Exploring the Concepts and Content in IGCSE and IBDP Geography
This video serves as a great crossover between units like urban environments and oceans/coastal margins in the IBDP syllabus. It’s something you should look out for when you do your post-Covid city trips! An interesting video that concerns many of the concepts of space, place, power, spatial interactions, and more. Credit to Half as Interesting Youtube channel for providing this video.
Why the East Ends of (Most) Cities are Poorer – Half as Interesting
Below is an IGCSE coursework checklist I created for my students and their component 3 (coursework) in the IGCSE geography programme. It is meant to provide a pathway to ensure students have a clear understanding of the expectations to do well. I do not give this to them from the beginning of the coursework writing process as I believe the coursework is a tool for (guided) inquiry. Instead I give them personal feedback as well as this checklist when they have completed their rough drafts.
I have slightly adapted this document so it is more general and other teachers can use/adapt it. We investigate urban stress in Rotterdam, but this coursework checklist is applicable to nearly all other fieldwork investigations. If any teachers out there have feedback I would love to hear it!
Click here to download the IGCSE Geography Coursework Checklist
The article below is an interesting read for anyone interested in both rural and urban environments. Counter-urbanisation, urbanisation, tourism, cultural identity, and architectural design are all interesting themes at play in the plans of building Europe’s tallest sky scraper in Brande, a town of just over 7000 people. Credit to the Guardian for the article, no author named. The photograph below provided by Bestseller and found in the article is of the planned skyscraper.
What lies below is a system I am using to give feedback on Paper 1, 2, and 3 essays. I have found over time that I am constantly writing the same feedback over and over again across different students. I think that this approach has cut down grading and feedback time on my end, while giving them the same (and in some cases more) feedback than previously. Not only that, it engages students to actually make connections and take a bit more control of their feedback. I still write personalised feedback, but I do find this system is working and appreciated so far!
My good friend and fellow geographer Arnoud Kamp recommended this (in Dutch) mini-documentary to me. At only 45 minutes long, it goes into the diversity, personality, and future of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. If you know anything about Rotterdam and the transformation it is undergoing, you will know about the rapid gentrification that is taking over. This documentary analyses the practical consequences of the drivers of this change. One of the more apt and realistic presentations of the damages of gentrification and so called ‘urban renewal’.
https://www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlicht/kijk/afleveringen/2018-2019/mijn-stad-is-mijn-hart.html
THIS IS A MUST WATCH FOR DUTCH SPEAKERS INTERESTED IN GEOGRAPHY AND CITIES
Hussein Nassar has graciously provided 200+ hours of GIS tutorials for no charge to the public. For anyone interested in GIS, particularly those already having beyond a foundational knowledge and skills with regards to ArcGIS, check out his informative videos on how to approach many different facets of GIS and programming.
https://www.husseinnasser.com/p/youtube.html
Last year, my grade 12s really enjoyed this activity for their revision and it ended up being quite straight forward to run. If you don’t have one, make an account at www.padlet.com. As a teacher, on a Smartboard, projector, Prowise; whatever you use, you can copy and paste one of the questions into a padlet. Share the link to your padlet with your students, who can then via any device access it and respond to the question. I did it in groups, so in teams of 3 students could come up with their answer. Then, as a class, when all groups had answered, we looked at the responses on the big screen to analyse who did the best and compare/contrast responses.
Padlet: www.padlet.com
Hazards and Disasters Revision Questions: Hazards and Disasters Questions
Urban Environments Revision Questions: Urban Environments Questions
Global Interactions Revision Questions: Global Interactions Questions
Mind you, these questions were based on the old syllabus, but there are still many relevant and useful questions that have ties to the new syllabus. Also, some questions are quite specific to what I taught in class, so be aware that they will be of no used to you.
The link below is to a feature run by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development on Social Housing in Vienna. This is in many ways linked to the social deprivation area of the syllabus, as well as a more eco-city designed detailed example.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html
The link below leads to a download of photographs I have taken of this social housing district of Vienna in the spring of 2018. I have annotated them in order to display features of thoughtful urban planning.
GIS is no longer the ‘future’ of geography, it is the now. Browsing through Linkedin jobs, it is clear that any single job related to geography makes it a baseline requirement that the applicant have experience with GIS.
Click the link for an online, free training with the world-renowned GIS company, ESRI. It is a great introduction to the mechanics and usefulness of GIS. It is a course that is helpful for students and teachers alike, and at the end you get a certificate (PD hours!). You will need to make a (free) account.
Below is the PDF download to a Collins revision list/glossary of foundation level geographic terms. Using this can really beef up terminology usage and thereby improve essay writing as well as understanding of short answer questions. The pictures and diagrams throughout can be very helpful to understanding the definitions.
Collins Glossary of Geographical Terminology
(Image taken from link)