How do you know what you don’t know? - Issue 53
Next weekend's online webinar on getting your students exam ready; an AI tool to turn Wikipedia articles into interactive timelines, the FT's IB Geography Class and developments on geographyalltheway.
⚙ Operational notes
The past month has been busy (again). Internal Assessment moderation, sessions for parents at school on our journey with generative artificial intelligence and a great trip to Berlin to lead an IB Category 2 workshop.
🌍 All Geographers
🗓️ Turn Wikipedia articles into interactive timelines
🔗 WikiTimeline is a rather helpful tool that I came across last week. Paste in a link to a Wikipedia article of your choice, and Al reads through the article and extracts all the chronological events. This usually takes 10-15 seconds. You can paste in multiple Wikipedia articles for the construction of comparative timelines.
🧑🎓 IB DP Geographers
🗞 The IB Geography Class at the Financial Times
I have mentioned before that the Financial Times offers 🔗 free access to schools. Each week, I (try to) send to the FT a recent article that is linked to the IB DP Geography course and offer four or five exam-style questions that could be asked about the article’s content. All these articles are now available on the FT’s 🔗 IB Geography class page, organised by geographic themes, Global Change and Global Interactions units.
📑 Getting your students’ exam ready - Saturday 22nd March 2025
The next workshop from Matt Podbury and at International Geography.training is next weekend → Saturday, 22nd March 2025, from 10h00 to 13h30 CET.
There are just over 50 days until the 2025 IB Geography exam, so get your place booked for this online webinar now, where Matt and I will share what we do to get our students exam-ready.
Examination season is almost upon us, whether it be IGCSE, IB DP Geography, or the like. It is time to take stock of the knowledge, understanding and skills that will underpin the likely success of our Geography students. This workshop will be split into two sessions, the first focused on the exams happening in the next couple of months and the second session on those exams happening in a year's time. We will introduce you to a range of strategies to aid student preparation, as well as the effective time management of revision to combat stress and aid well-being.
⬆ Updates
📊 Geographical skills on geographyalltheway.com
I have been working on the geographyalltheway.com 🔗 Geographic skills page. The idea is that each of the geographic skills listed in the IB DP Geography guide is presented with an example, a definition, links to the geographyalltheway.com lessons where that skill is practised, and a list of when that skill was required in an IB DP Geography exam. I hope you will find it helpful. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
👓 Random
♻️ Doing our bit to reduce food waste
I was recently teaching the ‘solutions to food insecurity’ part of the 🔗 Food and health unit. The unit includes a section on waste reduction as a possible approach. An online search led me to apps that link consumers with outlets selling unsold items at the end of the day for a discounted price rather than ending up in the bin.
Since then, we have been using 🔗 Too Good To Go once a week. The class I teach has become interested in the contents of the ‘surprise bags’. I will try to get one from a local hotel so the class can enjoy some ‘food waste’ pastries during one of their final lessons. This sort of action ties the content we need to deliver with meaningful contexts that the students remember.