Greenfield Brownfield Debate

In Year 7 we are thinking about where we can fit all the extra homes Leicester needs. Many of you have been asked to produce a poster for homework promoting either your greenfield or brownfield development from the point of view of the developer. Above are the examples we looked at in class.

Route around Bradgate

Click here for the route we will take


View Bradgate Trip in a larger map

Bradgate Trip

A reminder to year 6 to get their slips and money in before the deadline. A great view over Leicester awaits us.

Old John Bradgate Park Leicester in Leicester

Globalisation

We have been looking at some of the positive effects of the globalisation of industry in year 7 and 8. We looked at how globalisation means cheaper prices for us and how it offers some people the chance to earn a good wage in the poorest counties of the world. Of course its not always like that. We have already discussed the environmental cost of globalisation, but what about the exploitation of workers. What makes a fair wage and what are good working conditions. of course we can never get a good feel for what its like to work in a factory for long hours and low wages without trying it for ourselves however this game may help us to understand a little bit.

The box

The BBC have had a project following a shipping container around the world. This may be of interest to year 7 and 8 studying globalisation. View an introduction to this project here. You can track the position of the shipping container here. Shipping containers allow much of the international trade central to globalisation.

Globalisation

In year 7 and 8 we are looking at Globalisation. Part of this has involved a look at Leicester's fashion trade and how in order to survive companies like JAK are having to source fabric from Bangladesh, design the garment and cut the fabric in Leicester then stitch the garment in countries like Latvia before selling the product in countries like Germany. It is all about reducing input and process costs (especially cheap workers) while selling the finished product where it will get the best price. All the transport involved may make sense moneywise but does it make environmental sense? For another example of the effects of globalisation take a look at this video on the banana trade.

If you are still confused by some of the terms we have been using then some of them are explained in this short video (yes I know its a bit outdated mentioning minidisks!)

Mental Maps

We've been thinking about the way we view or perceive our local area in Year 6. One of the things we looked at was how to assess our local area and we used this site (thanks to geoblogs) to get us warmed up. The site is part of a mapping project by "My Society" but more on that another time. We looked at views like the one below and gave it a score out of 10 for how "scenic" it was. It raised lots of questions such as "what is scenic" and "what makes one view an 8 and another view a 9". I was delighted that my desktop background of Whitby Abbey scored a 10! This all leads us to the question of how we rate our local area and why some of us give it such a high score and others such a low one, we will be exploring this further.

Japan

As we progress with our studies of Japan in year 9 there have been a number of you who have been keen to have a go at origami. Remember we used origami as a way of gaining insight into the Japanese way of thinking and culture, we said it included design, engineering, attention to detail and an obsession with attention to detail and precision. For those of you wanting a bit more challenge why not try a couple of designs on this link.

Blogging Break

Apologies but there will be a brief blogging break on this and the Eco Club at Bushloe blog as we need to free up a bit of time for other projects to progress. We will return at half term in May.

Breathing Earth

Many thanks to Joel and his mum for reminding us about this site. Really interesting as we continue looking at population and development in year 9.

Is Development always good?

Many thanks to Tony Cassidy for this one. Perfect timing for year 9. Some real food for thought in this promotional video for a book.

Development: Coffee

As we start to consider the issue of development in year 9 we will think about how the worlds wealth is divided up. It is well worth spending the time reading these interviews with those involved with the coffee trade and thinking about their different experiences. What makes the difference and is this something that we can be involved in and affects us?

Measuring and Mapping Development

The trouble with development is working out what it is. Is it wealth and if so how do you measure it? Perhaps we could look at how much money a country has, but does that tell us if the money is spread across the population of a country? perhaps we look at other ways of measuring development like how long people live or how well educated they are? Even if we do work out a way of measuring development how do we find out and show which countries are most and least developed?
To make our lives easier others have tried to solve these problems for us. Take a look at this lovely graphic showing how wealth is spread across the world. Can you work out which are the poorest and richest parts of the world? Even more helpful is the gapminder site which allows you to create the most amazing and mindblowing graphs and maps on world development. A word of warning though it is not always easy to understand and you may need to take the tutorial. We will be using this in class though, so its worth taking time to understand it.

Snow

With snow due to sweep in tonight and through the course of Monday we will be looking at this in year 8 lessons. The cold airmass is heading in from Russia and picking up moisture over the North Sea. We have discussed in some classes before how weather coming from this direction often brings snow in Winter. Monday also sees the launch of the BBC's new weather pages, we will give this a try in lessons to see how long the snow will last and the processes behind it. It was interesting to see on the BBC news that they had recorded thunder and lightning during the snow (see previous entry on Thundersnow). I'm off now to look out of my window to see if any more snow is falling...

Carbon Calculators

In year 7 we are going to be thinking about the impact we have on the world. We have already found that everything we do has some kind of impact, good or bad. Often the energy we use adds more carbondioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere adding to global warming. It is important we are aware of the impact we make so we can do something about it. A good way is to use a carbon calculator which works out the amount of CO2 released by our activities. A simple one to use is here on the BP website (you may want to think about why an oil company would do this) . My result is above, it may be below the national average (I doubt this!) but I'm aware of how much more energy I can save. You can also try this calculator. Of course what matters is what we do about it. You can keep up to date on what we are doing in school by reading our Bushloe Eco Club blog, even better why not come along and make a difference yourself. If that is not for you why not draw up a list of ways to save energy in your home and act on it (some ideas here), a small way to start could be to monitor and save the energy used by your computer! If you want to learn more why not play the climate change pentathlon.