Bet nets for Nigeria in anti Malaria campain

It is hoped that a new campaign to to issue two insecticide treated bed nets to every Nigerian household by December 2010 will reach over 30 million homes and save thousands of lives. The malaria crisis in Nigeria accounts for over one quarter of all cases in Africa and this seriously damages the country's economy - estimated at a loss of $1billion. Sleeping under a bed net is one of the most effective ways of avoiding infection.

The campaign is being backed by £50million of UK aid along with USAID, World bank and UNICEF contributions..

300 lorries will transport the nets to 1500 distribution points
Radio broadcasts will promote the use of nets
Town criers will announce the delivery of nets to villages
9500 vounteers will be trained to visit 2million households to explain how to claim bednets
Drama groups will outline the dangers of malaria and how to hang the nets

This is the kind of detail which will reap its rewards in your answers! Named case studies are essential in paper 2 and will always be credited by markers.

Click on the this logo to link to an excellent new source of information about malaria. Malaria Consortium is the world's largest not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the control of malaria.

There is a wealth of material and links on their website. Here is just one of the photos from their photo collection - spraying drainage channels (potential mosquito breeding sites) with insecticide in Mozambique.

And there is even a Facebook page!

What has a pliosaur got to do with Higher Geography?

This is a pliosaur . It was in the news today because a fossilised 2.5m long skull and lower jaw of this voracious sea monster have recently been found in an undisclosed location on the Jurassic Coast - a stretch of coastline which we will be studying in the RLR unit. Click image to link to the BBC website report.

Fossil collection attracts many thousands of vistors to the Jurassic Coast each year and fossils continue to be found here because one stretch of this amazing coastline near Lyne Regis has very soft rocks which are easily eroded by the sea. Stormy seas release 'fresh fossils' all year round and so fossil hunters constantly unearth new finds.

You may find yourself explaining why the Jurassic Coast attracts so many visitors. Fossil hunting is one reason.... but of course there are lots of others!

3 Days in the Dales

Here, as promised, are some pics taken last weekend in the Dales..... starting with Thornton Force waterfall. Strangely I don't remember the sunshine. It must have been all that driving rain at the Norber erratics on Saturday which eclipsed it in my memory!

We did some fieldsketching at close quarters...

..and posed for a team photo...

Then it was on to Chapel Le Dale with its barns and walls scenery ...overlooked by the summit of Ingleborough Saturday morning saw us at Malham Cove before climbing the 417 steps to the limestone pavement on top.
...and our first sight of those clints and grykes!

...and here they are at at closer quarters ahead of team photo 2......
The sun came out briefly in Watlowes dry valley.... ..very briefly. It was gone by the time we got to the top and took in the view!From there it was on down to Gordale Scar... where the depths of the gorge inspired Tolkein's vision of Helm's Deep
and after all that walking, there was more mental exercise in the evening! and more limestone pavement on Sunday... Grikey... it's a long way down!

And here's the shot of the Ribblehead viaduct that delayed me getting back to the bus....... my picture of the weekend. It's a bit of an optical illusion - the 'sky' in the distance is actually sunshine on a distant hillside and the whole shot is foreshortened with a zoom lens.

And finally, despite lucrative offers of work from the BBC... Mr Foulds and I have decided to stick to our day jobs!!

White Scar Cave

I have just discovered that White Scar Cave which we will be visiting this week when the second Higher group are in the Yorkshire Dales, now has a new website....Click on the image above to link directly to it.

Another trip to the Dales

Having been to the Yorkshire Dales on Higher fieldwork about ten times in the last eight years, I thought it was about time I had a weekend there with my family. Unfortunately, I managed to leave my camera battery at home ! However, I did have my little Flip video recorder and so can upload a couple of bits of footage from that.

The first is on the limestone pavement above Malham Cove..

This one shows a view in Upper Wharfedale....

Jurassic Coast conflict

This is a great story to enhance your 'conflict' case study material for the Jurassic Coast....


Click on the headline to link to the Times on-line report!

Britain from Above clips

As I have just been saying over on GMPAY , the BBC are allowing bloggers to legally embed video from their Britain from Above website into blogs. The following clips have some relevance to the Higher course...

Firstly, an explanation of the Great Glen.....



And secondly, a view of a stretch of coastline which is eroding fast!



