David Rogers

Apologies for putting this here rather than the TM wiki , but the storage limit has been reached there! Following the success of TeachMeet #GAConf16   , we are proud to present the 2017 TeachMeet Proudly Sponsored by: Exact location to be confirmed but will be at the University of Surrey, Guildford. Followed by informal networking and the famous #beermeet This is a free event open to all - no need to be a conference delegate. The GA Annual Conference takes place from Thursday 20th - Saturday 22nd April. Further details can be found on the  GA Website A TeachMeet is an informal gathering of like-minded teachers coming together to present to, and learn from one another's classroom practice including practical innovations and personal insights in teaching. Participants volunteer to demonstrate good practice they've delivered over the past year, or discuss a product that enhances classroom practice. TeachMeet events are open to all ...

The latest edition of the Geographical Association’s Magazine is available to members for download today .  One of the articles was written by my colleague Jo Debens (@GeoDebs ).  I asked her to provide a summary of the article for this blog.  The project is up for a European Innovative Education Award later in the year. If you would like to read the article in full, grab a copy of the GA Magazine, or come along to our lecture at the GA Annual Conference in April. Space Explorers : Space Creators My name is Jo Debens and I am a Geography Teacher at Priory School Specialist Sports College in Portsmouth. This is a large city comprehensive school on a difficult site and was one of the many schools destined for the ill-fated Building Schools for the Future project. The original aims of this project were to enable and empower young people at Priory School by developing their confidence with communication, to increase their understanding of spaces, and to use student vo...

April each year is time for the Geographical Association’s Annual Conference. At 2010’s conference in Derby, The Geography Collective launched Mission:Explore: And I was involved in a number of workshops and a Mission:Explore field visit . The conference is always a great opportunity to catch up with the Geography community and there is usually a great buzz. This year the event will be just up the road, and I’m going to use this post to highlight a number of workshops, lectures and events that are of interest. This is quite scary for me, as I usually like to see where events end up! The full programme is available to download here. I’ll also be tweeting during the conference using the #gaconf11 hastag . Thursday 14th April This is the pre-conference event. The main focus is a think-tank style meeting of Geography activists and members of the GA.  I’m very much looking forward though to the free Public Lecture which is being given by Mike Parker, the author of Map Addi...

I have been involved with the Geographical Association’s Secondary Phase Committee for for a few years now.  Last week I was delighted to be asked by the committee to act as the Chair of the group. The Geographical Association is a subject association that supports primary and secondary geography teachers through a range of CPD, publications, advice and events.  The Secondary Phase Committee is a diverse mix of geography experts who take part in a wide range of activities. Our common features are our passion for learning, geography and sense of humour. Delivering workshops at the Association’s Annual Conference. In 2010 these included: The Geography Swap Shop and Putting Geography Back on the Map . Putting Geography back on the map View more presentations from David Rogers . Creating simple and accessible ‘Top Tips’ for a range of geography teaching issues.  These can be downloaded for free here . Monitor the views, interests, concerns a...

The last project that I finished was for Philip Allan.  The idea of the Managing Local Fieldwork pack is that it supports schools in developing their school grounds for fieldwork.  This isn’t just limited to secondary school geography departments as I’ve tried to make as much as I could relevant to other contexts. I do enjoy working on book projects as it gives me the chance to reflect upon my own practice.  This project builds upon the work of the GA’s Secondary Phase Committee (and especially Emma Johns) during the Manchester Conference a well as my own in developing an programme of outdoor learning. The pack contains a CD ROM full of presentation, reading and video material. I’m pleased that the editors allowed me to omit the presentation slide note pages. There is also a full course script and a book to help with presentation skills (not written by myself) I will be talking about developing fieldwork using the school grounds and local area at the Scottis...

I woke up this morning from a nice email from the folks over at slidehare . Turns out that their Education editorial team decided to spotlight the presentation given at the GA Conference last week. Sweet :-) You can view the presentation below, and the blog post that went along with it is here . I Want To Break Free View more presentations from David Rogers .

Great to see from Alan that the GA Conference already has a hashtag #gaconf10. I am just beginning to think about what I'm up to at the conference, and I hope to see some of you there! One of last year's highlights was sharing the biggest naan in the world with, amongst others, Rich Allaway and the SPC Committee. I was involved in a number of sessions last year, including a workshop on different ways to use textbooks , Dan Raven-Ellison's Urban Earth session and the SPC's Doorstep Geography session coordinated by SPC member Emma. This year I will be avoiding the barn again! Thursday 8th April Association at Work - a chance for the working groups to think about, er, stuff Public Lecture, this year delivered by Richard Waite of ESRI(UK) The Marston's Brewery tour, with some bangers and mash and a chance to catch up with a few people. Friday 9th April Putting geography back on the map - a workshop presented by the SPC where I will be sharing some of the experience...

The Spring Issue of GA Magazine is out and available to GA members. In this issue the new Editorial Collective are introduced to readers. I'm really excited that I will be one of the Collective, and I'm very much looking forward to working on the publication. Below is am extract and my call for great ideas. The GA Magazine should be a hot bed of sharing practice - so if you have something to share it would be great to hear from you! Just ignore the shameful hair do in the picture ;-) A big hello! I’m a dad, family member, learner, geographer, outdoor adventurer, Welshman and teacher. My enthusiasm for geography was ignited by growing up in the coal mining valleys of South Wales. The subject explained the painful process of industrial decline that my family and friends lived through. This passion was nurtured by an excellent teacher during my secondary school years in Carmarthen. I was hooked, and not only because of the field trips. When not cuddling my son, hanging from a ...

