Commemorate 20 years of Chembakolli with an interactive online march and new story book

Christopher Rushbrook Schools Marketing and Promotions Manager ActionAid UK has sent me the following information which I thought I would share here:

For UK primary schools, Chembakolli is probably the most famous village in India and December 08 sees the start of celebrations to mark 20 years of village life.

26 September 2008: Chembakolli, a village in southern India, was reclaimed following an unprecedented march in December 1988 by 10,000 Adivasi (indigenous people) from the Nilgiri Hills. Coming together to reclaim their tribal rights to live in the forests near the town of Gudalur, the march was a huge success, winning the respect of the government and local people. The Adivasi were able to settle in many villages on the land, including Chembakolli, as well as establish their own school and hospital.

To celebrate this anniversary, ActionAid is launching an online march, enabling teachers and pupils to create their own character and personalised placard before joining the virtual march.

Starting in Gudalur, the virtual route follows the footsteps of the real march, twenty years ago. In the town, the marchers can click on local landmarks, including market stalls, the hospital and school, and meet real life people and read their stories. As more people join the march, the route will extend into Chembakolli where visitors can learn about life in the village by clicking on parts of the village, local people, and an elephant.

As part of the celebrations, ActionAid has also produced The Chembakolli story, a beautifully narrated audio CD accompanied by a story/activity book and poster. The CD covers the events of the past 20 years in six parts, each with descriptive sound and music clips recorded in the village. It is ideal for classroom listening and interpretive learning and is available for £20 (inc p&p).

To take part go to the Adivasi Lands Right March website

Tom Barrett's Blog - Using Google Earth to plot the journey of James and the Giant Peach

Thankyou to Alan (my colleague at the GA) for sharing information about this blog at our meeting yesterday.

Tom has been doing some amazing work with his class on using Google Earth to plot the story of James and the Giant Peach. Start with his final page of the story and then choose the links to work back.

He has also been using Vocaro to record children's voices - which were then embedded into Google. Please read his blog to find out more.

Wordle

I've been experimenting with the online word generator Wordle it generates some fantastic word images.

The opening of the new Castleford Bridge - 4th July 2008

I'm experimenting with adding a link to my Picassa photo album into this post. Click on the image to access the photo-gallery.

Opening of Castleford Bridge - 4th July 2008

Support for the Primary Geography Quality Mark

I've been very active during the last month moderating the applications from Round 4 of the Geographical Association Primary Geography Quality Mark and providing additional support for teachers who are enrolled for Rounds 5 and 6 of the award.

An overview of the PGQM can be found on the GA PGQM website. Additional support for teachers who are interested in primary geography is available on the PGQM password protected website - access to this website is available to all members of the GA and details of how to request a password are available from the main GA PGQM Site.

My most recent PowerPoint was produced for a PGQM teachers workshop and was aimed at encouraging teachers to think much more creatively about the kind of geography that they teach.

Thinking Geographically

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: guidance pgqm)

Public Profiler World Names Website

Public Profiler World Names: this website lets you discover how common your surname is around the world. Type in your surname and the website generates a world map to show how popular your name is. It's also possible to zoom in and have a look at regional variations. Keep an eye on the actual `numbers' as the colour coding on the maps can mask a great variety in the actual numbers. A fascinating website and easy to see how it could lead to some fascinating geography and history for that matter. For example, why is there a higher frequency of people per million with the name Church in New Zealand than in the UK? Why are there Hamblen's in the USA and not in Canada?

This site is worth a look.

Geograph: an image for every square kilometre in the UK

We’ve had a really good August at home this year walking local footpaths and finding places that we’ve never been to before, all within a 5 mile radius of home. The motivator for all of this activity has been the Geograph website.

If you are not familiar with the site, then the aim of Geograph is to collect photographs for every square kilometre within the UK. 88% of England, Scotland & Wales now have at least one photo per kilometre square and 22% of Ireland has been covered.

This is a really useful website if you need images of the UK, first because all images are shared under the Creative Commons License (this means that although the photographer owns the copyright they have agreed to other people using their images). Second because the images are a reasonable size (640 pixels wide) they are very useful for projecting on an interactive whiteboard. So forget those tiddly little snippets that you find through searching Google Images – most of which are covered by copyright – and nearly all of which are useless for projecting and start exploring Geograph.

So log-on to their website: www.geograph.org.uk

Choose a place – it’s not very good at recognising postcodes – so either the place name or a four figure Grid reference work best.

If you want to see where I’ve been walking, then you could start in the west on the Moorland above Langsett ( SE1800 in the search box or http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/SE1800 should take you directly there) and try working your way east towards the M1 motorway.