The story of the hurricane: Friday lesson for S3.

Today's lesson with s3. Wanted to describe the distribution of tropical storms and explain their formation after some group work on pecha kucha style tasks. Lesson setup is all in the picture above as I wanted to get a quick start and keep moving. Started off with the map below on the whiteboard and just established that we all knew certain places, for example, North America, Australia, India etc.

Students then had thirty seconds to look at the map and then I covered it. We used the class tools jigsaw on the whiteboard 

Students picked the next person to go and gradually edited each other's sequence until we were almost spot on in terms of the distribution of storms. I think the link here should work to the jigsaw http://www.classtools.net/widgets/jigsaw_2/Yx7Up.htm 

We then put our response into our books. No need to write for the sake of writing, we used a print as nearly every class member was involved and understanding checked as we went. 

Then had a pecha kucha input on storm formation which helped us make the link between the sea and temperatures. This brought us to our think, pair share where we actually pre-empted a lot of the picture reveal which we picked away at to build our knowledge. For example, after the temperature link was made, I could reveal part of the annotations for students books.

Finally, our plenary was again student led. They could pick the term from the lesson and the person they wanted to explain its relevance to our learning. Happy with the pace and the content as well as participation. Hope to build on this on Monday and gradually bring in pecha kucha where it supports the part of the topic, allowing prior knowledge to be built on.

Where's the place for place?

I read a blog post tonight about learning place over processes in the earlier years of secondary geography. The fact that I'm reading it on the first day of the school holidays probably tells me that I haven't switched off yet but it set me thinking. I took the atlas skills unit out of our S1 course a while ago. I used to love atlas and map work personally (and still do) but, from feedback at my previous school, the way it was delivered in a block had been one of the reasons why students weren't continuing in geography. We rewrote the unit and tried to balance individual time with interactive work, but blocking it together all added up to an emboldening of a cultural view of the subject as being just about maps. 

In developing our fourth level course for S3 at my current school, I tried to link all of the topics we cover with the national course units. Therefore, we start with coasts and all of the processes that the author of the blog post had said should really come after place knowledge has been established. We have interspersed place knowledge in other parts of our lower school courses, so I don't think we have ignored it at all. In fact, from feedback, learning about a place such as Dubai or Tokyo or an empty land often remains one of the most enjoyable parts of students learning because it is the backdrop for all sorts of geographical themes but all within the context of an  alluring place. When we separate this out to teach about 'coasts' or 'glaciation', even when case studies are included, there is much more of a turn off from the students. Indeed, they find the processes repetitive and coasts is most definitely the least popular of all of the topics we cover in S3. Conversely, the over- emphasis on the exam that CfE was supposed to tackle but hasn't is precisely the reason that some of the same students by the end of S5 have it as a 'banker'. It's one of the topics where rote learning wins every time. 

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, from experience, the best learning and the most satisfying episodes of our students time in geography seems to be when we DON'T try to create big blocks of content, including how we teach about place, that separate rather than link learning and that, as a subject, we lose relevance if we make the content more important than the context. This is something I think I and other teachers can be guilty of, particularly in relation to physical topics. I'll state clearly that this is not a criticism of the blog I read as the author was at pains to explain how he links place content to the current, just a reflection on how and why I see myself going in the opposite direction. 

All the world is just a cake

Another fantastic example of what free choice can bring to the classroom. Two first year groups with an independent choice of topic, some controlled research  in class and then the choice of how they wished to present their learning produced some really outstanding efforts and took over our lessons by teaching each other over the last two periods. Well done, 1W and 1F.

Drops in the ocean

Today, we switched the focus of the elective class to the sciences and, in my opinion, our far too understated links with all three. This is a potentially rich vein of engagement that I think we as geographers frequently miss out on. Our subject lends itself so well to many of the practical elements of the sciences and students frequently tell me that they enjoy science "because of the experiments". We have built this learning through experiment and experience into part of the elective and focused on oceans today, using climate change as the context to discuss ocean acidification. There are already some fantastic resources available through the Catlin Arctic Survey and Digital Explorer which we used for the basis for today's activities. We also employed the S3 experiment write up structure that is used in Biology after discussion with my colleague, Mrs Morrison. 

