Monday, July 30, 2012

Geographers coming together



Image: Brisbane from the air.

Related sites to the Spatialworlds project
Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au

Where am I??
Brisbane, Australia: S: 27º 29' E: 153º 08'

GTAQ Conference, July 28th, 2012 in Brisbane

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Geography Teachers Association of Queensland (GTAQ) Conference in Brisbane.   The GTAQ conference was a fantastic event thanks to the hard work of conference convenor Rebecca Nicholas and the GTAQ team.  Of special note was the increase in number at the conference.  Hopefully this is an indicator of change and a taste of things to come as the Australian Currciulum: Geography rolls out in 2013.  As always there were some links of interest from the conference - here are just some of them.

* Presentations on the Australian Curriculum: Geography and Geographical Thinking


These are my presentations on the Australian Curriculum: Geography and Geographical Thinking at the GTAQ Conference at the University of Queensland. Feel free to use these presentations as you talk to staff, colleagues, family, children, teachers, students etc about this exciting development for geography in Australian schools.

World Vision has a wonderful website with plenty of great school resources on global issues, aid and development.  
This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 10 Geographies of Human Well-being unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.


 The Destination Spatial initiative, managed by SSSI and SIBA, was created to establish a central repository of spatial resources and information for people outside the industry but interested in learning more about it as a career.


 Global thinking and global action demand global understanding. This initiative by the International Geographical Union aims to bridge the awareness gap between local acts and global effects. It will achieve this aim through research, education, and information.                      


 Following the UNISPACE III conference held in Vienna, Austria in July 1999, the European and French space agencies (ESA and CNES) initiated the International Charter "Space and Major Disasters", with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) signing the Charter on 20 October 2000.

The site contains a catelog contains no data but rather metadata describing the images acquired by a range of satellites during activations of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters.

The site also contains a real time page on the latest disasters aroung the world.

* Geographies of the Olympics

Views of the World is the blog of the personal research website of Benjamin D. Hennig based at the University of Sheffield. He has mapped this and other Olympics and has much much more on his blog related to personal and innovative geographies. Some fascinating visualisations and maps of many events and phenonmena - go to the archives to view these rich resources.



Friday, July 27, 2012

A gladbag of sites for the teaching of the Australian Curriculum: Geography


Image: Sunrise over Sydney.

Citing sites


Here is an array of some interesting sites (with no theme) that have come my way over the past month.  Again I have referenced/mapped to the Australian Curriculum Geography to show how so many sites can be used for the teaching of this new geography curriculum.





A site that has a graphic (visualisation of something) a day and an archive of past graphics. Great site for visual literacy.
This site would be useful to support the learning program for all years of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
The Livehoods Project presents a new methodology for studying the dynamics, structure, and character of a city on a large scale using social media and machine learning. Using data such as tweets and check-ins, we are able to discover the hidden structures of the city with machine learning. Our techniques reveal a snap-shot of the dynamic areas that comprise the city, which we call Livehoods. Livehoods allow us to investigate and explore how people actually use the city, simultaneosly shedding light onto the factors that come together to shape the urban landscape and the social texture of city life, including municipal borders, demographics, economic development, resources, geography, and planning. Livehoods is a research project from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

This site would be useful to support the learning program in the Year 9 Interconnection unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
* Cool website
ClimaScope provides spatially explicit climate change data for 18 climate model patterns, for the new IPCC RCP scenarios, the old SRES scenarios, and specific adaptation scenarios for 2C, 3C and 4C warming.

This site would be useful to support the learning program in the Year 10 Environmental change and management unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.
* The Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) came from the concept of the balance between "Yin" and "Yang" of Tai chi in traditional Chinese wisdom.
The typhoon is a natural choice for the key feature in the logo of the HKO because members of the public always look towards the Observatory at times of typhoon. The cross at the centre symbolises the monitoring of typhoon rain bands by radar, representing round-the-clock surveillance of the weather by HKO and our target of making accurate weather forecasts. The typhoon symbol is extended laterally and fitted into an elliptic frame representing the shape of the Earth. It highlights the concept of stable equilibrium and prudency. It also alludes to geophysics and related sciences being part of the work of HKO.
Furthermore, two "S" symbols embedded in the HKO logo, a white "S" and a blue "S". They stand for "Science" and "Service" and stand for the fundamental philosophy of "Service based on Science".

