Geographical Association

Wendy Garner and Tony Pickford


Websites

Isle of Coll
Originally created in 1996 by the Coll Business Centre as a promotional site for the Hebridean island (the fictionalised ‘Struay’ in the Katie Morag books), this website is now maintained by Pete Mackay and contains an extensive selection of high quality images of the island. As well as the expected landscape images, there are pictures showing other aspects of island life, including employment, leisure activities and wildlife. The site is well designed, although the use of Java menus could make it slow to load over a dial-up or slower broadband connection.

Free Foto
This site claims to be the largest collection of free digital photographs for private non-commercial use on the internet. The images are grouped under clear headings and there are large collections for regions of the UK, Europe and the USA. As an example of the site’s depth of coverage, it contains well over 300 images of the city of Liverpool.

Panoramas.dk
Created by Hans Nyberg, a commercial photographer in Denmark, this site aims to be a definitive collection of links to QuickTime VR panoramic images on the web. The worldwide VR directory section can be searched or browsed by geographical regions. Although there is a bias towards images showing North American and European locations, there is a growing collection of images from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Weather Online
This site provides, amongst its many features, up-to-date weather information for world locations and an archive of climate data for a huge number of places. Using the site, it is possible to access charts showing yearly summaries of temperature and precipitation for locations around the world and ‘history’ charts showing weather patterns over periods ranging from 1 to 52 weeks. There are also links to worldwide webcams. This is an incredibly rich resource, although marred slightly by the banner advertisements that provide its funding.

River World
The River Trent
Coastal Environments
These sites are specific educational resources designed to help in the teaching of the geography National Curriculum key stage 2 programme of study requirement 6c ‘water and its effects on landscapes and people, including the physical features of rivers or coasts, and the processes of erosion and deposition that affect them’. Each website takes a slightly different approach. River World is a very detailed resource which focuses on the vocabulary of river processes, images of river features and a directory of world rivers. The River Trent site focuses on that river from source to mouth, taking a simpler ‘virtual fieldtrip’ approach. Coastal Environments uses an on-screen ‘big book’ format with hyperlinked text to explain unfamiliar terms. All the sites have strengths and all could be used by older key stage 2 pupils for independent research.

Environment Agency
Although very much aimed at an adult audience, there is a section for ‘Kids’ (as the site labels it) focusing on relevant environmental issues. The most useful part of the site is ‘What’s in your backyard?’ which presents information on a local environment (such as flooding risk, water quality and landfill sites), using a map centred on a postcode entered by the user. It is a very good example of a Geographical Information System (GIS) in action.

Mad About Mountains
Website showing a range of excellent photographs on mountains, both at home and overseas in a range of seasons and weather conditions. Children can use these to incorporate into their own presentations but they should acknowledge the photographer by name.



Related fiction

Hutchins, P. (2001) Rosie’s Walk. London: Red Fox.
This storybook could be linked to key stage 1 work focussing on the local area. Rosie’s walk around the farmyard could be used to develop ideas about routes and simple maps. Geographical vocabulary – in particular directional language – is rich within the text, and the book will help to develop geographical skills and ideas which could then be applied within the wider context of local area work. For example, children could take a short walk around the local area and take photographs using a digital camera. These images could then be used to produce a class book in the style of Rosie’s Walk.

Hedderwick, M. (1997) Katie Morag Delivers the Mail. London: Red Fox.
This could be linked to key stage 1 work focussing on the contrasting locality of Coll.

The QCA Geography Scheme suggests Katie Morag and the Two Grandmothers, but Katie Morag Delivers the Mail also offers many good opportunities for geographical learning. The story focuses on the delivery of mail around the island and thus has the potential to be used effectively to develop map reading and map-making skills. Geographical vocabulary is rich within this text and could be used to further develop geographical accuracy of maps used and produced.

This could also be used alongside the Easiteach software and websites described in ‘Geography topics for key stage 1’ (see page 6 of SuperSchemes Unit 18). This would help children to further develop ideas about the Isle of Coll.

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