I was confident in teaching part of this theme but wanted to make sure I wasn't teaching bad science, so I invited a colleague, Mr McDermott, to see if we could co-op on this. It's fair to say that we were both delighted with the outcomes. The students conducted experiments comparing carbonated water to still water, using 'sea' water and fresh water which they then carbonated themselves through straws, comparing PH change rate over time and prepared for next week, where we will look at being ocean detectives, followed by a look at ocean currents and how meltwater might influence energy distribution. The student engagement was first class, the learning was pretty much all through enquiry, the context (something that Mr McDermott stressed the importance of in our later conversation) was real and the results were not uniform. This led to anomalies and the realisation that unexpected results are not always wrong results, as long as they can be explained or improved. The concept of oceans as a carbon store was explored, but the real eye opener for me came after the lesson.

When we discussed the lesson from each others subject background, Mr McDermott and I actually learned quite a lot from each. For example, I now know that temperature increase diminishes the ability to absorb CO2 and can therefore link this to skewed results but, most importantly, the increasing acidification of oceans in polar regions. This also led us to discuss methane locked in the seabed and how increasing temperatures are likely to release it which, again, links back to climate change and greenhouse gases. This was hopefully a lesson which students enjoyed and has given me another angle to teach it from when we build on the prior learning next week. I was also sent a link by Jamie Buchanan Dunlop on twitter to this (

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/07/arctic-threat-ocean-acidification) which brings a marine biology element to the climate change and when we discuss oceanic circulation as part of the theme, there are ties with physics.  This is a small step towards proper interdisciplinary learning, a drop in the ocean to use an obvious pun, but the possibilities for its expansion seem very real if this is an accurate snapshot of the outcomes.

The Bill Boyd mini epic

A friend of mine, Bill Boyd, is a literacy adviser. His twitter page (@literacyadviser, funnily enough) and blog are always a good source of ideas for encouraging the development of literacy skills across the curriculum. I remember Bill talking about a 50 word 'mini-epic' that he used to employ when teaching where students had to write on a given topic using the exact word count, no more, no less. I've used the same thing recently with a new rotation of S2 students that I've been seeing since the start of May. It's excellent for encouraging kids to summarise rather than perform a straight lift from a source. Here are some examples of their work. It also leads perfectly on to the mentos experiment we look at next.

Forgotten, but not gone :-)

One of the perils of my job since I became PT three years ago this June is that I spend more of my time dealing with bits of paper which gives me less time to blog. As such, it can be frustrating, as for much of the time in that role, I see some great things or have a trigger for some nice ideas which I would like to share but don't get the time to. Plus, there are always the occupational hazards like trips to Arran, shown in the photograph taken today ;-) I wanted to share something we are developing for the coming year as I am genuinely excited about it and, for me, illustrates a lot of what the new curriculum in Scotland could be.

We have been given the opportunity to develop and deliver an S3 skills elective. Effectively, this is a blank canvas and, while I will share the outline of what we have so far, I would love to hear from any readers with further suggestions for activities which might work in conjunction with ours. We have decided to focus on skills and content which allow clear interdisciplinary learning to be facilitated and have (probably rather cheekily) titled it 'We rule the school'.

The elective involves three main themes and, if they work well, I would plan to bring some of them in to our core courses, particularly in the lower school where there is a lot of flexibility over content. The first of our three themes is primarily focused on developing literacy skills and is, unsurprisingly, being called Writing the Earth. We are using a purchase of digimap to help with this and have borrowed some ideas by Alan Parkinson and, for a later lesson elsewhere, Paula Owens. We probably don't use Ordnance Survey maps as often as we used to since developing our new courses, so this is also a good way to incorporate key mapping skills into students learning as well as an element of numeracy. Some of the activities include a persuasive writing exercise where students have to compete against one another for 'square of the year' using a randomly selected grid square and elaborating on the limited map evidence to make a convincing case for their 'brilliant' locations. We are also using the resource as a prompt for film locations and scripting. Finally, we are hoping to use the O.S. to inspire grid square poetry. I am hoping to set up a wiki to showcase student work and will credit properly where the ideas arrived from there (I have no idea how to hyperlink from my phone). Outwith mapping, anyone who is a regular reader will know that I like a good story and I think this would be an ideal place to resurrect the very successful river stories of two years ago where students wrote and recorded a first person account from a river from its youthful upper course to its old age (estuary). For all of this, we have liaised with the English department and are looking to assess literacy skills in a uniform way that students will recognise from their time in that subject.

