#86: An apology and some news

Some news on 'progress' from Mary Colwell, also tied in with news of an apology from a Tory MP who had mentioned on her constituency leaflets that she had been rather more involved with securing a GCSE Natural History than she actually was...

A sort of apology anyway...

The message also mentions that there is going to be a roundtable later in the year to discuss a "nature pathway".

A somewhat grudging, late and indirect apology - but moving on...THANK YOU everyone for your support, that meant a huge amount.

Time to announce something much more positive!
A 'nature pathway'. See 🧵below...https://t.co/fOVn8betoP

— Mary Colwell (@curlewcalls) August 25, 2023

Source of image: Stroud News and Journal. 

#85: Always Possible Podcast

Bank holiday weekend is almost upon us! What are your plans? Going on any walks? Visiting an urban centre?

Listen to our inspirational podcast with guerilla geographer and creative explorer @DanRavenEllison. And check out #SlowWays https://t.co/DeaLVCvyh0. You're welcome! pic.twitter.com/32r2DBQcsl

— always possible (@always_possible) August 25, 2023

Check out the Always Possible Podcast for an interview with Daniel Raven Ellison.

It includes a mention of Slow Ways, and also how we can connect more closely with nature and heritage and culture through developing a walking infrastructure.

“Geography exists at all scales at the same time, so whether it’s the guerrilla gardener pulling up a paving slab and making that a bit wilder, or whether it’s thinking about where you want to go on holiday, that’s all geography.”

“Science and history have done a very good job of creating places where people are very aware that they’re recreationally engaging in science or history. Geography, people are playing with that all the time but because of so many boring, dry textbooks, people think that it’s something that it’s not.”

#84: Feathers and Featherbase

If you found a bird's feather, would you be able to identify the bird it came from?

Featherbase is a wonderful resource and a labour of love.

As the creators say:

Every feather has a fascinating story to tell, each so unique in its makeup, shape, form, texture, color and function it serves to the bird. Feathers can teach us so much about birds and how they live. They bring people closer to the natural world – and therefore play an important role in its preservation.

Details (from the website):

Featherbase is a working group of German feather scientists and other collectors worldwide who came together with their personal collections and created the biggest and most comprehensive online feather library in the world. Using our website, it is possible to identify feathers from hundreds of different species, compare similarities between them, work out gender or age-specific characteristics and look at the statistics of countless feather measurements. In contrast to the conventional work of museums, Featherbase is much more oriented towards the general public, allowing not just enrolled scientists the opportunity to gain access to the collection, but anyone with an interest in studying birds and their feathers. Featherbase also frequently collaborates with scientific or educational organizations by offering images, data or teamwork in general.

Featherbase works completely independently, without administrative affiliation, and first and foremost without commercial interests. We are a non-profit making entity and funded entirely by our own contributors. The collecting of feathers and skins for our database is approved by the relevant authorities, and for any protected/CITES listed species held, we are fastidious about maintaining records of their origin.

This will go onto our list of websites to help identify wildlife and other natural history related phenomena and artefacts.

There is an Instagram page for the project.

Feathers - image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

#83: Encounter Nature App - coming in 2024

I'm a great fan of Melissa Harrison's writing. I have a number of her books in my library and several of them will also be added to the suggested reading list for the course. Check out her fiction book "All Among the Barley" and her collection of nature pieces called 'The Stubborn Light of Things'. She has also channelled 'BB' with a pair of children's books based on the classic 'The Little Grey Men', who I have blogged about previously. I also have her book called 'Rain', capturing four walks. She has also produced a 4 volume series of seasonal almanacs.

She is now working on a new app which will be launching in Summer 2024.

You can sign up to the newsletter to find out more on the progress as it takes shape. 

It sounds like it will be a very useful app for students to have on their own devices, and perhaps keep a nature diary during the course to track their observations and experiences. I think that would be a really nice idea for engagement with the natural world.

Description: 

Person by person, street by street, we need to repair our connection to nature. Encounter is a guided nature journal from nature writer Melissa Harrison that will open your eyes to the wild world around you, whether you live in the heart of a city or the deepest countryside. Full of seasonal prompts, tips and ideas, it will help you turn photos, notes and audio into a rich, meaningful and lifelong relationship with the natural world.

 

#82: UN Biodiversity

The United Nations Biodiversity feed is a useful one to follow. We will be producing a list of useful Twitter / X feeds to follow as part of the resources that are created in due course.

Healthy soil is vital for:
🌧️ Climate regulation
🌱 Growing food, fibre & fuel
🌼 #Biodiversity
and more!