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 7 Water unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
Some polling data in which people were asked what factor shaped their acceptance of climate change. Buried in the data were two apparently contradictory findings: there is a large partisan divide in acceptance of climate change, but most respondents said they base their acceptance on their personal experience of the weather. Assuming that hot weather shows no partisan bias, this doesn't make much sense—political beliefs shouldn't influence what we think about the weather. And yet they do. That's the conclusion of a new paper that dives into extensive polling data to find out how people perceive different trends in the climate.
This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 10 Environmental change and management unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

A food security index that ranks individual countries on food affordability, accessibility, availability, nutritional value and safety. An interactive site listing all the countries with supporting data.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 9 Biomes and Food Security and Year 10 Geogrpahies of Human Well-being units of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 5-10 of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.
A beautiful video able awe and wonder of the world from the BBC.
This site would be useful to support the learning program for all years of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
Schools should place a renewed focus on traditional geography field trips to stop pupils being trapped behind computer screens in the classroom, Michael Palin has warned.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for all years of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
* Anthill below the ground

This site would be useful to support the learning program for all years of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
* Fact a day

This site would be useful to support the learning program for all years of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
Design reveals silhouettes of Earth's tectonic boundaries in stunning, luminous color
This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 8 Landscape and Landform unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
For London, it’s the city’s most visible stride towards promoting greater density. And a much needed one. Although firm data for the past decade is not yet available, spatial analysis for London shows a rise in density up until the 1950s, before things then started to retreat. This decline density persisted until 2001. The same analysis shows a forecast to 2030, which shows density continuing to decline. (Given the crush on the tube, presumably few locals have felt this effect.) But the question here is whether the Shard marks a reversal at all; it certainly would within the borough it’s located, but perhaps others will instead leave to make way for the new arrivals.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 9 Shaping a Nation unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.
This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 9 Shaping a Nation unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.
This overview is the most accurate compilation of its kind and uses in-depth research results and reliable building information. It is based on data standards as outlined by the Emporis Standards committee (ESC). This listing is verified and updated continuously and includes high-rise buildings which have been topped out as well as those still under construction or on hold.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 9 Shaping a Nation unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.
* Skyscaper index

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 9 Shaping a Nation unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.
This site is a collection and comments on all kinds of intriguing maps—real, fictional, and what-if ones—and has been writing the Strange Maps blog since 2006, first on WordPress and now for Big Think. An anthology of maps from this blog was published by Penguin in 2009.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 5-10 of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.

 

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Harvesting Internet resources and mapping their use against the Australian Curriculum: Geography



Image: Office life at 6pm, Sydney CBD



Textbooks?

Harvesting Internet resources and mapping their use against the Australian Curriculum: Geography

In preparation for the introduction of the Australian Curriculum: Geography in 2013, textbook publishers are madly writing textbooks to align with the curriculum. Whilst textbooks have their place, with a 21st Century Curriculum we should consider that resourcing with current Internet sites should be the way to go. The GeogSpace resource recently introduced to Spatialworlds readers will be an excellent resource for schools to use when teaching the Australian Curriculum: Geography – and it will be free!  In fact, with the Internet there is a overwhelming plethora of free, high quality, contemporariness resources. A teacher can quite easily, with a bit of thought and time, build their geography programs around such free on-line geographically orientated sites.  Some of the sites are not created solely for education purposes but are easily translated into a learning resource for various sections of the Australian Curriculum: Geography. As I was gathering just a small selection of of these sites I found myself mentally mapping them against the content descriptions from the Australian Curriculum: Geography. For each of the sites I have made a suggestion (only a suggestion – could be many options) about what part of the Australian Curriculum: Geography the website resource could be used to develop a learning program.  For those with knowledge of the draft curriculum it would be an interesting and useful exercise to review sites showcased on previous Spatialworlds postings to see where they could be used with the Australian Curriculum: Geography. 
I must emphasise, these sites are just a random selection and are the tip of the iceberg of the free Internet resources available.  The Spatialworlds blog, as a repository of such sites, has showcased hundreds of such sites over the years and it seems to be no end to the number as new sites come on-line on a daily basis.  However, it is important to use critical literacy with such sites (who produces, is it reliable, is it biased, has it an agenda etc) - as a professional geographical educator such critiquing is in an important role we fulfil as we develop learning programs using Internet sites. 
Here are just a few sites mapped against the Australian Curriculum: Geography. Please note that the year level content identified and the names given to the units are from the draft ACARA documents and may change prior to publication.

