As Belgian as Chocolate?

Categories: Industry, s1 and s2

We are on a very tight schedule with Industry. Basically, we have to know factors affecting industrial location, reasons for the growth and decline of an industrial area and re-industrialisation strategies by Wednesday! To start off tomorrow, I'm thinking three things- a Belgian brainstorm, Google Earth Charleroi and atlases. It would be interesting to start the period with an association-type activity round the class. I'm guessing that it will be more chocolate, beer and tintin (or maybe that's me showing my age and tastes) than coal mines and foundries that people know, or think they know about Belgium. I'd like to then fly into Charleroi using Google Earth and introduce the Sambre-Meuse area through it. I once did this in reality and then took a train through Belgium to the Netherlands for a football match. I couldn't believe the difference from what I'd thought Belgium would be like in my minds eye and what it appeared like from the train window. Google Earth with the panoramio layer will allow us to get to know the area a little better, but I'm going to use this in dribs and drabs. After a brief intro to the area in terms of its situation, I want us to consider 'Why here?' for industry- why anywhere? What did industries require in the past, what do they look for now? A quick bit of mind mapping and then onto the atlases- a five minute task to find how Charleroi fits with these requirements. Some help from GE at this point, a summary using the same tool and then a recap slide to round things off. This map might come in handy too when talking about reasons for the growth of industry.

s2 started some work on Dubai on Thursday, and I was quite impressed by the knowledge the class had about this location-some much more than me! We completed a diamond 9 exercise from this set of resources on the GA's website towards the end of the lesson and students are now going to design their own sustainable building. I think I'll create an incentive here for this activity, with three prizes for the top three entries. I've posted the details of the activity, to be completed for homework, on edmodo.