The second theme is something we have called Experimental Geography. Here, we have linked with the sciences. I am currently speaking with a Chemistry colleague who already uses similar tectonics experiments as us and, hopefully, this will be something which compliments rather than repeats learning elsewhere in the school. We are using several experiments on pressure, weather, renewable energy, growing stalactites, ocean energy transfers, earth forces and biodiversity to enhance our status as a science subject as well as a social one. I really value the practical experiences as it contextualises learning for the students and provides a 'wow' factor at times. We plan to have students write up experiments to analyse their findings and become better at problem solving e.g. If it didn't work well, why? What would have improved the result? What influenced the result? The beauty of this is that it should make geographical field work and the use of hypotheses much easier if students continue with Geography in the upper school. 

The final theme is Artful Geography and involves some exciting collaboration with both Design and Technology and Art. We have already started an activity where we have been looking at abstract art and comparing to the patterns on maps (this was the Paula Owens idea). This will result in student produced mosaics or collages which mimic the patterns on maps which use shape, colour and line, will require students to become more familiar with the symbols on the maps and draw on advice from the Art department with regards the best way to create the piece of art. This also requires students to work on scaling up their compositions and will require disciplined team working. A side benefit has been the suggestion by my colleague in art that we can also dovetail with her photography elective by using landscape and photograph composition which involves some joint tuition. With my colleague in Design, we have also managed to come together to create an opportunity to use design skills learned in S2 using specialist software to bring to life sustainable building designs related to Noel Jenkins' excellent 'Designing for Dubai' exercise. This will also develop our role in global citizenship delivery and will allow students the opportunity to use digital mapping through Google Earth to provide a suitable site and situation for their designs, as well as again utilising problem solving.

I would love to hear any suggestions for further extension of these themes, particularly in terms of practical activities that you may have used which would fit. When we have had our first run through by November, I'd be happy to share a fully resourced scheme of work too. The short timescale has meant thinking on our feet a little, but I am really delighted at the shape it has taken and hope to be sharing some of the results here soon.

Mentos and mini cookers: Accidental IDL

I was reflecting on Friday after work about the day just gone and what we had tried to do with classes. At the time, I hadn't realised just how much some of the learning was linking with other parts of the curriculum and just how much interdisciplinary learning was taking place. Here is a quick summary of some of the lessons to exemplify that.

S1: The class were feeding back on a microclimate investigation we had conducted the previous period. We had used the school grounds to find the perfect site for a solar cooker to be used ( difficult in Scotland, I know) and I thought it would be a nice extension of the exercise to actually give the students the opportunity to make their own solar cookers using the instructions at the RGS website ( which isn't working properly tonight or I'd have included the link). I was surprised and delighted to find out that several students had already started or, in some cases, actually finished making these. We will try these when the weather is suitable. After discussing this with the PT of Physics, it seems this sits between an S1 topic looking at renewable energy and an S2 topic examining infrared radiation, so we made that link in class too. From this microclimate starting point, we discussed comparison of climate at a larger scale and used climate graph construction to take this a step further. Within the two lessons, we have included health and well being (fieldwork and personal responsibility while working with others), science, numeracy and geography!

S2: This period was all about volcanoes as the messy picture below shows! I had asked the class to do a little homework as preparation for the lesson, borrowing Bill Boyd's 50 word mini epic idea ( Bill can be found at http://www.literacyadviser.wordpress.com ). This was all about summarising why some volcanoes are more explosive than others. The students had to include the words effusive, explosive, eruption and a named example of both an effusive volcanic eruption and an explosive one. They had to do this in exactly 50 words, no more and no less. This proved really useful as it meant students had to effectively summarise the often quite technical sources that they were finding when they searched the Internet. By limiting what could be written, it made copy and paste almost impossible without it sounding ridiculous and meant students also had to look for different ways to express something. It also meant that students who wanted to take an easy way out by writing very little still had to find 50 words! The discussion we had before the main learning activity proved that students had a good grasp of what I had asked them to learn about and was invaluable in the next part of the lesson which included the well known Mentos experiment which allowed me to bring viscosity and dissolved gases into the discussion without it being totally alien to what the students already knew. Literacy and Chemistry covered!

In other lessons, we dealt with more numeracy themes ( using development indicators with S3 to compare countries) and citizenship issues ( using the Rwandan genocide as a backdrop to forced migration with Higher). It was quite a hectic day in and out of the classroom but, looking back, actually provides us with evidence of how we are working as a department which links up learning in a positive way.

