How do you know what you don’t know? - Issue 48
The Agafay Desert, thirty kilometres in the south of Marrakech, was visited on the October 2023 Discover Ltd teacher inspection tour.
⚙ Operational notes
I failed to send out any newsletters between late September 2023 and now. Sorry. I enjoy putting this newsletter together, but it is always the first thing I will scrap from my to-do list if things at work and/or home are too busy.
Going forward, the plan is to try to send out a newsletter every three weeks. This gives me a bit more wiggle room in terms of collecting ideas, putting something together and getting it all queued up to send.
🌍 All Geographers
In the words of Gapminder 🔗 ‘Many bad things happened in 2023’ so they collected a list of 100 positive stories from 2023 that might make you feel differently about the last 12 months.
It’s a great resource covering things from 🔗 Golden eagles reach record numbers in Scotland, to 🔗 Paris river to become swimmable for first time in 100 years to 🔗 Child mortality rate (probably) lowest ever.
🧑🎓 IB DP Geographers
🇫🇷 IB approved Category 2 DP workshop - Paris, 9-11 February 2024
I will be leading an 🔗 IB-approved Cat 2 DP Geography (in English) in Paris from Friday the 9th to Sunday the 11th of February. This is the first face-to-face workshop I have led since the pandemic, and I’m super excited (and a little nervous) about it. The registration deadline is 26 January. If you have completed at least one exam cycle or have colleagues in your department who have - get them or you 🔗 registered for what will hopefully be a really useful and collaborative couple of days in the French capital.
📢 Free webinar - Fostering Conceptual Understanding in the DP
I am involved in the presentation of a free online webinar for ManageBac - 🔗 Fostering Conceptual Understanding in the DP on Wednesday, 31st January 🔗 at 13h00 in London.
Join our expert panel for an exploration of concept-based learning in the IB Diploma Programme. Anna Androulaki-Woodcock will dive into Language and Literature, revealing strategies for unleashing the power of conceptual understanding, while Richard Allaway will guide you through mastering DP Geography and the 4Ps of success in unlocking key concepts. Paul Hoang will provide insights into CESC and WISE ChoICES, sharing effective strategies for teaching and assessment to boost student performance.
Register for the webinar 🔗 here.
⬆ Updates
🔑 Key terms now available by sub-unit
I continue to add to and refine the key terms associated with each page of IB DP Geography content on 🔗 geographyalltheway.com. There are now 428 key terms for the IB DP Geography course I teach. When I see that look of panic in the students' eyes, I point out that a lot of them are common sense! All the key terms can be accessed 🔗 here.
🔗 geographyalltheway.com subscribers can download key terms as PDF or CSV files. CSV files mean that the key terms can be easily uploaded to flashcard platforms such as Anki and Quizlet. The recent update means you can now download the key terms by sub-unit. It is useful if you are doing an ‘end of sub-unit’ test or similar.
💳 Invoices and card payments now use Stripe
One of the things I have been working on (while not sending out newsletters) has been to move some of the backend systems to Stripe. I am now using Stripe to generate all invoices and collect credit card payments. Stripe should provide a better service in terms of making invoice (and receipt) generation easier and, therefore, school finance teams happier!
👓 Random
I have used 🔗 textexpander for years - basically since geographyalltheway.com became ‘commercial’ in 2009. It allows you to type a couple of symbols/letters, and the service will then paste an assigned word, sentence, or block of text.
In hindsight, geographyalltheway.com was a rather long website name - so I have textexpander set up to turn gatw into geographyalltheway.com, em into richard@geographyalltheway.com etc. A lot of the ‘default’ emails associated with invoice requests and resubscriptions are generated by me typing in just a few letters. The platform is available for Mac, Windows, and Chrome.
Textexpander is a subscription service, but for USD 39,96 a year, I feel it is well worth the money. According to the website, working on the theory that I type 50 words a minute, textexpander has saved me 25 hours and 47 minutes in 2023. Well worth the fee!