But our soils are at risk; we need to work to restore degraded land and support healthy #soils to meet the current & future demand for food.

Via @FAOclimate pic.twitter.com/mVJrTG85eS

— UN Biodiversity (@UNBiodiversity) August 12, 2023

#81: Natural History Reading List #6: England in Particular

Common Ground was an organisation which was founded by Sue Clifford, Angela King and Roger Deakin in 1983.

One of their most impressive publications is called 'England in Particular'. It is a hefty tome which I have in my library. I've seen copies in second hand book shops / charity shops several times over the years - check Oxfam in particular for books.

It is subtitled: "A Celebration of the Commonplace, the local, the vernacular and the distinctive".

It is one of the most interesting books to come out of their work, and takes the form of a large A-Z compendium of distinctiveness, very nicely illustrated.

The entries range across landscape elements, myths, folklore, villages, country life, natural history, botany, entomology, riparian ecosystems and everything in between.

In a review by Mark Cocker, he praises the book for its diversity:

"It involves a complex blend of archaeology, anthropology, social and natural history, ecology and simple storytelling. It also incorporates the numerous voices of people who have submitted to the authors their own experience of English landscapes.

Their items resolve into six broad categories: plants, trees and vegetational communities; wild animals; various forms of rustic food, often fruits and vegetables; architectural structures and styles; rural traditions and festivals. The sixth category involves elements so broad in theme one might consider them abstractions, such as their essays on "Facing North" or "The Weather"."

He also reminds us of the importance of this diversity and vernacular landscape elements.

"Once you homogenise a landscape in the way that we see across large parts of central England, you not only lose the wildlife, you rob its inhabitants of the elements that make up their identity. The antiseptic uniformity of many English high streets is part analogue, part consequence of the surrounding countryside's wider sterilisation."

The book is over 500 pages long and features articles of differing length, and lovely illustrations in a range of styles. Some of the entries are for geographical features such as rias.

Here's a sample from the contents pages:

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license.

#80: Natural History Reading List #5 'Reconnection' - Sample Chapter

A recent book from Miles Richardson called 'Reconnection' is one that I haven't read yet, but may need to add to my collection ahead of the first teaching as its theme connects with what will undoubtedly emerge as important themes in the new specification. 

There is plenty on the relationship between Humans and Nature here.

A sample chapter can be read on the link below:

The Great Theft - how our place within nature was lost: https://t.co/PPYQk10m6P pic.twitter.com/ChhOz3Fm1p

— Miles Richardson (@findingnature) May 12, 2023

#79: The Language of Landscape

I contributed a piece to the Ordnance Survey's 'Mapping News' when it was still distributed to schools - at the time of the free OS maps for Year 7 students programme. It was called the 'Language of Landscape'

This led to me creating a booklet for Natural England.

It can be accessed via the National Archives - code NE201.

I came across this quote in a book I read last year.

It is about the value of landscape. Landscape according to Anne Whiston Spirn was our original language. She explains the powerful idea that:

“landscapes were the first human texts, read before the invention of other signs and symbols… a person literate in landscape sees significance where an illiterate person notes nothing.”

I then found a copy of the book in a second hand bookshop a few days later coincidentally. 

Reference

Spirn, A. W.: ‘Language of Landscape’ – Yale University Press; Revised Edition, 2000

The Languge of Landscape: 

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20140304113507/http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/50009?category=10005

#78: Time to vote for the Tree of the Year

I would hope that students taking the GCSE Natural History would be interested in voting for the Tree of the Year.

The tree above is the Waverley Abbey Yew, which was the Tree of the Year for 2022.

The image is courtesy of the Ancient Tree Inventory.

Is there an Ancient Tree near you?

A tree may be a village’s oldest inhabitant, a founding figure in a region’s identity or a natural monument integral to a nation’s story. It can also be a much-loved local landmark, a place to play and exercise, a gardener’s pride and joy or a space for communities to gather.

You can follow the voting link below to vote for the Tree of the Year 2023.

Voting is open until Sunday 15 October.

🏆 Cast your vote in #TreeOfTheYear 2023!

🎉 We've just released the shortlist for Tree of the Year 2023, celebrating 13 spectacular #UrbanTrees.

🥇 Each has its own story, but only one can win!

🗳️ See the full 2023 shortlist and cast your vote here: https://t.co/MjCN6QDfdl pic.twitter.com/0bDjrmlQfg

— Woodland Trust🌳 (@WoodlandTrust) August 15, 2023

#77: Saltmarsh App

Saltmarshes are an interesting ecosystem and the UK has quite a few of them.