Wee reminder to me

This is a template of what I would like to do with S3 for their end of unit presentations comparing development of nations. From the choice of Kenya, India and Brazil, students must compare one other country to the United Kingdom. The presentations can be completed using the following methods:

- PowerPoint
- Prezi http://www.prezi.com
- a Flickr slideshow http://www.flickr.com
- Movie (windows for presentation or narrated)
- An infographic
- A poster

The important element of the presentation is the content and the geographical skills exhibited. For skills purposes, there should be evidence of these key skills:

- The use of maps to support comparisons. For example, it may be that a student feels that the physical geography of Kenya has impacted greatly on development and they could compare climate, resources, relief and vegetation to the UK. Students may wish to use other types of specialised maps, such as those found at Worldmapper http://sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/ or the 3D visualisations of the CIA world Factbook at http://www.kmlfactbook.org/#&db=ciafb&table=2002&col=2008& . Students should use at least one map for comparison purposes. The map should be titled and referred to within the presentation.

- The use of development indicators to compare levels of development. Students should use at least 3 indicators of development with at least one economic and one social indicator. This may overlap with the mapping if using something like the kml Factbook. Students should explain the advantages and disadvantages of using these indicators for comparison. It may be useful to look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/int/geog/health/development/economic/index.shtml as well as the resources used in class when preparing this. Useful sites include http://www.gapminder.org and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ , both of which the class have already used.

- Students may present information in a variety of ways e.g. Graphs, tables, proportional symbols on maps etc

For the content, students must include the details below:

1) A comparison of the location of the two countries
2) A comparison of the physical and human factors which influence each country's development
3) A comparison of development data (this is where the maps, indicators and presentation skills are most likely to be used)
4) A detailed explanation of at least one way in which the development 'gap' could be narrowed e.g. Aid and how effective this might be

I think this is a bit ambitious and it's needing to be put into language that's a bit less threatening for the kids, but my laptop is not playing and this is really just a memo for me for tomorrow

Carousel Country Comparison

Apologies for the alliteration in the title, but the alternative post header was even more of a mouthful, a consequence of trying to turn my brain on too late. I'm hoping to use a carousel activity to highlight some of the difficulties in comparing levels of development between countries with my S3 groups. I was thinking back to a successful homework exercise that I used a wee while ago now at my previous school. I've included the Country A/ Country B image below (or above, depending on the way this post comes out) and it's actually the same country in both examples, DR Congo. I'm going to ask students to post their answers to the questions within it on the wall and collect and reflect at the end of the activity.

In the second activity, I'm going to have a number of atlases available. I want the students to really start exploring the full range of information available within it - socio-economic, physical etc and will ask them to consider Kenya, India and Brazil and, using only the atlas, determine which country is likely to be the most developed. This also covers a key curricular outcome using maps and specialised maps.

Thirdly, I want to have an indicators mix and match, where I'll be using the CIA world factbook information on the same three countries and asking students to allocate the figures to the correct location. This should be quite challenging as we have really just covered what we mean by development and why some countries are more developed than others (briefly) but we have already looked at some population indicators. It means that students will also have to think about what the indicators mean before they have been properly explained. However, I still intend to include as part of this task a response to which figures are most meaningful in telling us how developed the countries are and why. This is something we can obviously then use later.

Finally, I'm going to appropriate the old Make Poverty History banner and add the word 'by' to it and give the students some time to add their own suggestions as to how countries can improve standard of living/quality of life within India, Kenya and Brazil based on what they have learned from the previous tasks. The solutions must be realistic and, where possible, cost effective. All of this will then feed in to a homework task where students will compare the United Kingdom and one of the three focus countries by examining development indicators, physical and human factors influencing the level of development in each and possible strategies to narrow the development gap. This will then be brought together at the end of the unit mirroring one of the National 4/5 style of assessments where students will present orally on their comparison. I feel like we are over-assessing at present in S3, which goes against the ethos of the new curriculum a little, so we are really using this for practice and familiarisation rather than potential level setting for S4. Most importantly, students here are getting the opportunity to explore their task beforehand, draw their own conclusions and air their own opinions which will hopefully all make the final task a little bit easier. Any feedback greatly appreciated and any potential to develop the task would be considered, it's all a little rough just now. That's a lot of words and a few too many requests for the first blog in ages ;-)

Colorado Monopoly

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A wee game I'm trying with Higher Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

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Colorado monopoly

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A wee game I tried with Higher...

