The future in the past

Categories: Urban, s1 and s2, Geography General, Writing and Assessment

I am really enjoying reading boingboing, which has loads of unusual stories often of vague relevance, but occassionally of some importance to themes you are studying in class. I really liked a couple of the items posted over the last two days. One is a 35 year time lapse video of the Shinjuku skyline in Tokyo. I think this is a fantastic way to show the rapid post-war urban change, not only in Japan but in many Western countries, a process now being repeated in many cities in ELDC's. The other is an excellent link to a video from 1967 showing a vision of the future and the part that computers would play in our lives. 40 years on, the accuracy is startling. The clip forecasts online shopping and finances, although it would be interesting to see if you could separate the truth from fiction regarding some of the relationships portrayed.

I particularly liked this idea of a dependence on computers as I have introduced my Higher class to a task where they are creating and assessing their own revision podcasts. I have toyed with the idea of podcasting before, but have now opened an account with switchpod for easy hosting and subscription (I hope), and we are going to work on these over the next couple of weeks, now that I've relocated audacity on the PC's.More on Higher in a minute.

I (think I) managed to show AH Spearman's rank today, and tomorrow, we'll do a little more practise along with scattergraphs. s1 will be using Google Earth on the Whiteboard for height on maps after some battleships last period, while I hope to wrap up coasts of erosion with Higher after a brief interlude to talk about an adapted homework task with weblinks. Maybe turn the sound down and get a discussion going round about this video from GATM as we move on. Finally got to use that 'Back to the Future' pic...