There is a Saltmarsh app available to download.

It is a citizen science app inviting people to submit surveys.

It has a useful section which shows saltmarsh plants to help identify them. This will be helpful for anyone going on, or preparing for a field visit to a saltmarsh.

When I taught 'A' level geography in a previous school in West Norfolk, we used to have an annual trip to the coast for fieldwork. I think those schools who would beable to get to a saltmarsh should consider visiting one. 

There is a good opportunity to test a whole range of fieldwork skills in these environments, and they carry a range of risks to assess as well.

The website, from which the app can be downloaded has a useful guide to saltmarshes.

You can identify the locations of your nearest Saltmarsh using the MAGiC app (see the separate posts on this interactive map to see how it works). I've added the layer below and zoomed into the area of the Wash.

#76: Natural History Podcasts #3 - Jill Duffy

I came across this podcast while searching for some other OCR related materials.

It features the CEO of Cambridge Assessment: Jill Duffy, who I met at the most recent OCR Consultative Forum for Geography (I've been attending these for many years now, initially as an employee of the Geographical Association, and then as an independent consultant and now as a teacher who uses the Hodder textbooks that I helped to write).

She is talking about the proposed specification and answering questions from young people about it.

#75: New BSL signs for environmental terms

An interesting story in The Guardian.

This would be an interesting context for an activity, particularly if there was a chance to pair up with a school locally which was providing specialist teaching for hearing impaired students.

Scientists and BSL users from the Royal Society and Scottish Sensory Centre worked together to create signs for common environmental terms. The first 200 signs were themed around biodiversity, ecosystems, pollution and the physical environment.

To sign “greenhouse gases”, for example, BSL users are told to gesture with “both hands in circular shapes [to] represent gases, then put the left hand at the horizontal position and move the right hand, with the index finger pointing, down and back up to the left hand to show the sunlight reflecting on Earth’s surface”.

A full list of terms and subjects can be seen here. The initiative has won a number of awards.

The symbol for albedo is a good example of how the sign links to the term itself.

You can also see the specific geography terms and perhaps use them for an activity - how about a BSL club at school if a colleague has some skills. I did a BSL course some years ago and have a book and other notes from the course, but am very rusty now.

#74: Earth - the final episode

 This series concluded last night...

Catch it on iPlayer - particularly this final episode.

In 30 mins on @BBCTwo we conclude our #Earth series . 4.5 (ish) million years in 5 (ish) hours . Only the BBC could/would do this & get the support of >200 scientists @OpenUniversity I’d say it has been the greatest story ever told , and I’d say my final PTC is one of the most… https://t.co/yQXUqVZtgi

— Chris Packham (@ChrisGPackham) August 14, 2023

#73: Biodiversity Stripes

Created by Professor Miles Richardson from the University of Derby.

Check them out here.

Professor Miles Richardson (@findingnature) from the University of Derby created the biodiversity stripes in August 2022 and set up biodiversitystripes.info. 

Only by addressing both the warming climate and loss of wildlife do we stand a chance of passing on a stable planet for future generations.

The ‘biodiversity stripes’ provide a visual representation of the change in biodiversity over time, often since 1970. The highest level of biodiversity is coloured bright green. Lower levels move through yellow to grey, depending upon the level of decline. Darker greys appear with greater declines.

The original stripes used data from the Living Planet Index. This data tells us that the population of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles has seen an average drop of 69% globally since 1970. The global data includes over 30,000 populations of over 5000 species. The UK stripes use JNCC UK biodiversity indicators.

#72: A-Z of British Trees

The Woodland Trust has produced a useful illustrated guide to British Trees.

Each entry includes:

- the Latin name of the tree

- a description

- images of the trees

- identification guide to help identify the tree and what it looks like at different times of the year.

- a guide to where the trees can be found

- value to wildlife

- uses of the wood and associated mythology and other stories

- threats to the speices e.g. ash trees are threatened by ash dieback.

A very useful guide.

#71: Soil: home to more than half the world's species

A good piece in 'The Guardian' on the importance of soil: something which I would imagine would be an important part of the final specification.

Soil is of vital importance.

Soil is the top layer of the Earth’s crust and is composed of a mixture of water, gases, minerals and organic matter. It is where 95% of the planet’s food is grown yet it has historically been left out of wider debates about nature protections because we know so little about it. One teaspoon of healthy soil can contain up to a billion bacteria and more than 1km of fungi.

