The importance of podcasts in connecting with today's mobile learners

After two years of being a loyal Blackberry supporter, with the shift of the company towards its focus on the business community and the lure of Apple and its Apps, I succumbed last week to getting an I-Phone 4S and my my what a revelation.  Although the touch screen keypad is a little frustrating (ahem..predictive text), the power of the I-phone has surpassed my expectations.  It epitomises how EASY it is to connect to the Global Village (M. McLuhan)and in particular share ideas, links, resources, tweets, podcasts etc etc etc.

Podcasts are particularly useful and still, in my opinion, not utilized effectively by many teaching practitioners.  Obviously the tech savvy student in comparison to his more Luddite orientated teacher (apologies for the gross generalisation) may already listen to popular podcasts on comedy, sport (probably football), and radio shows.  However, there are a plethora of GREAT Political, Economic, & Geographic (a.k.a PEG) podcasts which students can download and listen to on their phones - hence, independent learning on the go, and it's not reading 'dull' or 'long' books!

As the UCAS drum starts to beat again, students (and teachers alike) are trying to prove WHY they love their particular subject through the medium of the their personal statement. If you are lucky enough to live near London, then the LSE Event lectures (free) and RGS Monday evening lectures (free to school members) offer a tangible and dynamic medium to engage with Geography at a higher level. However, for those a little further away, podcasts make geographical distances insignificant and allow any student with a decent smartphone and internet connection to engage with their subject at a higher level and through a medium which they may indeed find more engaging and time efficient. 


Below is a brief summary of some of the podcasts I like to listen to and tweet about (@jsbgeography). Check them out, select the ones you like and add any new ones to this post to share ideas and build up a resource bank!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/oneplanet

http://soundcloud.com/theeconomist

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/

If you are also interested in keeping up-to-date with topical news stories and have an I-Phone then download the free FLIPBOARD app; a great way to collate and browse topical news stories which interest you!

A great grouding in Geography - Geography History and Concepts (Holt-Jensen)

A fantastic introduction to the history and philiosphy of Geography - emjoy!

Changing Educational paradigms & the role of Geography

Many of you will have seen this though provoking video which has been making it rounds on the web. I am just posting it to remind us all of what can be achieved and changed!


Thoughts and comments welcome.

Geography matters on Google Books: Doreen Massey

A classic geographical text for all students wanting to expand their horizons  by  a very prominent geographer.

Abandoned places...spaces or places?

Geographers quite rightly tend to be obsessed with the concept of place and space. I stumbled across a series of interesting images and the following question arose - when places become defunct* are they still places per se or  over time do they lose their human attachment and just return to ordinary spaces/landscapes? Do landscapes have a social or even historical memory and how long can this last before e.g. do humans always have to inhabit places for them to be called a place?

*due to a natural or disaster, quasi natural disaster or simply that it becomes abandoned due to an industry shutting down.

Pictured: Ashley, Pennsylvania
The Huber Coal Breaker, built in 1938. “Other coal breakers have been demolished,” Yves Marchand says. “It really is the last of its kind.” All those windows were there to let in as much natural light as possible. Today they are target practice for stone-throwers

Pictured: Port Richmond, Pennsylvania A generator stands like a sculpture. In its day it was one of the most powerful in the world. It was housed, Meffre says, in a room “built to look like the main hall of a grand city station”

Robert Polidori's photographs of Pripyat and Chernobyl. 

Robert Polidori's photographs of Pripyat and Chernobyl. 

http://moreintelligentlife.com/gallery/american-ruins

http://chrisotley.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.houkgallery.com/artists/robert-polidori/

Everything which is bad is good for you

Steven Johnson has written an interesting book entitled, ' How everything bad is good for you' - the notion that popular culture is making us smarter.It is interesting to note the extent to which Western culture can be demonized and as pessimists moan about the state of TV programming and the rise of social networks, this book takes quite a refreshing approch - i know i will be ordering my copy on the Kindle1

The New Yorker sums up the book quite well here as does the Guardian

Clipperton Project Update

For those of you that have been following the progress of the Clipperton project will be please to watch the new trailer which shows the findings of the group's recent expedition earlier this year!

The Clipperton Project is a multi-disciplinary, international arts and science project which aims to take outstanding practitioners in the arts and sciences on expeditions to little-studied, inaccessible and complex territories which have been isolated by history.

Royal Institution - Geographers website

A fantastic website by the RI covering great geographic themes - plenty of videos to watch and discussion to to contirbute to - excellent - also on my links page!


http://richannel.org/themes/environment

Check out the link on the anthropocene...

Hope and Poverty

Hope and Poverty

Frontline Club - an excellent forum for geographic talks & debates

The Frontline club in Paddington is an excellent place to take older students or friends and listen to a topical geo-political/economic geography talk. Facinating indeed.

http://www.frontlineclub.com/events/2012/05/india-rising.html?utm_source=Frontline&utm_campaign=8b903bd6ba-22+May&utm_medium=email

http://www.youtube.com/user/frontlineclublondon?feature=results_main

Cultural attitudes to the environment & risk

In her latest work, Naomi Klein wonders: What makes our culture so prone to the reckless high-stakes gamble, and why are women so frequently called upon to clean up the mess.

What makes our cultutal attitude to the envionment lead to conflict and risk?

http://www.naomiklein.org/main

Rio 2012: 20years on from sustainable development

How has our attitude to the environment moved on from Rio 1992 when the paradigm of sustainable development was first publicy showcased.

