The MEATRIX

Mr Johnstone has been taking you through the Post-War Agricultural Revolution this week in class. Check out the link below to view The MEATRIX a series of award winning (and hilarious)cartoons that take one extreme view of industrial farming.

http://www.themeatrix.com/

Edge Cities USA

As promised in class I have uploaded the details regarding Tyson's Corner on the edge of Washington DC to the blog. Don't forget to take a look at Google Earth and in particular Los Angeles. Once you navigated to the down town area click in the bottom left hand menu to create 3D buildings. You will see the marked change in building height from the frame of the CBD into the core. Then type in "Century City" into the search box and you will find yourself taken to another great example of an edge city. A search in google images for Century City Los Angeles will give you a greta idea of what the place looks like.

Follow the link below tot he edge city power point.

http://www.slideshare.net/michaelbryce

Higher Inner City Issues

I tried this last year as a revision exercise with my GCSE set. Listen to this classic from Tracy Chapman and see if you can identify some of the issues of life in the inner city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orv_F2HV4gk&feature=related

If you want a closer look at the lyrics for "Fast Car" follow the link below.

http://www.lyrics007.com/Tracy%20Chapman%20Lyrics/Fast%20Car%20Lyrics.html

Undergraduate Study and Careers with Geography

I came across these pages within the Royal Geographical Society's website. If you are interested in studying geography at university then there is some good advice here.

http://studygeography.rgs.org/

GCSE River Processes (Fourths)

There are loads of great sites out there with links to the sorts of animations that can really help with understanding. For several years Wycombe High School has had a brilliant geography website which they encourage others to use. Use the link posted below to go to thier River Processes Animation links.
http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupRenderCustomPage.asp?GroupID=12426&ResourceId=60796

GCSE Geography/Careers trip to the TUN

One of our Geography GCSE classes was invited along to the Tun on Holyrood Road last week. John Shepherd who was instrumental in the development of the building, and has strong links to the school, set up a series of excellent talks with those institutions that work in the building. John took us a on very informative walk around the Holyrood site and was able to illustrate some of the planning issues and considerations in the area. He then gave us an excellent briefing on the development of the site of the Tun itself before taking us around the various organisations that work there on a day to day basis. We met the British Council, the BBC, The General Medical Council and The European Commission. By the end of our visit all the boys involved had a better idea on the many different careers involved in such a large development project as well as an insight into a range of working environments and organisations. On top of all that we were able to squeeze in some quality geography on changes to the inner city of Edinburgh.

A Level Central Place Theory

I was trawling through the web and came across this powerpoint regarding CPT. The slides at the start and finish aren't really linked to what we have been doing but the ones in the middle of the presentation show how the various 'levels' of the hierarchy stack up.

http://piru.alexandria.ucsb.edu/collections/sweeney/urban_geography/Centralplacetheory.ppt#289,1,Slide 1

GCSE Prelim Revision.

As promised I have added the slideshow that I intend to show to the Fifths on Friday to the blog. I'm hoping a click on the link below will take you to the web pages where the slideshow can be viewed again. (!!!!!!!)

http://www.slideshare.net/michaelbryce

GCSE Revision

All the 5ths at the school will be in the SLT on Friday during PSD to start the planning process for their prelims after the christmas break. I've been trying to update the presentation and have spotted some great new developments on the BBC Bitesize web site.
If you go to the link below you will see near the top right hand side of the web page a section on revision maps. This facility allows you to draw on-line mind maps. It is pretty straight forward when you get the hang of it. Give it a go......

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/

GCSE Development Indicators

We have been talking about development this week at GCSE and in particular the Human Development Index. The link below will take you to the United Nations site where the each country is ranked in order according to their HDI rating.

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/

If you enjoyed the animations then try them for yourself at;

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/data/

You will have to scroll down the page to the sub-heading "Human development in animation" to find them.

Inner City Housing - Higher

We were looking earlier in the week at Inner City housing in both Scotland and England. I made the point that the opening credits for "Coronation Street" give us some of the most familiar images of what that sort of housing looks like south of the border. Look at the three clips below and see how many of the key characteristics you can spot. One clip is much older than the other two. Can you identify what has changed as time goes on?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUcjy3WG-Rg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyO3hIblBwg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdwBIxBQOkA

Shift Happens

One reason I decided to start this blog was because of a recent conference I attended. At the conference I picked up a few tips on blogging and it was suggested I look at the video "Shift Happens" by Karl Fisch. Check it out for yourself and see whether you think teaching methods need to change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q