Pupilvision is a 600 page website full of resources for pupils and teachers of geography. The website is well designed and easy to navigate and is well designed. It enables pupils to view lesson plans, homework and syllabuses; support revision; provide guidance from pupils on how to improve grades; access geography careers advice; submit homework and e-mail questions relating to homework; access a plethora of geography websites by links.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for all years of the Australian Curriculum: Geography
http://www.pupilvision.com/

GeoResources site provides weather data and outline maps to include in homework or projects, detailed case studies e.g. Kobe earthquake, UK National Parks and oil spills, Virtual Fieldwork (so that can you can visit sites and stay dry!), a photo gallery and a weekly GeoQuiz.
This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 5 and Year 7 (Water unit)   of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

TheMet Office site provides the latest information on the world's weather. It has a Curriculum Learning Centre that includes worksheets and classroom activities, leaflets to download and a "Did you know?" section. There is also a Teacher Training Centre that claims to help "to teach the curriculum effectively - in areas like the atmosphere, fronts and clouds". It also includes a bibliography and suggested essay questions.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 1, Year 5 and Year 9 (Biomes and Food Security unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) lists information under: 'Geography'; 'People'; 'Government'; 'Economy'; 'Transportation'; 'Communications' and 'Defence'. The section on Geography includes location, co-ordinates, area, land boundaries, coastline, climate, terrain, natural resources, land use, irrigated land and environment. Constantly updated this is one of the most important educational sites on the Internet.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 6, 7 (Places are for living unit) and 10 (Geographies of Human Well-being unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

NewInternationalist: Rivers is an impressive website that provides detailed information on the world's five longest rivers: Nile, Amazon, Yangtze, Ganges and the Zaire.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 8 Landscape and Landforms unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

VirtualWildlife is produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Sections include Polar Regions, Coniferous Forests, Temperate Forests, Grasslands, Tropical Forests, Mountains, Oceanic Islands, Freshwater Wetlands and Oceans. After reading a two-page description of the environment, students have the opportunity to research the wildlife from the chosen area.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 4 of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

GlobalEarthquake Response Centre provides news on the latest earthquakes.  The website includes practical advice for schools about what to do if there is an earthquake in your area and resources for those who want to teach about the subject in the classroom. The website also provides links with other 'Earthquake Information Centres' and sites that are concerned with specific earthquakes. 
This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 8 Landscape and Landforms unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

TheTornado Project gathers, compiles, and makes tornado information available to weather enthusiasts, the meteorological community and emergency management officials. The company is using its website to share some of this information with the general public.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 7 Water unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/ provides the latest information on the pollution and abuse of the earth's ocean, land, air and fresh water. This includes press releases and overviews of their current campaigns. There is also a very useful archive section that contains articles, photographs and sound recordings on global environmental issues.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 4, 5 and the Year 10 (Environmental Change and Environmental Management unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

NationalGeographic Map Machine enables the viewer to select any country in the world. The map is displayed with national flag and other factual information such as: population, capital, main religions, languages, literacy rate and life expectancy. There are also sections on the country's history and economy. The Web Machine also has collections of 'Political' and 'Physical' maps. A recent addition is 'View From Above' that shows maps of countries based on satellite photographs.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 3-10 of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Food Security Index is an interesting interactive site listing all the countries with supporting data
Video at http://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Home/Methodology