Have we become a more globally and environmentally aware society?
Are we looking after the environment better and has our attitude to it changed from consumption to protection?

We will move towards a green economy in the next 50years? and more possibly are we on track to achieve the MDGs?

CHECK OUT THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS BY CLICKING THE LINK BELOW:

http://www.earthsummit2012.org/

Another interesting video -looking at whether development is compatible with the environment...
or not in the case of the tar sands

Charles Rothschild & UK Conservation

An interesting centenary marking the impact of one individual's attitude to the environment and how it defined a nation's approach to conservation:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18013101

Cultural capital - valuing nature a little differently?

Arguably in a post-industrial society we have moved towards 'valuing' the environment very differently to how we used to perceive it; an economic resource to be exploited under the guise of such paradigms like industrialisation, modernisation or globalisation. According to Kuznets would the West place itself in an era of increasing environmental awareness and decreasing degradation?

Since Carson's Silent Spring and the emergence of radical environmentalism in the 1970s &1980s, the environment has become an issue of common parlance and to put it simply, the environment matters. Today the environment should be (and to some extent is) viewed as as a holistic concept (economic, biodiversity, social-cultural etc etc) as UNESCO outlines in it's definition & mission statement. Clearly though, the latter developments have meant that from an economic perspective whilst economists still see value in the environment, it is fundamentally a different type of value to the one in the industrial period (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17448634).

The new paradigm of the environmental movement of the 1990s and new millennium was Sustainable Development, and as the environment became an issue of national (and international) security, politicians and academics started to see the need not only to protect but also to preserve the more subtle cultural and often spiritual connections organisms  had to the environment. It appeared that the cries of deep ecologists to revert back to pre-industrial times had been answered (well not really!) - alas though, the the environment is and always has been/will be a contested category providing that the human population conitue4s to grow and expand and nations continue to industrialise. Thus, with the Advent of the new Rio Summit there are cries (as there were in 1992) to improve our level of protection and romantic platitudes of a return to some modified form of a pristine wilderness...!(Just look at the BBCs recent programming over the past 5 years to increase our environmental awareness).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18060323

I would argue though that on the hand yes, protection is paramount, but from my time researching in Honduras, i would caution outright protection as often the Western model of a core and buffer zone can alienate the local people from the land and cut the connections which make that particular environment so diverse - just look at Ayres Rock (or Uluru) to see how poor management can lead to severe conflict...Israel, Palestine and the West Bank water security issues is another example.

Q: To what extent do different cultural attitudes to the environment make conflict inevitable?

Discussion: Is there such a thing as a pristine wilderness as Humboldt asserted or not? Discuss.

A new commodity: second hand clothes

Prices paid for second-hand clothes in the UK have tripled in the past five years, sparking a battle between charities, criminals, companies and local councils for the nation’s cast-offs.

It is an intersting development to new and 'emerging markets', especially when considering many developed nations export much of our recyling to LEDCs as they are more efficient at recycling.


As the FT states:

'The price rag dealers pay for used clothes has climbed from about £220 a tonne in 2007 to about £650 a tonne today, according to trade publication letsrecycle.com. Demand has mushroomed since the European Union expanded eastward in the mid-2000s, creating accessible markets for winter clothing that rag dealers cannot sell in Africa. Sterling’s tumble has accelerated the trend. Charities say donations are falling in the face of new high street competition. “Clothing has always been seen as something charitable,” said Maria Chenoweth-Casey, chief executive of charity TRAID, which runs second-hand clothes shops. “Vintage clothing is dying . . . It’s sad to see it shipped out of the country without even being looked at.” Criminals are also drawn to the high prices. In 2008, when Ms Chenoweth-Casey noticed the “yield” of her charity’s textile banks dropping, she hid a tracker inside a bank and followed the signal to an industrial estate in Havering in North London. The stolen clothes were in a trailer bound for east Europe.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/44784f66-8ae8-11e1-912d-00144feab49a.html#axzz1t41bUClx

The age of energy and the Green economy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/earth/the-age-of-energy/9057351/Richard-Branson-Green-Economy.html?WT.ac=8841781

Will the environment ever prominently feature in economic designs?

Transition to a world without oil

The importance of the RGS Monday Night Lectures

Dear all,

If you live in the vicinity of London - do please get down and attend one of these fantastic lectures, especially if you are a student or in academia. They are absolutely brilliant!

http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/London+Lectures/Monday+night+Lectures.htm

The Arab Powder Keg: An animated map of protests in the Middle East as they spread from country to country, updated with the most recent events.

An animated map of protests in the Middle East as they spread from country to country, updated with the most recent events.

The protests that drove Hosni Mubarak out of power in Egypt were only the beginning of a wave of civil unrest that has boiled over into nearly all of the Middle East. Tunisia had already driven longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from office, and by the beginning of February, unrest had spread to Jordan, Lebanon, and Sudan. Many more countries were to follow. This map depicts the tides of protests and government retaliations day by day, beginning in Tunisia and ending with the unresolved conflict in Libya. You can click through the days one by one with the green arrows or choose "Autoplay." To get the big picture, just turn off the info boxes and crank up the speed.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/maps/2011/03/the_arab_powder_keg.html

A smorgasbord of useful Geog data websites for further research; Unit 4 esp

http://www.swissray.com/

http://www.cred.be/sites/default/files/ADSR_2010.pdf

http://maplecroft.com/

http://www.gale.cengage.com/

http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/en/index.html