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Forgetting about everywhere

Over the last couple of days, I've been reminded of the wonders of Google Earth. I periodically forget about this magnificent tool; I suppose its a bit like a favourite food which you gorge yourself on, overdo, then get a craving for! We are currently looking at the Colorado River and its management with Higher. It's my second year teaching this topic and the first, if I'm honest, was something of a plough through an army of PowerPoints. It kind of killed enthusiasm. As a 'hook', as my colleague @Davie_marsh called it, we 'took' the class to the Grand Canyon on Wednesday.
Enabling the 3D building layer, we started at the skywalk, which we were able to experience first hand through the YouTube clips. It allowed us to get a feel for the landscape - the steep relief, the lack of vegetation, the depth of the canyons, the remote location and the arid conditions. This all stemmed from a decision making exercise where one of our group had wanted to flood the Grand Canyon. Using the GE stimulus, we managed to successfully debate the rights and wrongs of this proposal, using other incorporated tools such as the ruler to give an idea of scale.
We were just about erring on the side of not flooding the area when we switched location to the Hoover Dam. This was instantly recognisable, but the knowledge of the surrounding area was understandably less well defined. We were able to establish that this location had a much narrower canyon to dam and there were audible notes of surprise at the scale of Lake Mead behind it. The students were able to draw many conclusions on their own about the location of multi purpose dams before completing a sorting exercise. In terms of a plenary/ starter, we came back to this today via a pre picked location near Yuma, Arizona and established what we could about the suitability of the location before also deciding what the streetview and 3D modelling didn't tell us about the location. This has effectively covered a 10 to 14 mark part of the exam through critical thinking rather than bludgeoning by text and took probably the same time or less to complete.
Coming back to the title, my temporary colleague, Mr Collins, who is with us for a few weeks leading up to Christmas was very taken by the possibilities offered by Google Earth. He related it to his own school experience of detachment from the area that he was studying in Geography because of a lack of familiarity. Today, he recognised the wow factor that I sometimes forget about with Google Earth. We have the power to show students anywhere in the world within the four walls of the classroom. What a marvelous gift to have.

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Coastal Poetry by Oliver, 3F

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An excellent account of the formation of caves, arches and stacks. The student chose to present this way himself, as the rest of the class were presenting via Dear John letters, an idea unashamedly pinched from David Rogers

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Tweeting the elements

Many thanks to all of my twitter helpers for tweeting your weather conditions last week. This is just a very quick update on how S1 used them for their learning. We were trying to learn about weather elements and then use these in our descriptions of the weather (in the style of a forecast). Taking the tweets, we created a mindmap with the elements of temperature, precipitation, cloud etc and connected these to the vocabulary people had used to describe them. From this, we then looked at Troon weather for Friday, both observing the weather and using the met forecast. Students were then asked to compose a tweet which successfully described the weather through as many of the elements as possible in 140 characters. We are going to share some of these on the @marrgeog twitter account with the tag #1Fweather. Finally, we are using the collected responses from your weather tweets to build place knowledge, create a mock British Isles forecast for that day (we saved the satellite image and forecast) and, from this, start to explore reasons for differences in the weather by location. Once again, thank you for helping the class learn about weather through real contexts.

Sea wall of learning

This was the homework I gave one of my S3 classes in the first period I met them for our coasts topic. Students had categorized their coast brainstorm into physical features, human features and conflicts. I asked the class to either take or source one photograph as an example of each. We are currently collecting the responses and putting these on to our 'sea wall' at the back of the class which will occasionally become the front as students are invited to identify some of the relevant lesson points throughout the weeks from their own image. For example, we will soon be covering features of erosion and this will be a perfect post it plenary to spot what they have been learning about in class. An easy way to make a homework feed into the work the class will do rather than always reviewing what they have done.

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Sandpit responses

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Just some students findings from the coastal simulator I blogged about at http://geodonn.blogspot.com yesterday. This was from this mornings class, my room is a riot. Anyone spot longshore drift, beach erosion, swash and backwash?

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In Situ exploration

Just a quick recount of part of today's Higher lesson. I was at a Google education conference at the weekend and it served as such a good reminder of some of the simple things that can be done in class just to make learning more relevant. We were doing weathering, often not the most instant or interesting part of the lithosphere topic, and had already discussed types of weathering. I had been wondering where to go next with this to keep motivation and something Neil Winton had said at the weekend resonated with regards to getting students own devices into lessons and learning activities. This is something I used to be quite good at, but had lost confidence with a little.
Consequently, we had fifteen minutes of impromptu investigation today around the school grounds looking for evidence of the 3 types of weathering, biological, physical and chemical, recorded by photograph on mobiles with students free to move around and find their own examples. By the end of the lesson, I had managed to visit every working pair, check their evidence of comprehension via the photos and attempt to deal with any problems with the content. This isn't a major breakthrough in pedagogy, but its a nice way to evidence learning and was a toe in the water again for myself in terms of mobile learning.