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Years 9 Biomes and Food Security unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

EarthquakeKid Zone is a website that includes a quiz, crossword puzzle, word search games (for preparedness kits for cars, earthquake terms, and tsunamis), and answers to common earthquake questions for kids.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 8 Landscape and Landforms unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Infoplease: World Statistics http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004372.html enables students to compare data from different countries. The website provides information on population, unemployment, marriage, divorce, abortion, infant mortality, life expectancy, birth-rate, ownership of household appliances, GDP, exchange-rates and contraceptive use. Also sections on Worldwide Armed Conflicts and Counties with Nuclear Weapons Capability.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 6, 9 and 10 of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Cool Planet offers information and resources to encourage young people's development as global citizens. The site contains easy-to-follow curriculum information for planning global citizenship activities using our highly regarded 'Teachers Guide to a Curriculum for Global Citizenship'.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 4, 6, 9 (Connection Geographies/Personal Geographies unit) and Year 10 (Geographies of Human Well-being unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

GeoResourcesPhoto Gallery provides digital photos to help with Geography presentations and activities etc?

This site would be useful to support the learning program for all year levels of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

US Geological Survey: Volcanoes   http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ provides information on Volcano Hazards, Location of Volcanoes, Types and Effects, Volcano Monitoring, Historical Eruptions, Warning Schemes, and Emergency Planning. There is also a weekly report of worldwide volcanic activity prepared by the USGS and the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 8 Landscapes and Landforms unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

All About Rainforests http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/rainforest/ provides a good overview of rainforests. It also includes an illustrated glossary and a list of rainforest links.
This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Years 4, 5 and 9 (Biomes and Food Security unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

NFUFarm Studies http://www.foodandfarming.org/indexb.php is a series of eight farm case studies. They all include detailed information, farm data, photographs, maps and other graphics. Being a UK, site all types of farming are covered from different areas of Scotland and England.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 9 Biomes and Food Security unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Adventure Learning Foundation http://www.questconnect.org/ is comprehensive site takes students and teachers, as virtual participants, on real and virtual expeditions around the world. Through a collection of original pictures and journal excerpts, visitors can follow in the footsteps of travellers exploring the natural environment, culture, and peoples of different continents. Past expeditions include Alaska and Yukon, Baja California, American Southwest, Southern Africa, Mexico and Peru. Each expedition is accompanied by a mixture of information, links, and classroom activities.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 2-10 of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

GeographyOpen Directory is a definitive catalog of the Web. The Open Directory was founded in the spirit of the Open Source movement, and is the only major directory that is 100% free.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for all year levels of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Country Profiles http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/default.stm from the BBC website provides key facts, figures, timelines and dates on all the world's leading countries. There is also a quick guide and timeline on NATO and a chronology of key events concerning the Vatican and the history of the Commonwealth.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 2-10 of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

InfoNatura is a source for conservation information on the birds and mammals of Latin America and the Caribbean. This website is a comprehensive source for conservation, distribution, and taxonomic information on over 5,500 common, rare, and endangered species in 44 countries and territories. InfoNatura is updated three times a year to include "new data from refined geographic surveys, the latest taxonomic treatments, and any new conservation status assessments." Future versions of the database will include amphibian and reptile data.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Years 4, 5, 9 (Biomes unit) and 10 (Environmental Change and Environmental Challenges unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

CountryStudies contains on-line versions of books previously published in hard copy by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the US Department of Army. The Country Studies Series presents a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of countries throughout the world and examines the interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 2-10 of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

