School Geography

I got an O-level in Geography in Inverness and a Higher in Geography after we had moved to Keith. But that was almost 40 years ago, so my memory of exactly what I did in School Geography is dim. I cannot even remember the name of my Geography teacher in Inverness, though I do remember Eric Barton, my teacher in Keith, whose daughter Erica was in my class. A few years later he taught my father word processing at an evening class I believe.

But quite what we did in the Geography class is not something I can particularly recall. Indeed I remember rather better the Geography projects we did at primary school. For example I did a project on Sydney, Australia, and as part of the project sent off to the Australian Tourist Board for some leaflets. A huge pile of wonderful glossy brochures on all parts of Australia arrived at our door in Inverness, and I still remember the excitement of looking through those at a world which seemed impossibly far away. I wonder what I would have said had I known that I would spend a year in Australia some 20 years later. And I remember also doing a project on the Irrawaddy River which seemed so much more exotic than the mundane River Ness.

But now I find that some Geography classes at schools have their own blogs and are doing exciting projects on map techniques, population, settlement, water resources etc. One such blog is from Paul Williams, a Gegraphy teacher (perhaps the Geography teacher) at the Shrewsbury School in Bankok, Thailand. Not only does this site have interesting information of its own, it has a myriad of links to other educational Geography blogs.

And that would seem to be a reasource that I can use in this quest to make sense of Geography. I can go back to school without ever having to enter a classroom. So I will do exactly that, and I will report again on how I get on.

But currently I am in Malaga and such educational issues will have to wait. I am off to explore the varying Riojas of the region.