So back Online, and I received an email from Teachers TV(as you may have also) ...( http://www.teachers.tv/ ) Which is quite helpful, also some other useful websites which I was adviced to have a look at was TES.. (http://www.tes.co.uk/) Tes also has a selection of lesson plans and ideas.
http://radar.weather.gov/ - a great tool for looking at weather and land in a series of layers. (topography/rivers/highways)
http://geography.about.com/library/blank/blxindex.htm a great website for "outline" maps of Countries and Continents
Another good one to play around with is: http://www.mapbuilder.net/
you can select locations and add text to each location and then link it in to a web page.. and maybe use it as online virtual travel blog...
Visitor Locations
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Cast Away
Well.. My second blog...
After overcoming data loss, corrupt files and 15.4GB of "old windows" software, I now have a new operating system up and running... and my lap top back...
I have officially served my time working at the "worlds local" bank and I actually feel like I have my geography head back on, so I've been reading books and buying books. I have now started to make my way through the "secondary geography handbook", which I'm quite enjoying. I like the concept and idea's of using media coupled with today's entertainment and news stories as a medium of teaching.
Last night sky anytime failed to provide me with a decent selection of movies to watch, so I browsed through my planner and for the first time in my life I watched "Cast Away". Practically everyone in my world has already watched this film, So I apologise for my re-enactment of the scenes..... it excited me... here's just a few things that got my little geography brain ticking...
The use of a Transnational National Corporation, FedEx. I firstly liked the irony that "Chuck" is from Memphis, TN. Also the home of FedEx. Coupled with the constant use of Elvis' songs throughout the film. Also later in the film even the smallest most remote island in the world is "touched" by a TNC, when the FedEx parcels begin washing up on shore. Globalisation. In the film it also draw connotations to the FedEx slogan: "the world on time". At the start when Chuck races to Moscow, he also sends an egg timer through the mail to see how long it takes to get to one side of the world to the other. This can be paralleled to how connected the modern/western world is today, that it brings global to local within a matter of hours. It also shows how much western world relies on this network of quick supply of produce and information.
When Chuck awakes on the shoreline of what I would describe as paradise, he is left to fend for himself.
Its almost like he regresses from the "modern man" and reverts back to a Hominid. Chuck has to work out how to obtain food and shelter, work out how to construct tools with the limited resources he has.
Drawing on early human/hominid life, I also thought it was interesting how the only things he drawn on the walls of the cave, (where he slept) were the things he had with him, things he could see. Kind of like the way our "Ancestors" drawn things that they could see and know. Chuck also kept a record of the seasons and tides on the wall of the cave, by using the location of a speck of light that beamed through the rock. Kind of the same way Stonehenge was used to map the summer solstice.
Chuck was quite an ill equipt individual. He was constantly getting himself hurt, as a consequence whenever he was ill or injured he had to become his own doctor, and operate on himself. I thought this could be paralleled to people in less economically developed countries, where people have limited to access to health care, and where it does exist it is substandard. This however is not only true of the LEDC's, for example when Chuck was pulling out his infected tooth using an unsterilized metal blade.
It can be quite common for people in MEDC's (E.g America) where healh care is paid for by the individual and not the state. Many people cannot afford their health care, and decide to take matters into their own hands, performing their own surgical procedures to save money. This can have disastrous consequences in both LEDC's and MEDC's.
I also thought it was interesting that when the walls of an old "porta-loo" are washed a shore, chuck automatically finds a use for this seemingly piece of rubbish. It reminded me or seeing shanty towns in the Colombian barrios, where people will find scrap corrugated metal and plastic, sometimes cardboard, and use them as the roofs and walls of their home. Chuck effectively recycles this piece of plastic and re-uses and a sail on wooden raft. Ones mans rubbish is another mans gold.
There are several other nuggets of information that I can baffle on about.. But I feel I have done enough for now. I think what I've learnt from reading "Balderstone" is that Geography can be effectively portrayed in a varity of mediums, espcially Film(s) Like this one, and extracting relative bits of information to suit your topic at the time.
After overcoming data loss, corrupt files and 15.4GB of "old windows" software, I now have a new operating system up and running... and my lap top back...
I have officially served my time working at the "worlds local" bank and I actually feel like I have my geography head back on, so I've been reading books and buying books. I have now started to make my way through the "secondary geography handbook", which I'm quite enjoying. I like the concept and idea's of using media coupled with today's entertainment and news stories as a medium of teaching.
Last night sky anytime failed to provide me with a decent selection of movies to watch, so I browsed through my planner and for the first time in my life I watched "Cast Away". Practically everyone in my world has already watched this film, So I apologise for my re-enactment of the scenes..... it excited me... here's just a few things that got my little geography brain ticking...
