Breen and gone...

OK, so this week we've been looking at some past paper questions.
Remember that you will have one exam in June this year. It will last for 1 hour and 30 minutes and carry a total of 100 marks. There will be questions relating to various aspects of the course, with a concentration on one particular theme.
You will have a pre-release booklet which we will go through in advance of the exam.
The questions we had today needed you to remember the following things - if you found this difficult you need to go back to your Cape Farewell packs and do some more research, at sites such as THIS ONE:

1. Which extreme environment have we studied and what makes it 'extreme' ?
2. What landforms are created in this extreme environment ?
3. What processes operate in this extreme environment - make sure that you can remember the processes carried out by glaciers - be specific !?
4. Which resources did we use to explore these environments ?
5. What were the reasons for using the resources that we did ?
6. How does this place compare to MY PLACE
7. How do people make use of this extreme environment ?

(Remember what Brent said about "freeze thaw". This is a PROCESS not a LANDFORM)

So why BREEN in the title ?
Well, glaciers in Svalbard are usually called names ending in BREEN. You should ensure that you can name at least one (and ideally locate it in relation to a town such as Longyearbyen)
Here are some that you could investigate further:

1. Archibald Geikebreen
2. Linnebreen
3. Skobreen
4. Tunabreen
5. Bakaninbreen
6. Larsbreen
7. Longyearbreen
8. Wibebreen
   

You can see these and many others in a wonderful gallery of photos I came across at a site called POLARFOTO. This has a gallery by Hinrich Basemann which has LOADS OF SVALBARD PHOTOS.

Thanks to Pete from Barking in London, who sent me some great My Place resources today which you will probably get to see in a form adapted to King's Lynn some time soon.

Today I went over to the Millennium Village in South Lynn to take some pictures. I will add some of them over the weekend in a gallery. The development is likely to take as long as 10 years to fully complete, and the first few houses are completed and looking good. I also discovered that one of the members of staff at KES has bought one of the flats. I had a look round the show flat, which was very impressive. If I was 10 years younger and had no kids I'd probably be very interested in buying one!

Today I also said goodbye to our Chinese visitors. They were very impressed with the Google Earth and Interactive Whiteboard which I showed them, and I hope to see them again in China some time. I'll send you a postcard...

A few connections...

First of all, today had a meeting with our Chinese visitors from Qinghua Middle School in Chongqing. We've been showing a DVD of aerial views over the city which was presented to us by David and Mr. Yin, which shows it to be an incredible city. I showed the visitors Google Earth (of course), and we flew from Beijing and Tiananmen Square to Chongqing and managed to locate the school. We talked about the ideas of exchanging information between the schools, and will look to doing a project involving a new computer based 'chat room' and Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) called UNISERVITY.
I also tried my best to get a trip out there, to see the 3 Gorges.
We also talked about how China has one time zone, so that whatever the time is in Beijing, it is the same time in the whole of China, despite the huge size of the country.
We also talked about KARST scenery, which is the scenery produced when areas of limestone are eroded at different rates. The famous GUILIN pinnacles are a short flight away from the city.

I also had a virtual communication with Sarah from PICKLE MY FANCY. She is following the 100 Mile Diet idea which I mentioned in an earlier post. The idea is that you can only eat food produced within 100 miles of where you live. Sarah got in touch to tell me about her blog, which makes very interesting reading. There are some obvious links with the local area.
One of them is this product below. Do you recognise it ?
I'll post more about this product and its local links at the weekend.
How do you know how far away a place is from your house ? Well Sarah also mentions on the blog a very useful tool called the UK POSTCODE CALCULATOR.
This allows you to put in 2 postcodes and it will let you know the distance : 'as the crow flies' rather than along roads - it will only take the first part of the postcode e.g. PE30, but is a useful little application.

Can I also mention Tony Cassidy's recent posting on Global Warming in Antarctica. Although it is not related to SVALBARD, a lot of the processes that are mentioned are relevant to us too. Remember that you need to be able to talk about some of the Physical processes in the area - as shown in the past paper question you had recently.
Refer to GLACIAL processes which happen, and also WEATHERING processes which occur because of the low temperatures.
Remember also that you will need to know the definitions of the 5 terms which make up the word FUGIS. Not all of you could do this easily, and you MUST be able to write these - we shall be testing this as we get nearer the exam, but you can make a start now.