I visited Happisburgh (pronounced Haysburgh)a couple of summers ago and even from the ground it was easy to see the dramatic effects of coastline retreat...And finally, as we are about to embark on our case study of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, here is some Britain from Above footage which looks at the designation of green belts and national parks.

Yorkshire Dales fieldtrip November 2007

Well done to all of you who were with us in the Dales this weekend. You walked well (with hardly a complaint about the rain on Saturday!), worked hard - until after 10pm on both evenings, earned plaudits from the youth hostel staff and were good company. Here, as promised, are a few highlights from the weekend, starting with Thornton Force from Friday afternoon.....

Saturday morning walk to Malham Cove and the pavement at the top of the 415 steps!


Then on to Gordale Scar....
...followed by a visit to the Norber erratics

This morning (Sunday) we went to the limestone quarry at Hortonthen on to the pavements at Scar Close
at the foot of Ingleborough.......

....where we had fun testing out the grykes for size!

Last stop was a visit to White Scar caves .......Outside there were great views across the valley to Twistleton ...

National Parks land use conflicts

We are about to embark on a couple of weeks of work looking at land use conflicts in the Yorkshire Dales National Park for the RLR section of Paper 2. It is important, however, to remember that the theme of land use conflicts is repeated in all national parks - in fact, it is a recurring theme in most rural areas of Britain. While it is important to know specific detail about a case study area (for us this will be the Yorkshire Dales), you should also be able to apply what you are learning to other areas and be able to comment on likely conflicts and ways of resolving them. With this in mind, here are a few resources you could explore...

The first looks at conflicts in the Peak District National Park (the extractive industry shown here on the left is just one of those conflicts). Click the image to link.

The second is an extract from the Wikipedia page on National parks in England and Wales . It is a more general overview of land use conflicts in national parks but has a lot of useful links to explore.

Finally, here is a decision- making exercise which looks at the conflicts of land use which are related to tourism within an imaginary national park. This would be well worth looking at - especially as tourist related activity is the first land use in the Dales which we will be studying in class.

Changes on the farm......

The Rural Land Resources section of Paper 2 makes reference to changing rural land use and this is nowhere better exemplified than in the context of farming. The BBC website today carries a series of resources which explore this through several generations of one farming family in South Devon. there is also an excellent associated interactive resource which offers a 'snapshot of farming today in the UK' which you can link to by clicking the banner below.....

A Book in a Blog!

Rob Chambers, a virtual colleague of mine, who teaches in Cambridgeshire, writes a blog on which he puts course notes for his GCSE Geography classes.

While he should have been enjoying a well earned summer holiday in August, he was instead blogging pages of material about coasts. Although we will not be studying coasts until after Christmas, I am going to post these links now... or I may forget! Remember that all the postings on this blog are labelled according to the sections of the Higher course. We study coasts in Lithosphere (Paper 1) and Rural Land Resources (Paper 2). You should therefore be able to 'navigate' back to this posting at a later date from the labels in the sidebar to the right.

If you want to get an idea of what there is ... and there is a lot of it..... notes, revision. quizzes, links and games.... click on the following :

Energy at the Coast Coastal Processes Coastal Erosion landforms

Coastal Deposition landforms A Case Study of Coastal Erosion

Coastal Defence Coasts: Revision

This is seriously good material and you are lucky to have access to it! I would urge you to make good use of it when we are studying coasts. It wouldn't even harm to start now!!

Corries...'upping the ante' for Higher

You should recall me saying last week that if all you can write about corrie formation is what you wrote for S Grade, then you can expect to get half marks from a Higher marker! You really do need to add a lot of information to your basic S grade knowledge - especially as far as processes are concerned. Here is an excellent resource which will help you to get that extra headroom.

I took the image above last weekend from the north shore of Loch Morlich looking towards the northern corries of the Cairngorms. Coire Cas with all its ski related paraphenalia and the line of the funicular lies below the summit of Cairngorm, while to the right is the unmistakable outline of Coire an t-Sneachda. Fettes College in Edinburgh have produced some excellent on-line resources on the Cairngorms (the corrie link above is one of their pages) and they also have a full page with downloadable audio files which look at landforms in and around Corrie an t-Sneachda. Click on the image above to link to them. This is seriously good material and would stand you in good stead in both the Lithosphere section of paper 1 and in a RLR question if you were asked to refer to glaciated features in a case study area.

