David Rogers

No idea where the time is going at the moment so my posts here are slipping a little! Just thought I'd give a little update - detailed posts to follow. The image above was taken during a trip to North Wales and reminds me that without support I'm nothing. Whether it be the support of my family, friends, colleagues or of a great big ice axe! I've been struggling against what seems an unstoppable tide of anti-learning at the moment, so thank you just for being there. Anyhow, this month I will mainly be: Supporting BBC School Report Taking part in an innovative workshop put together by members of The Geography Collective Helping to launch a new book - MISSION:EXPLORE Delivering twilight training for making cross-curricular links Marking coursework (the last batch ever?) Preparing for, and attending the European Innovative Teachers Forum in Berlin Getting ready for the annual GA Conference (I'll be bringing some 80's style with me ;) Teaching and helping develop train...

What a month! a whole 4 and a bit weeks away from a computer, out of mobile reception most of the time and usually without basic facilities. I spent the first two weeks touring parts of Europe and some of the photos can be found on my Flickr photostream . This included visits to the mental fountain in Geneva and a journey into a glacier. Then, for some reason, I spent some time wild camping in Scotland. I plan to use some of the images to illustrate how most of our small island is used by people - even when it's taken 2 days to walk to where you are. A project to document the whole journey was foiled by the appalling weather. The final weekend was spent taking part in the 3peaks challenge. For anyone not familiar with this challenge details can be found here. e were a small independent team that took all possible steps to reduce our impact. Turning up at Wasdale Head at midnight was challenging as we had to keep the noise to a minimum. I'm pleased that I managed to get the view...

Well it's been a quite few weeks for me as far as blogging goes. Things on the work front though have been manic! I hope that you all had a good new year and Christmas period and are sorting out your feelings on the pay deal announced today! I'm now two weeks int my new post of Curriculum Leader - Geography, although I don't have the official badge yet! As well as getting on top of my classes (some of which I have done through the employment of an ice axe and crampons!) there is a massive amount to do! I particularly enjoyed my first week without any technology! The rolling blackboard came down very soon to b replaced with a simple whiteboard and the projector turned up shortly afterwards. The next trick is to convince the rest of the department that using ICT is easy, necessary and fun! A great resource at the school is that I have access to the roof. This looks over the who of Portsmouth and will be great for (very) local fieldwork! The site also provides an ideal locatio...

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...

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...

Well a lot has happened since my last proper post. Please excuse the last one - a result of showing a colleague how easy it was to post something on a blog - should have demonstrated how to easy it is to post something really useful on a blog! Well, I'm in front of this computer now and it's time to catch up, hopefully tonight I'll give an update of what's been going on over the past couple of weeks and get Day 1 of South Africa published. Anyhow, the fine looking chap above is St David the patron saint of Wales. Being Welsh and sharing his birthday, last Thursday was an interesting day. Not least because my 5 year old niece now thinks I actually am St David! Before that it was to La Rossiere for a skiing trip. The snow and weather where both great, although Year 11 say that the resulting tan looks like it comes from a bottle! Oh well, I suppose I'm worth it. Anyhow - better get back to the task in hand - apologies for few up0dates at the moment this is really due...

Where is the time going? I've not been able to post much this week as there is so much going on! However, I am off to South Africa on Friday to work on setting up curriculum links with a school out there. I hope to post more detail about our objectives later today. While away I am going to try using the PCS Blogs ( GCSE and KS3 ) to set cover work and monitor how well the classes are doing by getting them to post a comment at the end of each class - I feel a headache coming on! The picture is of me getting hands-on with a fire hose as part of the Fire Safety Course run by Firefighters at Portchester Fir Station. The course is coming to its conclusion and I must say a huge thank you to Andy Earl and Geoff Baker for their excellent instruction! Apart from that there's then the skiing to look forward to (a holiday at last - one day I'm actually going to just sit on a beach!). Together with getting job applications together it's been crazy. My Carbon Footprint this ye...