Received an email from the lovely people at the GA Office confirming my appointment to the GA Magazine's editorial collective. I will have some input into the Summer 2010 issue and am looking forward to getting stuck in!

The Textbooks: everyone's guilty pleasure workshop is now available as 10 handy YouTube clips. The idea was to provide a resource that can be used for CPD. Here's my favorite clip: And also tip 2 that talks about Twitter The others can be found on the Folens website . Make sure you watch in High Quality to be able to see the slides.

What a week so far! Will get around to updating a number of blogs and conference posts tonight. In the meantime, here are the handout notes for the textbook workshop. The notes details about the ideas and the pages used to illustrate the ideas. The video will be available soon! The handout is available here

Had the honour of introducing Dan Raven-Ellison’ s lecture plus on his Urban Earth project. I’ve known Dan for a few years now and never fail to be enthused by his energy and vision. I like the way in which he challenges the way we think. In his talk Dan communicated the purposes of Urban Earth very well. On reflection, there are many classroom uses for Dan’s work that I can think of. Some of these I have used. 1. Show the videos in class. The discussion about the how and why provides rich learning opportunities. For example, what is the objective of the film? How was it made and why were those techniques chosen? What are the limitations and strengths of this method? Could you design something better? 2. Plan and undertake Urban Earth walks around the school grounds or local city, village or rural space. One of the features of the walks is the engagement in familiar, and unfamiliar surroundings. For example, I tracked the evidence of Christmas during the Bristol walk. I found that (on...

Thought I'd share a couple of the excellent ways in which my iPhone was employed at the GA Conference. Beer o'clock I received an email from Richard Allaway at the end of day 1. I'd earlier met Richard for the first time. As you can see Rich's email contained a link to this: The pin was the location in which Rich and some other colleagues were enjoying a post-conference ale. Needless to say I was able to use the map to join the others. What a great use of Google Maps, the iPhone and the GPS capabilities of the phone.

Professor Stuart Lane gave an interesting lecture on climate change. Certainly called in to question how this subject is taught in schools. A main point through the talk focused around using current events to illustrate the effects of climate change. If I think about it, this is a common method of communicating the possible effects of climate change to young people. However, the danger of doing this is that the events are often part of a more complex pattern, and nothing to do with climate change. I was also interested in the language used. For example, 'possible' all indicating that it is very difficult to find 100% consensus on the subject. Another interesting point was that those members of society that work the land have a better understanding of the changes happening. The majority of us are insulated from the effects of climate change and only really see the extreme events. The danger in using events to illustrate climate change was illustrated by using the following examp...

Not long finished delivering the textbooks workshop. Seemed to go down well. The main thrust was that textbooks are not the creation of all evil. Rather, especially if learners are to develop into creative independent thinkers, we need to use textbooks in new ways. Creative use of textbooks can improve pupils' media literacy and make life a little bit easier for teachers. Textbooks Everyones Guilty Pleasure Workshop View more presentations from geogrocks .

In the spirit of using my own geographical experiences here's a lesson linking to climate change. The aim of the lesson is to consider the evidence for climate change. To allow pupils to develop critical evaluation skills as they watch parts of An Inconvenient Truth. I tell them that I am a death-defying stuntman shortly after saying that the world is without a doubt getting warmer. 'Yeah right, we want proof!' they all shout. So, I set about proving the point with this: There's the proof that their teacher is a death-defying stuntman. What do you mean no??? Reinforce the point. We then have a look at the proof presented by Al Gore for climate change - with some nice pauses to ask 'Is this convincing?'. Pupils group the evidence into 'I'm convinced' and "I need more information'. The idea that science is not always black and white, especially when it come to climate change, is a vital point to make to pupils. This PPT links the parts togethe...

I love Groundhog Day - what a film! Was watching it on my way home from the conference yesterday when an idea materialised. Tested the idea out today as Year 9 are exploring Climate Change. Linked to Ruth's Living Geography session - how should we be tackling climate change in the classroom? If you were stuck in your own 'Groundhog Day' what would you do differently? To be more sustainable? To experience more risk? What would you prepare for and how? Lots of possibilities and positive feedback from pupils and staff. Will be followed up by linking to Copenhagen 2009 . If our politicians commit us to an 80% reduction your like will have to change. If you had today again what would you do to help out country meet its commitment? Lots of links to Citizenship and moral responsibility. Why is 2009 a critical year ?

Great GA conference yesterday. Living Geography is all about keeping the subject alive, dynamic, linked to young people. Loads of great ideas came from the day, and I'll post about them as they are worked up for use in the department. Staff think I'm nuts, but there we go!

A big thank you to all those who have taken part in the survey. I would ideally like the opinion of some non-specialist teachers of geography. If you have some in your department, faculty or school I would be grateful if you directed them to the survey here .

In preparation for a GA conference workshop I'm collecting some information. It would be great if you could spend a couple of minutes completing a short survey. The survey can be found here .