Image above: The iWonder Home Page.
Related links to Spatialworlds
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'
The new iWonder site from the BBC
On 14 March the BBC launched BBC iWonder. This is a new factual and educational brand from the BBC, and it's all about feeding the curiosity. In the future the site will be perfect for stimulating geography, history, science and social studies classes via questioning and curiosity. Whilst not all of the iWonder articles are geographical, the potential of the site to ask and answer geographical questions is enormous.
BBC iWonder provides thought-provoking answers to the questions sparked
in your everyday life - questions sparked by BBC programs, what's in
the news, important anniversaries, or what's trending on social media.
"The BBC iWonder homepage will introduce you to something surprising,
provocative, exciting and challenging each day, hand-picking the most
inspiring BBC content and blending it with the most wondrous stuff from
around the Web and BBC Online."
Hopefully in time, this fascinating site will have more and more geography friendly items. At the moment it is primarily history, art & culture and science. However the science iWonder on the Northern Lights in the UK has some fascinating physical geography and maps. The line between science and physical geography continues to blur! This site will be no exception. At the moment it is a great site for history teachers using a great inquiry and questioning methodology to develop curiosity and interest.
Image above: Oblique aerial photograph of West Lakes, Adelaide.
Related links to Spatialworlds
Geogaction
Spatialworlds website
GeogSpace
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Humsteach blog
Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'
Observation as a skill when using oblique aerial photographs
Observation and questioning are important skills in the Australian Curriculum: Geography. Geographical Skills are described in the curriculum under five sub-headings
representing the stages of a complete inquiry. Observing and questioning are highlighted as the first stage of inquiry.
The ACARA site says that:
"Teachers could, for example, provide students with data to represent or
analyse rather than have them collect the information themselves. Many inquiries should start from the observations, questions and
curiosity of students. Inquiry will progressively move from more teacher-centred
to more student-centred as students develop cognitive abilities and gain
experience with the process and methods across the years of schooling."
This posting is dedicated to the potential of oblique aerial photographs as a resource to stimulate geographical questioning. In my class I have been using a set of photographs I have snapped out of planes (geography teachers love window seats!) in recent years, asking students to tell me what they see? It is fascinating what they talk about and the activity gives me an opportunity to turn a photograph out of a plane into a geographical discussion early in the course.
Here is a selection of the photographs I use for your interest and use if you wish (just increase size by double clicking on the image and then right mouse click to 'Copy Image' or 'Save As Image' as a JPEG). They range from suburban, coastal, rural, mountain to urban.
When I present the oblique aerial photographs to the students I ask them to:
*Firstly, try to describe all the natural and cultural features evident in the photography.
*Secondary, look to see if you can see any patterns, distributions, trends in the features you have described in the photography.
* Finally, try to explain why things are where they are - the 'why of the where' of geography
Image 1: Adelaide CBD
Image 2: Snow covered mountains somewhere over Italy
Image 3: Suburban Adelaide landuse
Image 4: Farmland on Yorke Peninsula, South Australia
Image 5: Suburban Perth
Image 6: Coastal engineering, south of Rome
Image 7: Coastal South Australia
Image 8: Sydney CBD
Image 9: Glenelg, South Australia
Image 10: New York
