Turkey earthquake

On Sunday 23rd October, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit eastern Turkey. The epicentre of the quake was near the city of Van and Ercis.

Useful links (particularly for Unit 4 A2 Geographers!)...
Turkey earthquake death toll passes 500 The Telegraph, 27th October 2011
Turkey earthquake: Teenage boy found after four days BBC News, 28th October 2011
Boy Pulled Uninjured From Turkey's Quake Wreckage NYTimes, 28th October 2011
Turkey Earthquake: building negligence amounts to murder The Guardian, 26th October 2011 (excellent evaluative article - useful for analysis!)
Turkey Earthquake: Government will accept foreign aid BBC News, 26th October 2011
Photographs from National GeographicTurkey earthquake: Death toll passes 430 BBC News, 25th October 2011
Earthquake Adds Even More Pressure to relations between Turks, Kurds Voice of America, 27th October 2011 (good for Unit 4 'values and attitudes' part of the mark scheme!)
Timeline: major earthquakes in Turkey Reuters, 27th October 2011
A Geoglogist's Eye View of Van Earthquake Scientific American, 27th October 2011 (good explanation of tectonics and causes)
New Insights into the October 2011 Van Earthquake Earthquake-Report (CEDIM), 25th October 2011
Turkey Quake casts spotlight on political fault lines Monsters & Critics, 27th October 2011
After quake, Turkey has proven it can get by on its own Haaretz.com, 29th October 2011
Turkey still not ready for next big one The National, 17th August 2009
The Next Big Quake? Foreign Policy, 21st January 2010

Don't forget to check out the 'related articles' that feature in some of the links above. This will broaden your research, whilst still keeping it focused on the Turkey earthquake.

Breathing Earth

www.breathingearth.net

I had forgotten about this great site until I saw it mentioned on Funky Geography. It is a simulated world map showing the CO2 emissions and birth and death rates by country happening in real time.

650 million years in one minute!

A great find, ideal for the first lesson of the new GCSE starting in September 2009!


650 Million Years in 1 Min. and 20 Sec. - Watch more Funny Videos

Coastal Management at Sidmouth

A good local example...what forms of coastal management can you see??


Sidmouth seafront west in England

Year 10 ICT lesson: Revisiting Development

You have today's lesson to put together a PowerPoint presentation that explores a development indicator of your choice. Be creative, however, and try to choose one that is a bit different to those that we have studied previously!

What to include?

1. Use gapminder (click on 'Gapminder World') to explore any relationships between your development indicator, and other indicators of development. Use the drop down lists on the two axis to select your indicator and the one(s) that you want to compare with. Include a copy of any graphs that you have created, and write a description to describe and explain what it shows.

2. Use worldmapper to create a map of your development indicator and its global pattern. Again, make sure that you include a copy of the map, with a description and explanation of what it shows.

3. Use CIA World Factbook to create a list of 8 countries and the data for that country related to your indicator. Are there any patterns? Are there any that do not fit a pattern? Why might this be? Some of you will be able to create a graph to show the data you have researched.

4. Finish your PowerPoint with 3-5 bullet points that summarise what you found out about your development indicator.

GCSE Case Study Template

Here's the case study template that we will be using in lessons and as homework activities to help you prepare for the summer exams for Year 11. For Year 10 students, we will be using these templates as part of an on-going processes of revision for end of unit exam questions and to start building up a bank of case studies as the course progresses.


Case Study Template for GCSE

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

It would be a good idea for you to download an electronic copy as you can then edit it to suit specific case studies. Paper copies will also be available from your geography teacher.

Case Study template now available to download from Okehampton College's new Frog VLE!!

Students click here to go directly to the Frog login.

World population

Year 10 have just started Population. We have started to look at the distribution of the world's population and played population top trumps. We also recorded the world population (using this world population clock) at the start of the lesson and at the end to see the rate at which it is increasing. Here's a couple of useful things related to population. Firstly, a BBC learning zone clip on 'Is the world's population spiralling out of control?'.


(Thanks to Odblog for highlighting this)

Secondly, this is the map that was used to describe the distribution of the most densely and sparsely populated places in the world. The map came from worldmapper where there's a whole host of similar world maps which have been resized to show different characteristics.


Finally, a fantastic tool using statistics to graphially show different characteritics of countries and their population. Here's one showing the relationship between life expectancy and income per person. The size of the circles shows the total population. Click on the graph to play around with the example one, or go to the gapminder site to create your own graph.

Using text messaging in your lessons?!

Year 10 tried something a bit different to kick off their first lesson of the new half term...writing geographical text messages. They had to explain the problems that exist in shanty towns in 140 characters (the same as a SMS text message!). Here's an example...

Probs in shanti towns-ovacrowdin leadz 2 spred of diseez.Por facilities n hygeen.High crime lvls n no way of disposin waste-dis leadz 2 pollushun.No wata.Wel poor!
(by Katie Curnow)

A site called lingo2word converts normal language into text language and vice versa. This is what I used for the instructions, but the students had to come up with their text message without any help. It proved rather too tricky for some!

Animoto

This is a new tool for you to watch out for in your geography lessons. Animoto is a site that allows you to upload images to create a 30 second slideshow.



Here's one I made earlier on the theme of shanty towns; a feature of urban growth that the year 10 are currently studying. If you would like to have a go at your own, click here.