CREATE http://www.create.org.uk/ stands for “The Centre for Research, Education and Training in Energy”. This not for profit education organisation promotes energy efficiency and sustainable development. There are resources to download, including teaching energy as part of the geography curriculum and a guide to energy-related topics in the National Curriculum. You can also subscribe to a free newsletter, Energy Watch.
This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 4 and 10 (Environmental Change and Environmental Management unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Geographyin the News is brand new site from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) provides free learning resources, for teachers and students, focusing on the geography in and behind the news. A forum allows teachers to review the materials, students are able to report news stories with a geographical perspective from their local areas, a bulletin board enables users to give their views on 'hot' geographical topics and there is an interview area for interaction with experts.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for all year levels of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

WorldAtlas is an outstanding website for all students of geography. As well as maps the site contains features such as country flags, current time (different countries), currency conversion (latest rates), continents (populations and sizes), map clip art, outline maps, map questions, and a daily geography quiz with prizes. There is also a list of of continents, countries, dependencies, islands, territories, lakes, rivers, seas, oceans, mountains, and the highest, lowest, biggest, smallest, tallest, deepest, oldest, youngest, richest, poorest places on the planet.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for all year levels of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Global Teenager Project http://www.iicd.org/globalteenager/ from the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) assists developing countries to realise locally owned sustainable development by harnessing the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The Global Teenager Project was launched in 1999 to bring the full potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into the classroom. In short, GTP's aim is to enhance secondary pupils' ICT skills and learning skills while increasing their understanding of other cultures by staging lively, global classroom debates in cyberspace. GTP unites secondary school pupils from all over the world in a safe, structured virtual environment, thereby helping to bridge the cultural and digital divide between the developing and developed world. So far, over 3000 pupils from 95 schools in 20 countries are taking part and the number is rising every month.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 9 Connection Geographies unit of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Global Wise http://www.wateraid.org/international/learn_zone/ is dedicated to helping people escape the stranglehold of poverty and disease caused by living without safe water and sanitation. WaterAid works in partnership with local organisations in 15 countries in Africa and Asia to help poor communities establish sustainable water supplies and latrines, close to home. WaterAid also works to influence governments’ water and sanitation policies to serve the interests of vulnerable people. The Global Wise website leads pupils through a series of activities which teach them about WaterAid water and sanitation programmes in India and Ethiopia.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Year 7 (Water) and 10 (Global Geographies of Well-Being unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

NationMaster is a website that allows users to generate graphs based on numerical data extracted from the CIA Factbook." A site making it easy to engage with the indicators that shape global commerce, health, politics and ecology.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for Years 6 and 10 (Global Geographies of Well-Being unit) of the Australian Curriculum: Geography

Global Witness http://www.globalwitness.org/ sets out to achieve real change by challenging established thinking on seemingly intractable global issues - to highlight the link between the exploitation of natural resources and human rights abuses, particularly where the resources such as timber, diamonds and oil are used to fund and perpetuate conflict and corruption.

This site would be useful to support the learning program for the Year 10 Global Geographies of Well-Being and Environmental Change and Environmental Management units of the Australian Curriculum: Geography


Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Holy Grail for Geography: Primary School Geography



Image above: Students at Cowandilla Primary School in South Australia "doing geography reading a globe."


Related sites to the Spatialworlds project

Spatialworlds website
21st Century Geography Google Group
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website
 Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au

Where am I??
Sydney: S: 34º 0' E: 151º 0'


Engaging with Primary School Geography

“Children have much personally to offer in their learning of geography in school, since they bring much from their everyday lives to school. …there is the basis for involving children and increasing their sense of place and participation, even within the school as place of learning. Children do not escape the vagaries – the benefits and issues – of the world at large, and that as teachers we have a responsibility to engage with them about it. Teachers we have a responsibility not simply to include geography in the curriculum but to have high expectations of children, to be knowledgeable about their locality and about the wider world.”
Simon Catlin 2005

As Simon, our keynote at AGTA 2013 in Perth in January 2013 writes above, there is and increasing realisation amongst geographers that the teaching of geography as a discipline in primary schools is essential for the future of geography in schools and most importantly an incredibly important part of the education of the young.

