If you walked in a straight line around the world, where would you pass?

Categories: Population, s1 and s2, Advanced Higher

In the past couple of days, there have been items posted on sites I visit which do a far better job than I of providing pros of the One Child Policy. If we were to compare China with India, an interesting exercise would be to outline some of the ways in which India has tried to control a burgeoning population - public education campaigns, contraception, sterilisations and voting rights in states being tied to population growth. Which is more likely to be successful? Which more humane? A little debate about this in class, starting with comparing growth and structure. I'd then like to use parts of two articles. The first is about India, brought to my attention by Ian Murray on sln and a harrowing read. The second is about China, found through Osocio, and in it's own visual way, as powerful as the last article. I'd like to give the class some time to digest both of these before asking students to formulate their own responses about the success or otherwise of China's population policy.

On less serious matters, I was looking at a resource which I will probably use as a period starter with s1 tomorrow. If you travelled in a straight line from the school, depending on the direction we went, where would you pass through? This map helps and can be opened in Google Earth too. I've also started collecting vocaroos in our world tour, some of the results here. If you are listening back, I'd advise that the volume is low. My fault, I forgot to suggest that students kept back from the mic a bit :-( This is really just some personal reflections on places that students have visited or would like to visit, and is a means of a) me trialling this and more importantly b) creating maps which show personal geographies and have some meaning for the class. I am pleased with the exercise so far and will continue to add more.

I'm in the middle of Tony Cassidy's Lost in Translation exercise with s2. It reminded me that the last time I taught this, I used a Tokyo webcam early in the morning as it'll be 6 at night in Tokyo. Providing it's not filtered, I'll try to do the same again tomorrow morning. Got some maga drawings from one pupil and looking for more tomorrow from another. If we have time, more Unzen stories will be recorded too.

Finally, Advanced Higher. I haven't quite decided how I'll use it yet, but I'm sure I could get some kind of mapping/ GMT exercise out of the London profiler and the data it holds. This and the direction link are all courtesy of googlemapsmania.