The use of a Transnational National Corporation, FedEx. I firstly liked the irony that "Chuck" is from Memphis, TN. Also the home of FedEx. Coupled with the constant use of Elvis' songs throughout the film. Also later in the film even the smallest most remote island in the world is "touched" by a TNC, when the FedEx parcels begin washing up on shore. Globalisation. In the film it also draw connotations to the FedEx slogan: "the world on time". At the start when Chuck races to Moscow, he also sends an egg timer through the mail to see how long it takes to get to one side of the world to the other. This can be paralleled to how connected the modern/western world is today, that it brings global to local within a matter of hours. It also shows how much western world relies on this network of quick supply of produce and information.
When Chuck awakes on the shoreline of what I would describe as paradise, he is left to fend for himself.
Its almost like he regresses from the "modern man" and reverts back to a Hominid. Chuck has to work out how to obtain food and shelter, work out how to construct tools with the limited resources he has.
Drawing on early human/hominid life, I also thought it was interesting how the only things he drawn on the walls of the cave, (where he slept) were the things he had with him, things he could see. Kind of like the way our "Ancestors" drawn things that they could see and know. Chuck also kept a record of the seasons and tides on the wall of the cave, by using the location of a speck of light that beamed through the rock. Kind of the same way Stonehenge was used to map the summer solstice.
Chuck was quite an ill equipt individual. He was constantly getting himself hurt, as a consequence whenever he was ill or injured he had to become his own doctor, and operate on himself. I thought this could be paralleled to people in less economically developed countries, where people have limited to access to health care, and where it does exist it is substandard. This however is not only true of the LEDC's, for example when Chuck was pulling out his infected tooth using an unsterilized metal blade.
It can be quite common for people in MEDC's (E.g America) where healh care is paid for by the individual and not the state. Many people cannot afford their health care, and decide to take matters into their own hands, performing their own surgical procedures to save money. This can have disastrous consequences in both LEDC's and MEDC's.
I also thought it was interesting that when the walls of an old "porta-loo" are washed a shore, chuck automatically finds a use for this seemingly piece of rubbish. It reminded me or seeing shanty towns in the Colombian barrios, where people will find scrap corrugated metal and plastic, sometimes cardboard, and use them as the roofs and walls of their home. Chuck effectively recycles this piece of plastic and re-uses and a sail on wooden raft. Ones mans rubbish is another mans gold.
There are several other nuggets of information that I can baffle on about.. But I feel I have done enough for now. I think what I've learnt from reading "Balderstone" is that Geography can be effectively portrayed in a varity of mediums, espcially Film(s) Like this one, and extracting relative bits of information to suit your topic at the time.
Monday, 9 August 2010
Blog1:
I have no idea what's going on with this "blogger" thing... I believe I have set it up correctly.... :s
However I cannot for the life of me, figure out how to "find" people.. I clicked on the "follow" tab.. . Thinking and hoping it might be like twitter, hoping that I could search for a name/url/email address of someone and then be presented with the option to "follow them"... turned out I just ended up following myself... If that's possible.. :S so my one follower, is me.. lol....! I'm currently scouring my iPhone to try and find an app for this blogger... It might make it easier for me to understand... lol... Right now, I think I'm going to find myself a self help video for this program on YouTube, before I even contemplate cracking on with the Geography... I maybe procrastinating a little, or just trying to delay the fact/realisation that there are aspects of geography out there, which I'm not that great at, and yes I will have to admit that to people(s).... So after my self help video( or video's however many I need ) , I will scan over the sheet, and pick some areas I'm not too comfortable with....
night for now
I have no idea what's going on with this "blogger" thing... I believe I have set it up correctly.... :s
However I cannot for the life of me, figure out how to "find" people.. I clicked on the "follow" tab.. . Thinking and hoping it might be like twitter, hoping that I could search for a name/url/email address of someone and then be presented with the option to "follow them"... turned out I just ended up following myself... If that's possible.. :S so my one follower, is me.. lol....! I'm currently scouring my iPhone to try and find an app for this blogger... It might make it easier for me to understand... lol... Right now, I think I'm going to find myself a self help video for this program on YouTube, before I even contemplate cracking on with the Geography... I maybe procrastinating a little, or just trying to delay the fact/realisation that there are aspects of geography out there, which I'm not that great at, and yes I will have to admit that to people(s).... So after my self help video( or video's however many I need ) , I will scan over the sheet, and pick some areas I'm not too comfortable with....
night for now
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