Still wearing my old hat at SAGT

October 25, 2008

Attended the SAGT conference at the weekend. It was my first SAGT as a proto-teacher, not on behalf of ESRI(UK) … seems I still cant leave the old life behind. I’d offered to introduce the ESRI sponsored keynote, and so ended up on the stage – much to the confusion of some of my ‘new student friends’.

Highlights of the day included the keynote from Ian Stewart on how natural hazards are , well … no longer really natural. The cycling hero that is Mark ’round the world’ Beaumont was inspiring, and the excellent seminars. Maybe next year I can final attend as a teacher and will have left the ESRI life behind ….

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Posted by Andrew Duff

Biodiversity day at SNH

October 24, 2008

Yesterday was a day out for the PGDE biologists and geographers to the SNH offices up at Batteleby just north of Perth. The topic of the day was a blend of biodiversity and learning in the outdoors.  Presentations were given from teachers delivering cross-curricular projects that embraced biodeiveristy,  an update from  Patrick Carson of LTS/ACfE on outdoor/biodiversity outcomes and Laura Welford of HMIe on an inspectors view of teaching that is constructed specifically within the context of ACfE.  Following this we also had the opportunity to attend smaller seminars with more chance to discuss.

So what were my main impressions that I took away …

  • On ACfE… I really think now is an exciting time to be entering teaching – for two  reasons. Firstly I’m optimistic that ACfE looks like it will provide teachers with a framework in which to deliver lessons that are more cross-curricular, more about teaching kids how to learn (rather than just teaching them facts) and looks to include more emphasis on learning in the outdoor/environment.  Secondly, unlike experienced teachers, I’m naive enough and have no preconceptions!  So I’m spared the explicit or implicit reaction I see in some teachers to ACfE – these range across …  ‘God, not again!’ , to ‘ACfE, what a good idea, guess – we’ll need to bin The Curriculum for Mediocrity we current use” and of course the ”No time!  No time!’. I don’t mean this in any way to denigrate those with these views – if you have been delivering excellent teaching it’s only human to  have a slight niggle … but then ACfE is about proliferating existing best practice not saying it doesn’t happen :-) ?  (I guess my main concern regarding ACfe from a geographers point is that although we present geography as ’the cross curricular glue’ - I have a fear that geography has been diluted and carved up (and some big bits seem completely lost) amid the subject outcomes.)
  • On education in the outdoors … One of the reason I want to teach is because of my interest in the outdoors. There was some excellent examples presented here … from taking kids on field-trips to a local beach to immersing them (not explicitly) in week long sailing adventure through the Western Isles.  Despite these types of activites,  in terms of the total amount of out of classroom teaching they are still very much the exception.  The ever cited barriers of cost,  disruption of other subjects and the H&s/paperwork issue meant that there was more emphasis on the value of the outdoors in the imediate vicinity, school grounds – eco-schools etc. 
  • On just get on an do it …One of the best presentations that emphasised this was from Sinclair Dyer of Hamilton.  His presentation what I believe was I bleieve entitled ‘from little acorns’ – or should have been. He talked about how his school’s projects had grown from planting up a small patch of playground as an alternative to ‘pots on the window sill’ to where they are today – international links to mango plantations and Aids projects in Ghana! Truly inspirational. See www.hamiltonscience.org , but this doesnt really mention the eco-projects in detail.

And the best bit of advice was given by a teacher from Monifield.    Get inviolved, do something - BUT dont go in all guns blazing.  Keep your head down in your first job, for the first couple of months. Observe the politics,  take it slowly – then come up with ideas.  You can’t do everything yourself, you need to understand your workload, you need the support of your colleagues. Then go for it …

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Posted by Andrew Duff

Applying Landfullness to Geography field-work

October 16, 2008

This term’s Geography PGDE assignment is the Methodology Study. The task is to get us students to research a methodology relevant to teaching Geography. The purpose is to get us to undertake a predominantly literature based research project, augmented with some personal observations. The end-product is a 1500 word essay. The assignment is also seen as pre-cursor towards the larger Professional Project; a major part of the summitive assessment of the PGDE.

To help me get started I’ve set out my chosen task in terms of a research question, snappily titled: ‘How can Landfullness be used to deliver Geography field-work that is productive, relevant and fun?‘ With this I want to try and explore how putting more emphasis on place and understanding place in the land-scape (as encapsulated in the term Landfullness) can be applied to Geography field-work.

