Hydration

I felt quite sick and light headed this afternoon and then I realised it was probably because I hadnt drunk enough water. Especially as the weather is starting to warm up and everyone in senior school is doing exams we are all suddenly much more aware of the need to keep rehydrated.
Which leads me on very nicely to my next point about the appropriately named Tears of a cloud which is a lovely ironic look at our over reliance on bottled water. In some African countries bottled water is more expensive than petrol, and just think about how many plastic bottles of the wet stuff you will quite happily buy, and only drink half of, this summer. It is claimed that the next global war wil not be caused by the impending worlwide shortage of oil but because of water shortages and territory. Very handy thought for IB Geography and Environmental Systems especially as we look at the use and abuse of water as a resource.
A tug of the forlock to T. Cassidy and waterconserve for this.

Year 9 Examination results

The end of year geography exam papers have all been marked and well done to Year 9 who have really impressed me with not only their case studies but their general geographical knowledge. If you want your marks then you have to find me before we head off to Gredos at el crack of dawn on Monday morning.

Mickey Mouse and the Disneyfication of culture

I was sent this by a friend who obviously knows my prediliction for all things Disney. It set me thinking however about global culture or rather the decline of it and the fact that culturally we are all becoming similar. We eat the same food from Burger King and Pizza Hut shop in Zara, Mango and Continente and watch American soap operas. This sent me off on another train of thought about the decline of languages and culture globally and how over 1200 languages and all of the associated knowledge and cultural heritage, a legacy of the brilliance of humanity, have been lost in the last 20 years as we as a world become more globalised. For those who want to get ahead of the game there is a really interesting speech by Wade Davis on Ted Talks, and who could fail to be intrigued by the true story of the poo knife. Want to know more then just click on the link!
Year 11 and year 12 IB will study this phenomenon, and much more, in Globalization next year and also the ideas behing the theory of glocalisation.

Year 8 agenda

I am a little bit disappointed that only one person from 8N handed in their homework that was due Thursday 21st. As it is exam week and then next week I am in Gredos I will expect it first thing Monday 8th. May or you will be in a Humanities detention at lunchtime. For those of you who have lost it here are the questions and the link to James Nachtweys photographs.
1. When was the Vietnam War? (30 secs)
2. When were the 10 IRA prisoners starving themselves to death? (4 mins 20 secs)
3. What does IRA mean?
4. When was the second intifada? (5 mins 30 secs)
5. What was the name of the Palestininan refugee camp? (6 mins)
6. In Yugoslavia who were the three main groups fighting? (6 mins 15)
7. What did the Xhosa tribe do to the bodies of young boys in Transkei? (7 mins
8. What was used as ameans of genocide in Southern Sudan) (8 mins 50)
9. What is genocide?
10. What is an NGO?
11. What is the UN?
12. How many people wer slaughterd in Rwanda? (10 mins 30)
13. What is NATO?
14. What was Agent Orange?(14 mins 20)
15. What was the active ingredient in Agent Orange?
16. Who are MSF?
17. When did he go to Darfur? (16 mins)
18. Who are the Taliban? I18 min 20)
19. What country is Bagdad the capital of?
20. Where did the Shiites go to observe Ashura? (19 mins)

8R will be considering the mystery of why Kanye West doesnt want to wear his bling whilst 8N are going to be watching the Film Blood Diamond as part of their work on the geography of conflict, and both 8R and 8N will have an oppotunity to see the following short video.



This I feel helps to put both the human and physical side of both the legal and illegalside of the diamond industry into perspective. When I was a child I lived on a diamond mining compound in Namibia and I remember my father telling me how all the yellow diamonds were thrown in a bin to be ground into powder to be used for industrial purposes, how times change now they are very highly prized for the colour! We also had to be X rayed everytime we went off site to see if we had any uncut diamonds on our body, because if you did you could be thrown into jail for 15 years for theft, the laws however were just a market control. The diamond marketing strategy is to keep them scarce. If the diamond fields were really mined, diamonds would be so cheap it wouldn't be worth cutting or selling them. So they are hoarded, and only a carefully calculated trickle are ever released into the global market.



Both 8N and 8R also have a homework for the week of the first of June, it isnt too demanding and will really help you get to grips with some of the issues that we have explored in recent weeks regarding the crisis in Darfur. It´s also fun! I recommend you have a go at playing it, the IB students and I found it strangely addictive. Darfur is Dying

For the last lesson after you have seen the video, Kanye Wests song about Diamonds from Sierra Leone is going to be up for consideration, with you asking yourself why he refuses to wear his bling anymore.Could it have something to do with the mining of blood diamonds. You will just have to complete the exercises and find out.

Then for the last two weeks of term we shall continue with war and conflict focussing on how and why the map of Europe changed after World War II and how conflict is redefining the landscape in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Gredos Field Trip

After the trauma of the Year 9 and 11 exams is all over, papers marked and reports written, the oldies all no doubt sitting at the front of the coach, will have a good six hours to prepare themselves for the demands of the residential field trip.

Now I appreciate that the general consensus is that it´s a bit of a jolly with paintballing being high on the agenda but there is a real purpose to it especially for Year 11 Geography and Environmental Systems as for two days they will be waist high (well just above the knee!)in cold water gathering data for their Internal Assessment. A 2500 word epistle on whether or not the Rivers Tormes and Messogosso follow the model of an ideal stream profile.

Year 11 need to be very comfortable with the Bradshaw model, the Hjulstrom curve and all the depositional and erosional landforms that are normally found on a river. You can however leave out estuaries and deltas which are unlikely to occur high in the mountains!

The Barcelona Field Studies Centre has an excellent website that details a wide variety of methods of data representation and presentation.

IGCSE Geography - Fieldwork Data Presentation

View more OpenOffice presentations from Richard Allaway.

The ever fabulous Richard Allway has done it all for me, and made a comprehensive list of all the methods that you could possibly want to use to present your data. Now wasn´t that nice of him?

Virtual River is good, a little bit old fashioned but excellent for covering all of the relevant information that you absolutely positively have to know for Gredos.

Are you getting enough of it?

I know that this just might be a little bit late, especially as KS3, year 8 and year 11 exams start tomorrow, but I was thinking back to the days when I was a student and lived on coffee, chocolate, full fat coke and four hours of sleep a night. Perhaps thats why my genius was never fully realised at school, I wasn´t getting enough sleep! Makes you think though doesnt it, just how important it is to get at least 7 to 8 hours of shut eye every night....ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz......

Sleep

View more OpenOffice presentations from TonyCassidy.

Twitterpated with flutter

Sometimes I think that I am seriously getting old with all this new technology web 2.0 and such like. So coming across this tongue in cheek (I think!)video on you tube made me smirk for a moment.

Gapminder

My biggest problem as a teacher is I have a box full of geography stuff that I have torn out of papers and magazines with the intention of using them in a lesson, unfortunately I never seem to get around to it. That box has been calling to me for the last few weeks and so rather than ignoring it I decided to bite  the bullet, tidy it up and find homes for everything. A piece of paper fluttered out with a web address on it and rater than bin it I typed it in and rediscovered the fabulous Hans Rosling and his gapminder website. That was it, my intended housekeeping was abandoned a I lost myself in the beauty of the way in which statistics are represented. 

For Year 11 who are now hopefully in the throes of revision for their end of year exams this is a lifesaver for development and resources statistics.