of our team. Essentially to lead this change, the leader will need to take risks, enable team members to take control and promote ownership and responsibility amongst the team. I feel that this is something that I struggle with at the moment. I often work longs days and complete tasks on an individual basis in order to maintain control. Clearly this doesn’t have such great benefits for myself or my team. A clear learning path for me will be to learn how to share responsibility amongst the team and then allow people to take ownership over the opportunities that are available to them. A ‘Eureka’ moment occurred to me this evening as this is essentially what my previous Head of Faculty led on a day-to-day basis and as a team member I felt valued, but also felt that my own skills were developing all of the time.

The evening also offered the opportunity to talk with two other Heads of Faculty (Maths and English) from my school which I rarely have the opportunity to talk with. Alongside discussion with our leadership coach, we soon began to realise that although we have different faculties, we are faced with similar challenges and that with a support network we can then begin to discuss ideas of how to lead our teams and how to approach the challenges that we face.

On a personal note, I hope to develop my leadership skills over the next 9 months in a sustainable manner that will lead to the faculty that I lead becoming a more effective team. I suppose today is just a snapshot in time, in the progress of leading a team and becoming a more effective leader in order to leave a legacy within the Humanities Faculty in my school, should I decide to move on at some point?

I hope to reflect further I a move through the program. The next task is to request five people who I work alongside or lead to fill in a development diagnostic about me as a leader. I will be interested to read the results.

GA – A different view

The movie to accompany ‘a different view’ the Geographical Association’s 2009 ‘Manifesto’ for school geography. Geography is about discovering the world… and its complexity Geography deepens our understanding of the world Geography fascinates and inspires Thinking geographically … thinking critically … about what we see and understand This can be shown without any preamble as to its purpose as hopefully the movie makes it clear what it is for.

I’ve spent a bit of time reading over ‘A Different View’ page on the GA website and am initially impressed, as I often am by the way in which the GA aims to drive forward and support school geography.

An aspect of the site that initially grabbed my interest were the results from the Ipsos MORI survey of key stage 3 pupils on world issues. I found the results quite enlightening, if not suprising. What makes me think now, is how can we as geography educators tackle pupils concerns, particularly over crime and anti-social behaviour? There seem to be clear opportunities to integrate these finding alongside the every child matters and community cohesion agenda.

Some food for though in terms of curriculum planning. Could there be some mileage in a cross-curricular project centred around pupils perceptions of crime and anti-social behaviour?

Urban Fieldwork using Trailguru

I’ve neglected this blog for quite a while now, so with a break from the day-to-day demands of teaching I thought it was about time to post.

Today I’ve been out with my Year 12 Geography students completing some urban fieldwork in relation to Unit 2 of the AQA AS Geography exam that they will sit in the summer. We were aiming to compare environment and housing quality in two contrasting inner city areas (Everton and Princes Park) and a suburban area (Woolton) in Liverpool. We decided to compare two inner city wards due to the results of the data that we collected from the census 2001 website. The results threw up some interesting discoveries in terms of ethnicity, employment and education when comparing the two wards.

During the day students were required to complete environmental and housing quality surveys within the three wards. Whilst completing these surveys, I thought today would be a good idea to track our journey using the Trailguru application for my iPhone. I hoped to track our whole journey, plus collect geotagged photographs that would hopefully show how housing changed as we moved away from the CBD of Liverpool. Kenny O’Donnell had completed a similar activity recently using Everytrail, and after the results from today I may go back across our route and use Everytrail as today’s results were not as good as I had hoped.

You can view my trail of the Trailguru website, and some of the results are quite interesting and useful, but unfortunately only parts of my trail have been saved and only seven of the photographs that I took have been uploaded to the site. Whether this is a problem with the site or an issue with me using my phone I’m not too sure?

The image to the left indicates my trail from today. The majority of the trail has been picked up and the first seven photographs that I took are accurately geotagged. Unfortunately the trail did seem to be cut off when travelling from Princes Park to Woolton. In addition to this, all of the photographs that I took in Princes Park and Woolton have not been posted to the site.

The trails can also be viewed in Google Earth and this can be viewed below.

The elevation profile indicates how land height changes across my trail. This clearly shows as we moved away from the CBD of Liverpool, our elevation increases. Exactly what we expected.

The potential for this software is clearly there to see. Hopefully over this week I will re-visit the three wards that we visited today and upload a new trail with geotagged photographs to support the data that we collected.

Free Copse Pack from the Woodland Trust

 

I am currently participating in an online course run by SEED and WWF. The course is titled ‘Opening the Doorway to Sustainability’. The course is organised through various discussions and documentation from the SEED Moodle. I hope to gain a clear direction of thought in terms of taking sustainability forward in our school, once I have completed the 1 week course. This is the second week and one of the discussions centres on the sharing of resources, weblinks and ideas. This is nothing new for a geography teacher via SLN! I am just looking through the various posts as I blog.

Today I have ordered a ‘copse pack’ from the Woodland Trust. This will arrive in early March and this maybe a trigger to start a ‘sustainable schools’ action group in school? You can still order the ‘copse pack’ by visiting the Woodland Trust website.

 

7 things about me …

I have recently been tagged by Liz Smith in the ’7 things about me’ blogging game. I’ve already read many posts from other bloggers, so the pressure seems to be on here!

1. I was born and brought up in Stoke-on-Trent. I moved to Liverpool for university and have remained here ever since. Somehow the pull of this rejuvenated city has prevented me from returning ‘home’!

2. When I was younger I played a great amount of football ‘between the sticks’. As a goalkeeper for people who don’t follow football. I represented Stoke-on-Trent at under-15 level and the county of Cheshire at under-19 level. I enjoyed playing football then, but have lost the passion now and as of last season, no longer play football!

3. When at school I sort of lost my way during A levels. Probably something to do with the discovery of Stoke-on-Trent’s pubs and clubs! Although completing an A level in Geography I had lost my interest in the subject and really wanted to follow PE/sport studies at University. Geography remained part of my degree course somehow and I am delighted that it did as I regained my passion for the subject at University. Things happen for a reason!

4. When I studying at University I worked at the famous Cream nightclub in Liverpool. Every Wednesday I would work until 4 in the morning and until 5 on a Saturday! I loved working in one of the world’s most famous clubs at the time. On occasions I managed to catch 40 winks in the stock room whilst the music shook the building! Don’t ask me how?

5. I once had a walk in part in the ‘classic’ channel 4 program Hollyoaks! This was also whilst at University. I was part of a football team that was required to make the ‘real’ actors look good! Not to hard!

6. Although I have lived in a city for the past 10 years, I have a great desire to do more hill walking. I used to participate in many walks before I moved to University. My resolution for this year is to get out in the Lakes and North Wales at regular intervals.

7. I love the challenge that teaching offers. For many of my friends who wouldn’t even entertain the idea of entering a room of 30 14 or 15 year olds, there is nothing better than when relationships with classes build up and I can honestly say that a day in school never drags! Yes there are good and bad days, but you can always return to a new challenge! However, I hate the paperwork!

I know that I am now meant to tag other people, however I think that all the people that write blogs that I read have now been tagged! Need to be quicker next time!

‘Euro tourists’ crossing border

Interesting story from BBC Northern Ireland looking at how people from the Republic of Irealnd are taking advantage of the falling value of the Pound against the Euro and crossing into Northern Ireland to buy their Christmas bargains!

Economic migration in action?

Highlights from photographer Stuart Franklin’s Footprint: Our Landscape in Flux

Greece Landscape

Stuart Franklin’s collection of fantastic images with explanations about changes that are taking place with our landscapes. Link to the images.

Great Landscape Images

An interesting collection of images that have been entered for the ‘Take a View Landscape Photographer of the Year’ competition. Link to the Guardian website.

Jason Bangbala – Behaviour INSET

Thursday proved to be another interesting INSET day offered by school. I have seen Jason Bangbala on two previous occasions and can honestly say that I use as many of his techniques as possible when teaching. Once they are embedded into day-to-day practice, they really are effective strategies to manage behaviour. I last saw Jason 4 years ago, so this INSET refreshed me with some of his ideas. I will be using some further strategies that he offered when I return after half term.

Jason also offered some excellent, if not controversial, views on behaviour management. One of the most interesting parts of the day was watching the reactions of other members of staff!! I would thoroughly recommend any school bringing Jason into their school to help support staff.

Link to Jason Bangbala website