David Rogers

During the Autumn Term, Year 7 spend their time exploring ‘Amazing Places.’  Lessons focus on the distinctiveness of places around the world.  The Spring Term concentrates on ‘Our Places' staring with the school and local area.  This is a brief description of an enquiry lesson that explores the similarities of places. Priory Geography has access to the flat roof on top of our 3 story main building, built around 1890.  As we are an urban site, the school is surrounded on all sides by some of the highest density housing in the UK. The lesson starts by considering the Urban Earth video below.  The class are challenged to identify distinctive features of the city. We use this video as it is unfamiliar to our students.  Of course, the general consensus is that there isn’t anything in Bristol (based on the video evidence).  This is used to suggest that most urban places in the UK are mostly similar.   This feature allows geographers to m...

Yesterday was Urban Tweet Day . The tweets, from a number of countries can be seen here . Look out for news from Urban Earth. Below are some of the highlights from my urban walk yesterday. No collection till 2004 http://twitpic.com/xd44j #utday The imperial red of a post box stands proud and distinct from the monotonous White #utday Urbanites head to the last bastion of civilisation: tea and cake ;) #utday http://twitpic.com/xcwkf Icecream weather? #utday http://twitpic.com/xcwy7

Some readers will know about my involvement with the Geography Collective . We are a band of academics, teachers, artists and Guerrilla Geographers with a common aim to encourage (young) people to see the world in different ways. There are many exciting projects coming up this year, including the launch of MISSION:EXPLORE and the Journey Journal . I would encourage all educators, parents and those involved with young people to look at these resources. Keep reading for details of more exciting developments. Anyway, one of the projects that Geography Collective members have been involved with is Urban Earth. This Saturday is Urban Tweet Day: If you enjoy looking at the world differently then this project is for you! URBAN TWEET DAY is a side project of URBAN EARTH. TWEET DAY is about tweeting what you see, hear, smell and sense in and around your urban world. Find something (un)interesting? Share it with us... The idea is to record our perspective on our urban lives and habitat throu...

This is the first lesson of the Our Place unit. The unit is being taught to Year 7 pupils during Geography Lessons. I intend to write about this unit as it progresses, highlighting the links between it and the collaborative document set up to facilitate the unit's development. The learning objectives will be to: Identify characteristics that set different places apart. Work as a team to collect, present and interpret information Understand that different groups of people will have different perspectives about differentplaces The lesson presentation is embedded below: What Makes A Place Distinctive View more presentations from David Rogers . The first activities link into the previous sequence of learning where Year 7 explored various geographical concepts through a range of amazing places. We will then move on to consider what makes urban areas distinctive. I will be showing the Urban Earth video below. This is for the following reasons: I took part in the...

Urban Earth Day 1 from David Rogers on Vimeo . Enjoying the half term rain at the moment and just about to head out to prepare my bike for the South Downs Way. Getting distracted at the moment by the Discovery Channel. Sunday saw the first of 24 hour long walks. Part of an Urban earth project. The walks will build up into a picture of urban areas. As I had been invited to a BBQ at the potential-in-laws we decided to walk from the flat. A few things stuck me during the walk: How easy it was to get into a really rural feeling area dispite being surrounded by suburbia. There was a real urban adventure feel to some areas How British people love stripping off at the first sign of sun! I wonder if the pilgrimage to the seafront reflects the lack of space in our urban areas? How very very quiet suburbia is. Sunday afternoon, lots of BBQ smells but the only real sounds being birdsong and bees. Away from the seafront we saw no one! A very cool den, lots of improvised bike jumps and de...

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...

Interesting and useful way of presenting ecological footprint information: