Case Study of a Face Eating Parasite

After marking hundreds essays about HIV over the summer, the typical case study of an infectious disease, and becoming increasingly bored of the lack of variation when there are so many other important infectious diseases in the world I decided it was time to introduce my students to something new: a FACE EATING parasite!

...read the rest

How much do You know about the Kalahari Desert?

I recently signed up for a free trial with Netflix and last night I came across David Attenborough's Africa series and watched the first episode and part of the second (ok I know it came out a year ago and I need to get up to date!).


Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely, the stunning photography, the narrative, the sound track - all beautifully put together. It starts with the mystery fairy circles, which I had never heard of but immediately diverted me for half an hour of Google searches and made me wish I could do a field trip there to take some soil samples and see whether I could find any environmental gradients. Or get hold of some remotely sensed images to examiner their distribution and see if there was a pattern.

The stories of the animals really draw you in, from the nightmarish invasion of the giant ground crickets, to the mischievous drongo, the amazing cartwheeling spider and the romantic encounters of black rhinos under the stars.

And if all that isn't enough, it's narrated by Sir David Attenborough, so how could you not like it! (Although I was sad to discover a few weeks ago that not only had some of my AS students never heard of him, one of them even asked me if he was a paedophile?! =O).

Of course, the best thing about it was that I couldn't help noticing all the links to geography. I found myself wishing all my students were watching it too! So, I decided at 11pm last night it would be a good idea to make a quiz to go with the first episode. It could either be used in class or set as a homework, but particularly relevant for anyone studying arid environments (deserts).

KALAHARI DESERT QUIZ

I hope it's useful to somebody, let me know if you'd like me to make quizzes for the other episodes too. By the looks of it they will be very geographical too, and I definitely plan to watch them all so I may as well make up some questions as I do! 

The Storm Hydrograph Revision and Exam Technique

So, I spent about 40 hours (seriously, it took me HOURS) making a video tutorial to help my AS class after they almost all failed some homework questions on the storm hydrograph. I didn't have the lesson time to go over it again so I thought by making a video they could learn about it in their own time. Here are the questions if you'd like to use them:

STORM HYDROGRAPH QUESTIONS

Lets hope their homework has improved when they resubmit it! And I'm also hoping there's some more students out there who can benefit from my video. Please subscribe to my channel - if I get enough viewers I'll make some more videos and take requests. Even thought it took me a long time I actually enjoyed doing it, and it's worth it if it helps out some fellow geographers! Hope you like it!

p.s. apologies for the few mistakes and blurry images, it's my first try so it's not perfect, and to be honest I think I will jump out the window if I have to spend any more time editing it! However, it you spot anything that is totally wrong or incoherent please let me know! 

I now have a new appreciation for all those other video tutorials on YouTube....!!

Tackling Essay Questions at AS

Essay questions more than any other are designed to test your ability to USE and APPLY what you have learnt to the question, not simply regurgitate it and give a long description with no discussion or assessment.

Remember that these questions are level marked, each level shows a higher level of understanding, knowledge and ability than the previous one. Let’s look at this more closely with an example from the AQA AS topic 'Health Issues'…

“An infectious disease has a greater impact on economic development than a non-communicable disease.” To what extent do you agree with this view? (15 marks)

...read the rest

Immigration - Threat or Opportunity?

Radio programme today about immigration to the UK - great for Population Change at AS and Conflicts (Multicultural Societies) at A2. You can listen here:

Call You and Yours Tuesday 3rd September 2013

Thoughts of an AS Geography Examiner

This summer I worked as an examiner for AQA and whilst doing so I thought it would be useful to write down some things I learnt about answering exam questions. Having to mark people down for silly mistakes or just basic lack of exam technique was painful at times! Unfortunately the way exams are these days means that a lot of it is about your ability to answer questions in the right way rather than how much geography you know. Obviously you need detailed geographical knowledge as well but I would say someone with less knowledge but better exam technique is going to come out with a better grade than someone who can reel off hundreds of case studies with supporting facts and figures and explanations.

I know it's a long way before the exams, we're right at the beginning of the year, but it's never too early to start developing good habits when it comes to applying your knowledge. Hopefully, with enough practise, you'll be so used to it that you can focus on the geography rather than trying to interpret the question and avoid making unnecessary errors that could cost you a grade. So, without further ado, here's some things I wrote down while marking.... I hope it helps! (nb this mainly applies to AS nothing about essays at A2 in there I'm afraid but much of it applies to both levels).

• Don't write outside the area of the question (e.g. in the margin) if need more room use a separate sheet of paper and indicate this in your question, otherwise part of your answer will get cut off.
  
  
• Write clearly in black ink, so many of them didn't scan properly or the handwriting was illegible
  
  
• Answer needs to be very very focused on the question and command words, there is no point adding in random stuff that's not relevant to the question just to try and fill the space. If anything this is annoying for the examiner who has to trawl through trying to find the good parts of your answer.
  
  
• Lists or bullet points or writing in note form will confine you to low level 1.
  
  
• Study OS maps very carefully, e.g. in one questions people consistently counted the wrong number of churches and assumed that a 'place of worship' was a church, when in fact it could have been a mosque, synagogue etc. A-level lessons often do not have much time to spend on studying OS maps so this is something you should practise your own time too.
  
  
• If asking to compare you MUST compare! Do it point by point, do not write 2 separate paragraphs and expect the examiner to compare for you!!
  
  
• Please learn definitions correctly! This is the easiest thing ever, even if you don't understand it you can just memorise it and still get your 2 marks, 2 marks are not worth losing due to laziness. Ask your teacher for a list of key words/look in the textbook and start learning them now!
  
  
• Think about things carefully and try not to oversimplify, e.g. renewable energy isn't always sustainable or good for the environment, the phrase 'three gorges' comes to mind...
  
  
• I really can't be bothered to read illegible answers... (i did try of course, but you are not doing yourself any favours if the first impression your answer gives to an examiner is 'oh God, seriously? this is English??'). You know that exams are marked on the computer now, so imagine how illegible your illegible handwriting is going to be once it's scanned... then imagine that you and your 10 000 friends from the 'my hand writing is so illegible it looks like an alien code' society decided to sit the A-level geography exam.... 
  
  
• Marking the same question over and over and over gets pretty boring, especially when everyone uses the exact same case studies from the exact same textbook... there's nothing wrong with being original and giving your own opinions occasionally (rather than the opinion of the guy who wrote the textbook), it might wake the examiner up from their marking stupor and encourage those sitting on the fence between levels to mark you up instead of down...
  
  
• e.g. HIV in Botswana.... One child policy in China.... snore....these are great case studies if that's what you did in class, but please tell me something new or interesting about them
  
  
• If the question asks you to discuss, please DISCUSS!!! don't just describe stuff, this is so tediously boring and sad to mark...(so much valuable and carefully learnt information... so carelessly regurgitated onto the page...) It was so uplifting when a student put in their opinion, compared two viewpoints, weighted up two situations, decided which negative impact was the least worst, considered short and long term, the past and the future, different aspects of something, variations in TIME/SPACE/SCALE etc etc and I could say, woohoo! they've reached the next level!
  
  
• Saying there is a clear trend or lots of variation will not get you any marks, you must say what the trend is!! Duh!!
  
  
• Few students seem to understand what 'implications for social welfare' means! And even fewer can comment on it 
  
  
  Learn what 'comment on' means and how this is different to simply 'describing'.
  
  
• Using a black fine liner was clearer than a biro, and please don't write so microscopically tiny as exam scripts aren't scanned in HD.
  
  
• Don't cross stuff out unless you're 100% sure! It could be right...
  
  
• When comparing stuff 'A is 20% and B is 30%' is NOT a comparison! You need some comparing words such as 'whereas... only....much lower at...' in there!
  
  
  
  
  
  

Billboards and Camanchaca

Browsing facebook again and I noticed a headline 'Drinking Water out of Air' (check out the video below). Intrigued I read how a group of engineers in Lima have designed a billboard that captures humidity from the air to provide clean drinking water in city where many people don't have clean running water and much of the water they can get hold of isn't suitable for drinking.

