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Spent a day this week in the Peak District, visited Peak Cavern.

Conducted velocity measurements using flow meters.

And mourned damage to the most inappropriate fieldwork bag ever.

Talking of fieldwork, picked up on a tip off from Alan Parkinson about the Enhancing Fieldwork Blog.

I did some online INSET about my use of technology via Google Talk to another school in Derbyshire. A first for me, sat at home in the backroom. I didn’t really do it justice, it was hard to speak about ideas without the visual prompts available and it was hard to strike up a dialogue. I hope some of the colleagues took at least one idea away. I have to say thanks to the Year 10 ICT leaders, who managed my session, without them it would have been a massive mess!

We finished and dispatched our sample for the controlled assessment for the CEA Geography Spec. Thanks to Graeme Eyre for writing three posts concerning the specification, derived from a recent support meeting for English centres.

Congratulations to David Rogers who’s Long Shore Drift video won one of the prizes on the Dream Teachers video competition.

Had a request about a crime scheme I wrote nearly eight years ago, and lead me to rediscover Geointeractive.

Also said a goodbye to one of my education mentors who retired this week, enjoy the rest Mr Warrington, a true gentleman. I shall never forget my interview grilling.

After what seems an endless term, I’m off to have a rest. Happy Easter.

Census dropped through the door and completed it online…

A good Geography FM meet this week, discussed a range of issues including achievement, revision and mobile policies. A replay can be found here. Do join us for the next one. Great website from Noel Jenkins- listening to Los Angeles -considering how to get this into a lesson.

Spent part of the weekend preparing some resources about the development of the Olympic site in Newham for CCEA GCSE spec, I’m now less a fan of the 2012 games. Nearly finished the course though…

Of course, the major breaking stories was about the Japanese tsunami. Spent much of Friday watching the live feeds and answering questions. I think the images said enough. Some interesting screenshots from the QuakeZone IPhone app.

Huge cluster of tectonic activity on the day.

Magnitude of the foreshocks and aftershocks were quite intimidating.

Lots of geographical thinking going on from various geography colleagues about how to respond to such an event. great collation of a range of ideas from Alan Parkinson. I think it’s a little too early to get to grips with the huge implications of the disaster, but will be showing the BBC Japanese news special as an overview. Considering an emotional response to the event using a 100 word challenge, simple but effective technique.

We have links with Toyota schools in Japan, I hope all our connections are safe and well at this challenging time.

Loved this find by Terry on the SLN forum. Great little starter which I’m going to use as an introduction to a revision of fronts.

Also posted a response to a mobile policy review that is being conducted at my place of work on my personal pages, any response would be grateful.

Sorted our 19th Geography Flash Meet on the 10th of March, all are welcome to join us.

One area I had success with last week was looking at the Christchurch earthquake. I like the idea of floating topicality, it makes students realise that geography is a living subject. I do struggle though  with developing an appropriate response to such a recent tragic event. For Key Stage 4 it was a useful revision of plate tectonics, for Key Stage 3 I used a little strategy I picked up from Ian Murray. I first shows a clip in of the quake aftermath from the BBC, then explained the tectonic theory. I then read eyewitness accounts from the BBC website, as students actively drew what came into their minds.

It was interesting to see how students responded in a variety of ways, from artistic representations…

To storyboard accounts…

To images with associated quotes…

It was interesting then to discuss why they had drawn such responses and what key themes ran through the class set of images.

Also signed up for the RSS feed of a new Alan Parkinson blog about supporting geography teachers. Should be good… no pressure

A task comparing the global nature of the X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing TV franchises. I’ve produced this as a homework/cover task- nothing special, but may save someone time.

Now found a home for my pirate resources on R.G. that don’t fit presently under the thematic organisation.

I’ve produced a lesson about piracy which has been in the news recently again, which might come in handy for a one off topical lesson. Nothing special- I thought the topic was just inherently fascinating.

[slideshare id=1292437&doc=piracy-090415040055-phpapp02]

The PowerPoint can be downloaded here (1.5 mb) and the associated task sheets here (1.8 mb).

In my world piracy comes over as privacy so let me know if any mistakes need amending.

The G.A. now has a new Ning to help collaboration…

Sadly, no nice badge. I like collecting those…

This is a great step forward, but I do worry about whether in the future we may have too many rooms to speak in…

Someone once quoted that at me via email when they were upset by arrival of the now defunct Geography forum, how times change.

I still think that School History Forum is the best model of practice.

Interesting result of Google rolling out its street-view capability.

Google Earth captures drunken man passing out on kerb – mirror.co.uk

He may look like a junior geography master, but Miliband has gone nuclear | Mail Online

Oh dear… interesting quote

He may look and sound like a junior geography master at a run- down prep school for dim and idle boys — or is that unkind to geography teachers?

I think the answer may be yes…

Interesting Geography news aggregator on My Space, features some posts from here. Thanks Alan.