David Rogers

What is the point of education?  It's a deep question I know. Is it to impart facts and pass exams, or is there something deeper?  I often see teachers grappling with the facts and bare bones of a topic , without delving deeper.  Geographers are a classic example: examinining case studies from around the world without exploring the wider context of the country.  Such learning is merely the tip of the iceburg. Of course, it's not our fault.  The examination system has always been focused upon facts and knowledge recall (no, it's not really a new Gove invention) and there is limited time and so much content.... What can we do to encourage young people to fall in love with the places, people, problems and passions that we explore in our institutions?  Wouldn't setting learning within a wider context actually assist in the recall of knowledge?

I have always found exploring the concept of a sense of place difficult. The National Curriculum demands that young people use their geographical imaginations and build upon their own personal experiences. In addition, this lesson equipped the young people with a strong vocabulary to use when describing places so there are links to literacy. I should add, that this is a parallel group to the one talked about in the Our Place series of posts. Secret Geographies View more presentations from David Rogers . The lesson has been inspired by Noel Jenkins' Flickr photostream . We started by watching a slideshow of this set . Pupils wrote down adjectives. I was stunned by the response, for example: 'dank, dark, dusty, musty, drips, water.' The images were also excellent for spotting evidence from photographs- an important geographical skills. Most of the class thought that this was a place for children and had been bombed. Not bad when the only information they had to go on wa...

There are a number of items in my RSS reader that are just for fun. I've added another today thanks to a post on John Howarth' s blog. He included an image from the Gaping Void site. On further investigation, I came acorss this image: This gave me an idea for a lesson. As Geographers, we should be challenging stereotypes. However, I don't think that we should be making assumptions on the stereotypes our students hold. To avoid stereotyping stereotypes ;-) I created the map below using an OS map outline that a freely available . I have to point out that my annotation are tongue in cheek and no offense was meant ;-) For example, the Midlands are 'Blurry' as I most often see them form the M6 on my way to either the Lake District, Snowdonia or Scotland. This is also a useful activity for exploring and building upon pupil's own experiences of geography. On my return to the classroom, I'll be using this method with classes in order to explore stereotypes and pup...

At the weekend I had the idea of putting together a collaborative unit of work centered around the geographical concept of Place . There was a fantastic response, especially from Primary Colleagues. The outline Scheme of Work can be found here as a Google Document . There are some great ideas, and others that I will need to add from SLN , Blog and Twitter comments. I will update the document on the train to London on Saturday. The request to add outline ideas seemed to work well. This has created a 'toolkit' of ideas that can be developed further. Some contributers linked to existing work which is also very handy. I think that the document is best used as a selection box (or a tin of Roses): take what you like and what will work in your particular context. It certainly isn't a one-stop-shop. I hope that colleagues will continue to add ideas . I'm not too happy with the layout as I think it may restrict contributers to a particular mode of thinking. I have also r...

This post reminded me of a documentary series a while back. Combined with Dan's work , Noel's ideas and a ' travel guide ' I'm thinking of putting together a mini unit based on places that don't exist. I'm hoping that the main outcome will be the creation of more places that don't exist. For example: how many of the places and spaces that young people inhabit and interact with don't exist for us? How many spaces don't exist for pupils? The staff room? The Head's Office? The dining table? This unit could really explore personal geographies. Based on some neogeography could we make maps of places that don't exist in our local city? If we layered different people's maps where would be the overlaps? What would happen if we expanded the map to include a county, region, country..... Could we compare the maps of different nationalities, ethnic background, age, social class...... This could well be a can'o'worms.....

1.1 Place Understanding the physical and human characteristics of real places. Developing ‘geographical imaginations’ of places. Taken from here . Just got back from a short ride on the MTB and avoiding packing away the tents for next weekend. The clip above will form a lesson idea designed to explore Year 7's geographical imaginations. Place as the National Curriculum sees it looks like this: From this it is clear that pupils should explore different places and interpret their imaginations of place as well as other peoples. Essentially, exploring places. But how can we communicate geographical imaginations? The youtube video is one of my favorite parts of Cool Runnings . I like this as it links to the Olympics and one of the main characters says something that I very strongly believe in: 'I didn't come all this way to forget who I am and where I come from'. How would we like to remember Portsmouth if we moved away? What images will we remember in 10 years time? Below i...