For me field-trips are that made Geography, but I was much less enthusiastic of the field-work exercises that were done on some trips. Does measuring rivers with flow meters, soil with PH kits, counting cars or classifying land-use make the best use of the limited time that you have pupils ‘in the field’? Maybe it does and maybe my experiences and current (somewhat negative) pre-conceptions about this are wrong? This assignment will give me the time to investigate this. Hopefully at the end I’ll come out with better ideas for my own practice of field-work as it is now , or how it could be improved so much the better.

Given the fact that Landfullness seems to provide many applications for teaching Geographic enquiry skills this seems an interesting topic. And through being conscious of applying a more Landfull approach hopefully I’ll deliver better outdoor-learning generally, and also deliver better understanding of Geographical concepts/processes – and have a whole heap of other cross-curricular/citizen-ship/ACfE benefits.

If you have a view on this and would like to provide me with pointers towards interesting sources, example of best practice … or anything else, then please email me via the details on my the About me page.

Alternatively leave a comment below – I moderate all comments via email before they are posted.

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Posted by Andrew Duff

Geography and IT

October 11, 2008

My PGDE Geography class had a presentation this wednesday from the inimitable Ollie Bray on how to ‘invigorate’ our Geography lessons through the use of IT.  (Sorry you can tell my age – I still can’t completely bring myself to call it ICT … yet.)  And a very fine session it was too.

Beyond all the top-tips of using the ‘geek-stuff’ (Generators, advanced Google , blogs, podcasts etc) the main tone was about how we should be teaching using the medium that kids are using in their everyday life.  Kids use the web more than they watch TV, they have their phones with them all the time, they listen to MP3s/podcasts, they build their own websites and mash-ups. As teachers we should use these things  - because to fail to embrace technology makes our lessons boring and makes us look like dinosaurs. All good stuff with which I completely concur, and something I will try to do in practice. (Though perhaps getting kids to text me in class won’t be something I’ll be experimenting in on my first placement!)

But here’s my comment on the hurdles of everyone gaining the IT proficiency that Ollie covered …

  • … first how are teachers out there in real teacher-land to gain these IT skills? In my experience to gain IT proficiency you need confidence, and for many more to get there they need those few initial pieces of knowledge to get them ‘onto a roll’.  Is there the time/support  in schools for teachers to do this?  I haven’t been there enough yet to know – but I suspect not.  So then maybe the problem will solve itself as a new generation of IT-savy teachers join the profession. But to do this the current set of student teachers need to have, or be given more IT knowledge/confidence.
  • … so my second point is – Where are the current set of student teachers getting this IT knowledge from?   Ollie did a great session, but it was only 2 hours out of 18 weeks of study.  Given that a level of IT is not a pre-requisite for entry to the PGDE course – should there not be time in the PGDE dedicated to giving students more IT skill as part of their ‘core skills’ for teaching?

But then maybe this is just life, the same with everything.  At the end of the day we just need to get down and get on with it … but the other big message from the session is to ensure that we all share best practice in the spirit of the way that Ollie so enthusiastically demonstrated.

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Posted by Andrew Duff

Local Hero and the Geography Curriculum

October 11, 2008

Ask most Scots in their 40′s to rank the top Scottish films of their youth?  I bet, shortly after Gregory’s Girl and even before Trainspotting and (hopefully) way way before Braveheart,  you’ll get Local Hero.  A free DVD arrived in the Duff house in last weekend’s Observer.  Somehow it took until Friday night before Mrs Duff and I were able to enforce viewing on our offspring.  Ok, so maybe it wasn’t as good as my memories of it … but it was still darn good. And these day’s being a proto-teacher  I just can’t stop thinking about using stuff like this to design lessons – or even whole curriculum.  And this film has almost everything! …

  • Human geography- The local natives/crofters just managing to make a living from the pristine land … but who, at the drop of a hat ,will give all up for the economic development provided by the oil giant.
  • Physical Geography – All those geological/landscape locational factors for the siting of the oil terminal
  • Cross curricular / Science:There were many comments on scientists predictions of ‘the next ice age coming’.  Remember that was the dominant scientific theory of the early eighties!   You could do an excellent piece on this – discussing how the scientific method is based on theories evolving and being challenged, not fact.
  • Cross curricular – IT: As a retrospective on what IT was ABSENT, or what technology would be shown were the film made today. We had scale models rather than computer models. People standing in phone boxes rather than using mobiles.  No email! Etc Etc
  • And lots more …

Then again maybe I need to re-think this. While I’ll admit that I found the film a bit lacking compared to my memories …  the Duff-juniors found it – dead borin’.  So maybe there’s a lesson for me in here? Sure come up with something that you can build a story around – but make sure that it means something to the target audience, not just you!

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Posted by Andrew Duff

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