Higher Pupil Conference.

Almost 300 pupils from schools across the central belt attended the Higher Geography Pupil Conference run by the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers at Dalkeith High School today. If you were there, you should be pleased to know that those of us who were lecturing/presenting were particularly impressed with our audience today!

I am hoping that having given you the link to the HigherGeogBlog, you are now going to become regular visitors and I thought you might like to be able to access the presentations I gave today.
Firstly, for the Biosphere Unit and on the topic of sand dune succession......


Secondly, for the Rural Land Resources section of Paper 2, my afternoon workshops were on the topic of Farming in the Yorkshire Dales.....


Sorry, no music on the on-line version.... you'll just have to hum....it was 'Emmerdale' and 'Last of the Summer Wine'!

Although it is now the 24th, I am going to edit this post rather than add a new one for today. Ollie Bray, Deputy Head at Musselburgh GS was one of the presenters at the conference on Friday. He has also kindly made his presentation on Population available to you.
On his own blog, he apologises for the first slide! However, it is only the title page and the rest more than makes up for it!

More Dales pics..

I thought I'd try this way of letting you see some of the Dales fieldtrip photos....
Slideshare allows you to upload PPT presentations and them embed them in a blog. So here goes!



I also have a lot of very good photos of those of you who paticipated which I will let you see in the privacy of school!

Dorset Coast Digital Archive

Here is an excellent resource on the Dorset coast which I have recently discovered. Having just marked your RLR prelim question (more of which tomorrow!), I am still amazed that so few of you have taken on board my advice about being highly specific about case studies. Remember .... name drop and give specific examples otherwise, as I discovered as I marked your scripts and you will find when you get them back, you could be talking about almost any coastal area in the country! You have to convince the marker that you really 'know' your case study area. You have to refer to issues which mark it out as different from other areas. Ah well.... there are still two months for me to convince you!!

In the meantime, you could do worse than browse through the resources on the Dorset Coast Digital Archive. There is a huge amount of material which you could use to supplement the notes you already have. For a start, try theme 1 topic 3, theme 2 topic 4 and theme 3 topic 3. There is also a 'Schools Learning Materials' section.

On another subject, the second Dales fieldtrip is next weekend. Those of you who are going on this one should have received a parental consent form by post. Please remember to return it to me as soon as possible.

Jurassic Coast resources

To supplement what we have been doing in class about coasts within the RLR unit of work, there is a wealth of good material on the Jurassic coast for you to browse through on the Internet. Start with the Jurassic Coast World heritage site website which has just undergone a massive overhaul and transformation.......Click on the image to link. In particular, you might like to have a look at the following sections:

1) The Coast Uncovered where sub sections let you explore the coastline, study the geology and the coastal processes

2) The Jurassic News contains up-to-date information about new initiatives and projects along the coastline. There is lots here which could really 'give you the edge' and make your answers stand out from the crowd.

3) Educational Resources including downloads. Units 13 and 23 are particularly relevant to what we are doing.

You could then 'home in' on Lulworth by looking at the following (click headlines to link)..

The PPTs which I have been using in class this week are now available from the 'P' Drive on the network in school.

Discord on Dorset coast!

We have been learning recently about concordant and discordant coasts. Here are a couple of images taken last summer of the discordant stretch of coastline in Dorset which we looked at in class. It would help your understanding of this if you get yourself a map. Click here for the OS Get-a-Map service and put Swanage into the search box. You will then be able to navigate along the stretch of coastline north and south.

Remember that on a discordant coastline, the geology is 'arranged' at right angles to the coast...

The view looks north east from Durlson Head across Durlston Bay to Peveril Point and then across Swanage Bay to the chalk cliffs of the Foreland which end at Old Harry Rocks. The sequence of bays and headlands is mainly due to the fact that relatively harder rocks like limestone and chalk resist erosion to form the headlands while the softer rocks such as clays and sands succumb to erosion and form bays.

Here, another shot from the same spot but with the zoom lens foreshortens the view.....

Bournemouth in the distance forms the backdrop to the chalk Foreland (with Old Harry clearly visible) and limestone Peveril Point in the foreground. Between the two lies Swanage Bay....