“… without primary geography, students’ comprehension of the planet’s natural resources and the need for judicious use and conservation is deferred”.
Harm de Blij (1999)


To the alarm of geographers worldwide, over recent years there has been a general decline and loss of identity of geography in schools. This view was affirmed in 2008, with the release of the Australian Governments Erubus International report on the “A study of Geography in Australian Schools in Years 3-10”. The report showed that the discipline of geography was not being taught effectively, if at all, in primary schools in Australia through the integrated approach of Society and Environment (SOSE). It was clearly reported that primary teachers and many junior high school teachers lacked the content knowledge and content pedagogical knowledge of geography and as a result the discipline of geography had faded in its passion and rigour from the primary school classroom (also from the junior high school classroom). This statement was not intended to ‘sledge’ these teachers but simply to state the obvious fact that since the 1980’s exiting teachers from our universities and colleges have been trained to teach SOSE and not geography as a discipline and as a result did not have the knowledge, understandings and skills to teach geography as a discipline in our schools. Having said that, there has been some wonderful environmental and geographical education conducted in our primary schools by teachers prepared to do the hard yards to gain geographical knowledge, understandings, skills and pedagogy. Despite these dedicated teachers it has been the Holy Grail of Geography Teachers Associations (GTA’s) across the world to engage primary and SOSE teachers in professional learning in the discipline of geography. There is only a handful of primary teachers across Australia who are members of Geography Teachers Associations and they are rarely attendees of geography conferences and professional learning activities conducted by the GTA’s (not from lack of trying – advertising, free workshops, reduced fees etc). The engagement with primary teachers may change as the compulsory geography curriculum in the Australian Curriculum rolls out from the end of this year. GTA’s and AGTA will certainly be developing strategies in an attempt to make such an engagement happen. In the UK they have worked hard to engage primary teachers in geographical learning for the classroom by producing a range of wonderful resources and providing regular professional learning opportunities. As a result many of the resources cited below come from the work of the geography community in the UK to engage primary teachers in geographical education.


To start with I thought it would be good to again refer to some wonderful Australian examples of geography in the primary school by some schools in South Australia which trialled the draft Australian Curriculum: Geography in 2013.

The article by Simon Catling on Primary Geography and the SlideShare PowerPoint titled “Geography is a key subject to engage”, also by S Catlin, are certainly a good place to start your thinking about the uniqueness of primary geography and its importance to the education of young people in our school

The remainder of this blog posting lists and in some cases describes some of the resources available (to be purchased and free) to support the teaching of geography in the primary years.

Books/resources/activities related to the teaching of primary school Geography



Geography in the Primary School

Primary School resources to buy

Primary Geography handbook

Primary Project Box

Teaching Primary Geography

Primary Geography resources

BBC Primary Geography resources

Mapzone

15 cool geography Apps

Geography from Square One from the GA in the UK

Geography from Square One from the GA in the UK

Primary Geography from Ireland

The Learning Zone for geography from Ireland

Teaching ideas

Global Gang
A website has been created to help teachers to bring global issues into the classroom. The site is designed for children aged between 8 and 12 and has plenty to appeal to this age group, including pet pictures which children have sent in. Other sections include Real Life, Global Gossip, Games, On the Ball and What's Up. Planet Teacher, has notes for teachers on topics such as healthy living (including a feature on clean water in Kenya), and 'chocolate can be good for you' (all about Fair Trade issues).


Slamnet
A collection of geography Powerpoint presentations for primary school students produced by teachers in Suffolk schools. Titles include: Homes across the World (Jackie Derbyshire, Sally Rose, Martine Sills), What do we know about where we live? (Amy Gray), "Handa's Surprise", "A Walk Around the Farm (Becky Flint and Jo Smith), Geography Through the Window (Sarah-Jane Sharman) and How has the seaside changed? (Aileen Bale).

Our Place in the World

A fun junior primary activity using plastic boxes to understand location and scale.

Combining cartographic expertise and a desire to start geography education at a very early age, the founders of Kids Placemaps have personalized a child's geography in a tangible, simple fashion.