As with anything the system isn't perfect. it requires electricity to run (perhaps solar panels could be installed? take advantage of the sun as well as the humidity!), it must be expensive to install (this could be funded by whoever had their adverts displayed on the board) and require some type of maintenance (though perhaps local people could be involved in this?) and unfortunately many areas around the world with water shortages probably don't have high enough humidity, but overall it's great to see innovative solutions to environmental challenges being tried and tested.

It reminds me of 2 things we study in the Deserts unit at AS. Further south along the coast from Lima a more low-tech solution to water shortages in the Atacama desert, Chile, has been successfully used to for some time to make agriculture possible in one of the driest places on earth.

© Laurent Abad (Flickr) 

Years can pass by at a time without rain falling in this area, yet near the coast the Humboldt current cools the warm air above it producing the camanchaca (love that name it sounds so descriptive), clouds of fog which blow over the land in the mornings like white blankets. They not only look beautiful but allow plants, and animals such as guanacos to survive in an area that would otherwise be too dry.

The other thing it reminded me of was another example of environmental engineering that was proposed as a solution to mitigate desertification in the Sahel (last video for this post I promise!).

All this almost makes me wish I'd done engineering! I'm not sure if they're planning to actually try this out but apparently the 'Great Green Wall' initiative has already been started so perhaps this will be tried in combination if anyone can ever get it together to undertake such a huge project in such a hostile environment. If the project is successful it could have a huge positive impact in one of the poorest more insecure regions in the world. 

Baby BOOOMMMM!!

Normally when you hear 'UK' and 'Baby Boom' in the same sentence you assume I'm explaining the bumps on our population pyramid and referring to the one that happened after the last world war, but turns out from 2011-12 'one' became 'one and a half' born every minute.

You can see more details in this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23618487

Great if the UK is one of your population policy case studies as this will give you something to say in those tricky 'assess the success' questions...

And here was me thinking that there'd always been loads of babies everywhere and I was only recently noticing it after having one myself, but perhaps I have become an unwitting victim of the very policies I've been teaching about!

MISSING: 60 Million Girls

Someone posted this link on Facebook today. Mention gender imbalance and most people think of China, but according to this article in some places in India there are only 3 girls to every 10 boys. In total it is estimated that there would be an extra 60 million women in India (the entire population of the UK) if it were not for sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, sex selective neglect or even murder.


Seems hard for us to comprehend how such attitudes of ignorance still prevail in some places of the world, so strong are people's beliefs they are willing to kill over them. We really are lucky to live in a largely tolerant and peaceful society. I really hope that one day people all over the world will get to enjoy the freedom and security that we do.

http://m.aljazeera.com/story/201372814110570679

The Formation of a Meander

Sometimes I find poems helpful for remembering things! So here's one I wrote about meanders, which includes lots of key geographical words you should be using to describe them!

Rivers always take the path of least resistance

Winding round obstacles into the distance

Even in straight channels bars of sediment seem to form

Alternating deep and shallow sections is the norm’

At alternating intervals of 5-7 times the bend*

The bars deposited when low flow conditions tend

Riffles and pools are they names these features go by

Weaving in between then, the thalweg must comply.

Riffles will reduce the river’s efficiency

Slowed by friction the water has no energy

To carry its load, so it drops it right there

Forming what’s known as a slip-off slope or point bar

While the inner bend is built up by deposition

On the outer bend the river’s flowing fast with a mission

The high hydraulic radius in pools is the reason for

Undercutting by abrasion and hydraulic action more.

This process is perpetuated by helicoidal flow

A corkscrew like movement about which you need to know!

This erodes the river cliff of one meander’s outer bend

Depositing downstream in the next one’s inner bend

As these processes continue the meander slowly migrates

Moving both laterally and downstream at a steady rate.

* 5-7 times the width of the channel – I wrote ‘bend’ because width’ didn’t rhyme!

How the Trade Winds started Globalisation

Very interesting video about how the trade winds played a role in globalisation.

AS - this is a good video to help you understand the causes of deserts.

A2 - this is a great way for you to incorporate some synopticity!!

How to Make a Sand Dune

I found a great video clip about sand dunes and how they form, including barchans; check it out: