Revision Guides.... again!

Another reminder for Yr12 and for those of you in Yr13 who are resitting AS modules, that the revision guides that I wrote at Christmas are all here. The Population and Rivers ones, although written for the old specification should be useful for Yr12 too.

I have also just added a Cold Environments Revision Guide, written by Rob Chambers, who is a Geography teacher in Cambridge. Although it is specifically written for AS, it is also of use to Yr13. There is some stuff at the beginning that is specific to Rob's school but you can just ignore that bit!

The password is Ben's geographical nickname... If you can't remember, ask me at school, email, or ask one of the Yr13s.

The Places We Live

Just come across this superb site exploring 4 of the world's slums, including Dharavi:

Antarctic Treaty

Thanks to Tony Cassidy for pointing out this Costing the Earth episode about the Antarctic Treaty - useful listening for both Yr12 who will be looking at this after the holidays and Yr13 as revision...

Yr13 - Tectonics

We started Wednesday's lesson with a reminder about the structure of the earth... We talked about Mr Ogden's biro experiment (but didn't risk setting fire to the Maths Block...). We recapped the different types of plate boundaries that you had looked at while I was in Wales, the processes occurring at each, and the landforms that result.

We then watched the Volcanoes episode of Power of the Planet, where Iain Stewart visited, amongst other places, Erta Ale in Ethiopia ("the first time you're gonna abseil, you kinda didn't want it to be into an active volcano"!) and Thingvellir in Iceland.

We finished with a discussion about the theory of hotspots - still somewhat controversial, but the most commonly accepted explanation for the formation of volcanic islands such as Hawaii, well away from plate boundaries.

Yr13 - Cities

Some nice presentations on Tuesday about Urban Development Corporations, City Challenge and some of the more recent regeneration initiatives such as Sustainable Communities. Check back to the previous post on this for some links, etc. if you need to check details.

On Thursday, we started to look at the LEDW case - we started by brainstorming our perceptions of shanty towns, based on the work you did last year, and on what we "know" from the media, etc.. We then had a look at Dharavi, the Mumbai slum where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed, and talked about whether we thought it was a "slum of hope" or a "slum of despair".

The links to the photos, etc. we looked at are here:

Audio slideshow from The Guardian
Images from the National Geographic
BBC Interactive Tour of Dharavi

There are various clips on YouTube that are worth a look too...

After the holidays, we will have a look at the plans for the redevelopment of Dharavi...

Yr 12 - The Inuit

Double lesson before the holidays was spent looking at the Inuit people.

Various links here which will remind you about the distribution of Inuit people, their traditional way of life, and how their lives have changed.

Inuit Communities (in our least favourite font, sorry Laura - but some good info)
Canada's Arctic
Inuit Culture, Traditions and History
The Inuit (this one is a portal linking to lots of different sites including the Nunavut Government, various maps, and a site about Inuit games!)

We also watched the second (Baffin Island) episode of Billy Connolly's fab Journey to the Edge of the World series. The ITV pages for the series are here and have a variety of photos, video clips, etc. and a map of the journey.

Some fab photos on Flickr too, including this one from Gattou/Lucie/In and Out...

Revision Guides

Proper posts with reminders about what we covered in the last week of term will be here tomorrow.

In the meantime, however, a reminder about the revision guides that I put together at Christmas... Although they were written for resits for the old spec (ie the one that Yr13 are doing at the moment), much of the Population, Settlement and Rivers stuff will be of use to Yr12 too.

They are here and the password is Ben's geographical nickname (email if you can't remember!).

I hope to be able to get some more stuff together in the next few days, esp Cold Environments - will add to 4shared and post here, if and when it's complete.

You might also like to check out the couple of revision bits that I have put on GeogtasticGCSE as well - the ideas could easily be adapted, so if you fancy putting together some mobile phone revision quizzes (or perhaps "flashcards" of key words?) or Xtranormal videos, send them to me and I'll put them here so everyone can use them.

Mt Redoubt

Although the alert level has been reduced, there's ongoing Mt Redoubt activity... And a fantastic panoramic image (view full size):

Earthquake in Indonesia

Just seen on the BBC website that there has been a magnitude 6.5 earthquake in Northern Indonesia... (Pacific Ring of Fire... look at your plate boundaries maps Yr13!) Fortunately no reports of casualties or damage so far.

Strong quake hits North Indonesia

In the footsteps of Shackleton

In 1908, Ernest Shackleton and his team set off to explore the Antarctic "terra incognita"... Towards the end of last year, some of their descendants embarked on an expedition to retrace Shackleton's footsteps.

There is a nice arcticle and video clips from the BBC here and their expedition is the subject of this evening's Timewatch at 8.40pm on BBC2. Will be well worth a watch for Cold Environments!