#70: Crab Museum

While in Margate recently I had the good fortune to visit the Crab Museum. It's open Thu-Sunday. 

It can be found upstairs behind a colourful but unassuming door in the Old Town.

This takes an irreverent look at the crustacean with a whole range of displays and fun captions. There is also a gift shop selling a range of fun postcards, pencils and other gifts for the crab-lover in your life.

If you were expecting a fairly dry museum, some of the displays will have you scratching your chin. The team behind the museum include a geographer, which is always a sign of quality.

The blog has a range of interesting posts, which will also give you an insight into the sense of humour that sits behind the whole experience.

Admission to the museum is FREE, and they promise that if you don't enjoy it you'll get your money back.

It gave me an idea for a possible student activity: that each member of a group selects a card with the name of a native animal from a chosen context e.g. British wildlife. 

The plan would then be for the students to develop a plan for a museum, and some of the exhibits that would go into it, and create some display material, interpretive signage etc. I'm sure you can think of other elements to this task.

In time, once things become clearer, I will create a card deck for the activity with some sample UK wildlife to choose from, and a rubric for the task as well.

#69: Linnean Learning

Linnean Learning is a website and Twitter account which shares resources created by the Linnean Society.

Their three Linnaeus-inspired values are:

1. Going outside and exploring in nature makes us happy and healthy
2. Our understanding of the natural world requires recording and sharing
3. Learning about life on Earth is vital to sustaining its future

They have both Primary and Secondary sections.

There is a selection of animated videos which some will find helpful when putting together a library of YouTube clips, particularly useful for homework tasks, or prior viewing ahead of a lesson where a new idea is going to be introduced.

This resource is listed in a directory of resources which are being prepared as part of the suite of unofficial resources that I am currently working on in anticipation of the release of the specification at some point.

What other websites do you think might form part of such a resource?

#68: WWF: Risky Seafood Business Report

'The ocean is the blue heart of our planet and we ignore its health at our peril. Protecting this precious resource should be the top priority of every single fishery around the world, yet for too long unsustainable practices have gone unchecked, draining the ocean of life.' 

Kate Norgrove, Executive Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at WWF 

My favourite meal is fish and chips (with mushy peas), from a decent chippy, of which there are several close to where I live in Norfolk.

We like fish and chips as a nation too.

A fairly recent WWF Risky Seafood Business report says that a total of 887,000 tonnes of seafood was eaten by people in 2019 - the equivalent to 5.2 billion portions of fish and chips. The report can be downloaded from this link (PDF)

It goes into detail on the impacts of seafood extraction on other aspects of marine ecosystems, including the impact on endangered species.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

There is also a good range of useful images that would find their way into lessons on the oceans, food production, fisheries and sustainability.

Image source: WWF Risky Seafood Business Report

#67: Noticing Nature

This Twitter account is rather good and is well worth following. It is apparently the work of four women who are also putting together a book due out in September called 'Nature's Calendar'.

It shares ideas from a range of people and places, and would be a useful companion perhaps to Richard Mabey's 'Flora Britannica'. (see earlier blogpost on this book)

It is based on a Japanese concept of there being a whole range of seasons, each of which lasts just a few days at times.

The 72 Japanese micro-seasons are outlined here on this website.

The book comes out in September.

I would imagine that climate change is going to mess up these fine grained annual rhythms sadly...

#66: Field Studies Council courses

It's inevitable that those teachers who are going to teach the new (eventually approved) specification will need some training of their own first to ensure that they are ready to feel confident in the classroom. Some of this training will hopefully be provided by the awarding body and be specific to the development of the course, and the assessment. 

I hope that this blog and the Facebook group that we created at a similar time will help in developing a community of teachers who will, in turn, share the resources that they have 

One place to look for training will be your local Field Studies Council centre.

We are experts in Nature Learning!
Start your learning journey or broaden your knowledge - our courses are delivered at structured levels to progress your learning suited to your needs.#Nature #UKWildlife #Biodiversity

— Field Studies Council (@FieldStudiesC) January 3, 2023

Scroll to the bottom of any page on the Field Studies Council website and you will see a link through to all of the FSC Centres.

Also worth saying that as a long-term moderator for the Geographical Association's Secondary Quality Mark (SGQM)

#65: GCSENatHist Twitter account

A reminder that alongside this blog and our Facebook group, we also have a twitter account. We haven't been tweeting much yet, but will be tweeting (or Xing) a little more once things (hopefully) start to speed up on the development of specifications and other supporting resources.