Secondary Sandpits

Don Ledingham asked on twitter recently for examples of play type learning in the secondary setting. We had just finalised a coasts unit which involved a coastal simulator seen below. This lesson built on a previous word association task where students were mapping their existing knowledge of coasts and coastal vocabulary. This is a brief review of the lesson (it could be much lengthier and messier!).
I fleshed out an idea I had found for using sand trays to simulate coasts. The paint roller trays were ideal as they had variable depth and we could build beaches on the raised platform and water filled to meet the sand - matching our self defined idea of a coast as being where the sea meets the land. Students were encouraged to try some of the following; aim 'waves' straight at the sand, angle the waves, change the intensity of the wave, place natural obstructions in the simulator and see what happens (rock boxes were supplied), change the type of rock used, try placing man made objects on our coastlines and see their impact etc. I was very clear that I wasn't looking for a definitive answer to anything, but I did want students to observe and record their findings before trying to link to actual coastal landscapes.
Some observations would be that a few students struggled with the independent nature of the task, not in terms of focus, but in terms of outcomes. That said, the engagement in the activity was first class from all, including the non subject specialist support teacher! Some students asked really searching questions and others made very astute observations. For example, although no one named it, several were able to describe what is effectively longshore drift, as well as noting how it banked sand in some areas but removed from others. Interestingly, although it hadn't been suggested, several students tried building sea walls and one a protective harbour and one group recognised that their construction would, in real scenarios, impact on areas further down a coastline.
We tried to give the activity some endpoint via the recording, but I'm not sure that this is the most valuable aspect of the activity. The freedom allowed students to just try things their own way, experiment and probably make some different conclusions from mine, but some similar ones which they will ultimately keep from a memorable lesson. I've no doubt that it was useful, even if some of the outcomes were less expected and I think there is a lot to be said for just making the lesson enjoyable. There are so many pieces and links we can pick up from this in future lessons, even if the learning was messy, with a different structure and an unusual way to explore the new topic.

Composition for Place

This is a short post to recap on a very useful day that some of our S2 students spent with Colliers Green Focus. Some time ago, after discussions with an English colleague, Angus Willson, and members of my department, I applied to the organization for their 'compact' input, which would get us a half day with a geographer (Gyles) and photographer (Richard) in the local area exploring a sense of place. The remainder of the day would involve each student selecting their 5 favourite photographs from the day for entry into a national competition. Potentially, our students work could be displayed in a London gallery with some individual rewards possible.
The elements of the day that I really enjoyed most were as follows:
1) There was almost complete freedom in terms of the focus. We had talked to students beforehand about considering contrasts; physical landscapes v human - the coastal location made this ideal - old v new etc. These themes, to a greater or lesser degree, allowed students some hook for the composition of their photographs. Our rough departmental ideas for routes are shown on the image in the post.
2) It was an excellent cross curricular project. The aspect of composition was explained to students before the field exercise and permeated everything they did - even to the point where some students had to be gently moved away from staged shots. The whole time, the idea of 'place' was at the centre of what we did. We have already firmed up plans with the art department on the back of the day for a sustainable project in the lower school, possibly using students own devices.
3) It was paper free! This is one of the first fieldwork exercises I've been involved in where the method of recording results was one which enthused and motivated pupils. 30 camera for 2 and a half hours and no lulls.
4) It developed confidence. Some students found praise for a talent they did not know they had, beyond photographs on Facebook for their friends. It was interesting being an accidental eavesdropper into discussions about framing a scene, as well as the growing interest in the competition as the day progressed. It is partly for this reason that we want to develop this as a department in terms of our fieldwork commitment. The 'mobile' package allows schools to run this themselves and still enter the competition. Hopefully, we have something concrete from this year to make this 'real' in future students eyes as it became in Thursday's group.
5) It's free! An absolute gift in the time of CfE, wider achievement and the problem of shrinking school budgets. I would encourage more of my Scottish (or any other UK schools) to get involved with the project. It's a win win.

Aidan journeys to the centre of the earth

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Creative revision of the 2008 Brendan Foster film to make the fantasy more factual, if that makes sense. Well done, Aidan. Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

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