David Rogers

Well, the new half term has arrived with a vengeance! On Friday I head off to Goa. You may remember that the young enterprise team I mentored: S.O.N. ,won the Linvoy Primus Enterprise Challenge. Their prize is a trip to Goa. I am really looking forward to the trip as the boys will be making some of their own videos, one of which will be uploaded to a new website that I am looking into. More on that on my return! I also hope to really use what I learnt on the recent Google Earth training to create resources that can be used with the rest of the school! The visit is being facilitated by missionaries in Goa and will include visits to orphanages and villages. Indeed, the team is required to provide a meal for an entire village out of their own funds. Anyway, last week it was a trip to Paris. Here's a little mystery. What does this represent? A few clues. A hunchback could have been found very close. The underground looks like this. Anyway, I'm going to continue to download some ne...

Many Hampshire schools are compressing their Key Stage 3's at the moment. This shrt article was published in the Autumn Hampshire Secondary Newsletter.

Wow! It must be half term and I must have lots of time on my hands to keep posting at this rate! Just remembered about this resource found in the Independent a couple of weeks ago. As those of you who know me I believe that it is time to move away from looking at the 'science' of global warming: the greenhouse effect. I believe that young people are so bombarded by the media about this subject that they a) already know much (although there are misconceptions that we need to challenge) and b) are getting bored of this topic taught in the same old ways. Indeed a student recently commented to me that all he seems to learn about these days is climate change and global warming across the curriculum. I've started to audit the coverage of the topic across the curriculum. Apologies if this is old hat but I try to focus on the huge range of impacts that climate change will bring. For example, how can we prepare for sea level change when no one really know how much the sea will rise?...

A few more of the photos from my Alpine trip as I've just been reading about this story to extend a mountain! Nuts..... Huge terminal morraine showing glacier retreat. Poor shot out of the cable car! Th small little electric vehicles for getting around Saas Fee and Zermatt Klien Matterhorn - the moutnatin they plan to extend! August skiing here! Getting ready for some ice climbing.

The Hampshire / Western Cape is gathering momentum which is great. I've put together a short Google Earth tour of our recent Year 10 coastal field trip. The tour is basic at the moment but I think the potential for using GE in enabling international (and national) links between schools is huge. I'm going to aim to create a tour showing the local area around our school and the main geographical issues that our students care about. One barrier to using this technology is training. I hope that I will be able to train staff in all partner schools. This would enable us to communicate via GE as well as sharing information on the local area.

Following on from a recent idea by Dan , I remembered all about this book that I swapped at a YHA this year. Based on this idea I've used extracts from this book with classes during a Tourism unit - they had to prove the country doesn't exist for homework. The idea then led onto the class producing their own tourist guides of a made up place. Very funny in parts!

Well what a week it has been! To save putting lots of different posts here I've condensed it into one! Saturday (14th Oct) The GA SPC meeting at the Institute of Education . Very productive meeting and I'll be helping other members to deliver a workshop at the GA Conference. Then off to the London Eye! First time on this beast and thanks to Airmiles free! Monday This saw me at the RGS in London on a Google Earth course. I have to admit that I still under use this excellent teaching resource and am pleased that I have the skills now to really explore GE. I'll be putting together some Virtual Tours to start but hope to use the programme to follow the Tour of Geography and my planned journey to Kazakhstan in the summer..... Tuesday I spent Tuesday at Priory School in Portsmouth on interview. I'm pleased to say that I was appointed Curriculum Leader - Geography and am very much looking forward to the challenge in Jan! Wednesday - Friday I was reminded how hard life is as a...

These posts are becoming like buses! Forgot to include this snap taken on the Mattmark reservoir near Saas Grund. Makes a great starter photo ! And yes that's me on top - just don't ask how I got down but shortly after this was taken I was knee deep in a glacial river with another boulder pinning my leg down! Ouch! I have hundreds of photos and videos of the area and am happy to upload them to Flickr under the SLN group if there is demand. All I need to know is what type of photos would you like to see? Leave a comment and I'll do my best!

I was lucky enough to head along to the Area 4 CDG meeting yesterday afternoon. This is a forum of geographers (mainly Heads of Geography). The main discussion points were the compressed curriculum and the new 14-19 curriculum. I think that as geographers we need to move our focus away from the logistics of 'how are we going to get our pupils from school A to B' and whether these qualifications are a good idea and to 'Where does Geography make a contribution?' I am told that the new outline schemes are available on line and I've made a commitment to look at these in order to identify where Geography can make a contribution. I think that this is an opportunity to be pro-active. We would be going to Heads and telling them where specialist geography input would ensure that young people have the highest quality teaching and learning. We must remember that it even at full tilt the new diplomas will only be followed by 40-50% of pupils. By being proactive we can ensure th...

Eating lunch just below the summit of Breithorn Well - I must still be running on Alaskan time or something as it has taken me ages to get around to writing this post. The main barrier has been that I am unable to upload photos to blogger from home! 'Ecole de Glace' day one of training on a 'dry' glacier. You can see the crevasses. The following day we were lowered into a 'wet' crevasse and had to rescue ourselves! In August myself and a friend drove down to Saas Grund in Switzerland. The aim was to complete an alpine mountaineering course with Alpine Guides . This is an excellent company with their own blog that is very useful for teaching about Alpine environments. I am really pleased that we managed to climb 2 4000m + peaks, the Alalinhorn and the Breithorn and 3 3000m+ peaks including a rather hairy via ferrata! Leading the way over a 'wet' glacier toward the Breithorn - a real tourist motorway Alpine style. A fairly wide snow ridge on the way to su...

Well it's taken a while but there is now a dedicated blog set up for the Hampshire - Western Cape link. http://hantswcapegeog.blogspot.com/ The link is between Brookfield School and my own school and is very much in its infancy. I would appreciate any comments people have on the idea. I'm hoping that the project will gain some real momentum now and eventually lead to a dedicated website forming a wiki. This will act as a resource for all schools in the partnership including Primaries!

An student used this clip http://www.4shared.com/dir/4162535/5bcb85b9/Random.html when delivering a presentation on the effects of hurricanes yesterday.