Vistors from Near and Far to OUR PLACE...

The Queen came very close to 'OUR PLACE' today when she visited the school.
I hope you enjoyed the close-up view of her Majesty as you stood outside the front of school.
Here's the visit as reported by the BBC:

The Queen has unveiled a plaque during a visit to mark the centenary of a Norfolk school.

King Edward VII High School in King's Lynn was opened by the Queen's great grandfather, King Edward VII, in November 1906.

The Queen was photographed on a 100-year-old camera when she returned to the school for the first time in more than half a century.

She also signed a portrait of herself - as she had done in 1956.

A photographer used a Box Brownie to record her visit on Wednesday as part of a BBC documentary about Edwardian inventions.

Edward VII's opening of the school on 5 November 1906 was also recorded on a Box Brownie.

Head teacher Michael Douglass said the visit would be a lasting memory for many of the children at the school.

"It is a great privilege for the school to have a visit from Her Majesty, The Queen."

Imagine the school was to get a Royal Visit in 2057.
What changes would you expect to see in the area in and around the school.
Are the buildings today sustainable ?

If you have any pictures of the visit, let me have them in electronic format and I'll post them here.

Meanwhile, a virtual colleague of mine: Tom Biebrach who teaches in Wales is sunning himself in Zambia, visiting a FAR PLACE with the aim of making closer links with students at Kabundi High School in Zambia.
You can read about his visit at his weblog which is HERE.

Meanwhile, we have been playing host to more visitors this week from a FAR PLACE.
This time it's CHONGQING (which I understand is pronounced CHUN CHING, or something similar to that)
Chongqing is a HUGE city, with over 30 million people living in the METROPOLITAN area. I have been given a DVD showing the city and it's a hugely impressive city on the Yangtze with an amazing variety of landscape and buildings and impressive infrastructure. Please ask if you would like to see some of the DVD.
We have a link with Qinghua Middle School in the city, which is in Banan province.
For more information see my CHINA page.You may have seen Mr. Yin (pictured above) about the school this week. He is the Headmaster of the school, and I will be meeting him tomorrow to see whether we can further some GEOGRAPHICAL links between our 2 schools (and hopefully get me out to China at some stage!)

Finally, a link which may be useful to colleagues teaching the Pilot. Noel Jenkins has reminded me that there are materials which are very useful for teaching the topic of People as Consumers at the Birmingham University MAKING THE CONNECTION project page. Download a whole 5 week unit of lessons as PDF files with associated powerpoints. We shall be using this later this year, so you can always get a sneak preview if you are a KES student. The themes are related to BANANAS and MOBILE PHONES: 2 items you possibly consume.

Chinese Visitors

Some visitors to MY PLACE next week. Have been invited to a reception on Monday to say hello to the Chinese delegation who will be in the UK for 8 days, and on Wednesday we are having our Royal visitor, and on Thursday will have a speaker in the afternoon talking about the Middle East conflict.
Preparing some special China lessons for our KS3 groups. For more see the relevant page of GEOGRAPHYPAGES.
Also tomorrow, all being well, we have our visit to Leicester, as part of the Young People's Geographies Project, which involves four students from the Pilot GCSE groups. I will post more about this at the weekend.

More visitors...

In addition to the visitors already mentioned, we are going to possibly have more visitors this half term, and I don't mean the Queen...
We will have visitors from our Chinese partner school, and I am looking at setting up a link so that you can exchange views on what MY PLACE is for you, and for pupils from the Chinese school.
More on this to come soon too...

Can you see this post through the Fog ??

Fog is very much in the news at the moment as we approach the Christmas period

There are tens of thousands of passengers delayed at airports like Heathrow. Some have no luggage, and others are sleeping on the floor. The story has occupied many hours on News24, and there are several issues which are of interest to geographers as a result. The fog has finally cleared today in Norfolk, although there are still patches in other parts of the country.

Modern aircraft can take off and land in fog, but safety considerations mean that there are longer delays between take-offs, which at Heathrow leads to major cancellations very quickly. There have to be larger gaps left on the ground in particular, and visibility should generally be around 500m, but in some airports it has been only 100 metres. I went up to Hunstanton yesterday to get the main Christmas supermarket shop done, and stock up on logs for the fire, and the visibility was only around 50 metres.

What is Fog ?

Well, there are actually several types of FOG.

In the UK, we mainly experience advection fog or radiation fog.

Fog requires moist air which is cooled below the dew point. This more usually happens at altitude to produce cloud droplets. Fog droplets are formed around some sort of condensation nucleus, such as dust, or ash, or salt or pollution in the form of aerosols.

When we breathe out on a cold morning, we are producing our own mini fogs, which persist for just a few seconds. The HIGH pressure has allowed for the fog to persist as there are light winds and the sun is low in the sky (the shortest day was during this period of fog, so there is no time for the heat of the sun to evaporate the fog)

Earlier in the week, fog caused the cancellation of the Carling Cup Quarter Final match between Arsenal and Liverpool.

Games can’t be played if the goals can’t be seen from the centre circle, or the referee can’t communicate with linesmen – there are also issues with being able to distinguish colours of the player’s kits…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog - Wikipedia article

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understanding/fog.shtml - BBC Weather article on Fog

Of course it’s not all bad news. How about this posting from the BBC’s “Have your Say” on the Fog…

Oh well, at least a significant pollution saving is to be had. It's good for the environment. Less planes equals less pollution (and so on). Long may the fog continue.

Mel Cabbit, Petersfield, United Kingdom

A few questions for you to ponder:

a) What is the difference between mist and fog ?

b) Does fog count as a form of precipitation ?

c) Why are the fogs on the Pacific coast of S. America of particular use to the inhabitants.

http://www.fogquest.org has some useful information to help with part c) of the above

Keep an eye out for fog as we go through winter. Some of the fogs will be advection fog, and some radiation fog.

There are also features called FOG HOLLOWS (also Frost hollow). These are areas where the topography increases the chance of fogs forming.

Banner fog is a feature of my journey to school through the winter. At various points, the road crosses streams and hollows and fog tends to accumulate there, and then evaporate as the road rises up the hill.

Fog has also been linked with a number of unfortunate events in history. Can you identify any ?

Also making a Foggy PhotoJam with some wonderful FLICKR images which have been posted in the last few days: the immediacy of the web once again in action!

Looking for some FOGGY music to go with it. There’s a track by Frank Sinatra called “A Foggy Day”. Anyone know of other foggy music… “Misty” perhaps ?

And finally, the answer to the picture clue of earlier in the month.

The picture was of Eric Morecambe: someone who is very much associated with this time of year due to the enduring popularity of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Shows, and the second picture is of cockles.

King’s Lynn has a large number of Chinese immigrants, many of whom work in the food processing industry locally. In February 2004, a number of Cocklers died in Morecambe Bay. This put the issue of migration and the use of migrant labour into the headlines.

Christmas is Coming, and it's coming from China !

As I said on Friday, we'll be finishing off the Svalbard work next week.
Around the middle of December we'll have a quick sneak preview of the work on the People as Consumers unit when we look at CHRISTMAS and the consumer aspects of this holiday.
This weekend, Felixstowe made the news as the largest container ship in the world (it can carry 11 000 containers!) arrived full of goods from China.
Its arrival was reported on the BBC NEWS site, and the GUARDIAN also had a useful article.
The container ship is called the EMMA MAERSK. It will apparently take about 3 days to unload the UK consignment of materials. Felixstowe is one destination on a route which included Gothenburg, Yantian (China), Hong Kong and Tanjung Pelepas (Malaysia)
The ship is a quarter of a mile long !

There's a very useful PHOTO STORY following a toy car from design to sale here.
An interesting article here on SANTA's LITTLE HELPERS: children not elves...

The ship contained the following items according to the 'Independent on Sunday':
2 million christmas decorations
thousands of electrical goods
12 800 mp3 players
33 000 cocktail shakers
150 tons of New Zealand lamb
thousands of frozen chickens
138 000 tins of cat food

I will be absent from the first part of the lesson on Tuesday as I have a meeting. I will of course let you know once more what to do, but it will also be posted here on Monday. Remember that both Task A and Task B need to be completed.