Development Lesson Plans and Starters

1. Information on Charities can be found at the newly updated GIVING NATION site.

2. The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development: CAFOD site has a DEVELOPMENT QUIZ which can be printed out and used with groups. It looks at issues of debt and debt repayments. There are also various other resources which can be obtained from the site. A useful stopping point.

Website users can see what their life might be like if they had been born in another country. Submit your details, choose a new country, and wait for the transformation process. Recommended

4. Head over to the JUSBIZ site and pick up a load of free resources. Quality too. Recommended.

5. There are plenty of RESOURCES and CASE STUDIES with TEACHERS' NOTES at the STEP site: Sustainable Technology Education Project.

Choose a few for pupils to resource. All of these are sustainable small-scale ideas which will make a big difference to people's lives.

We have become familiar with various terms for the less economically developed parts of the world: first world and third world, rich world and poor world, north and south, and LEDC and MEDC...

Now it seems that we may be undergoing another change in terminology - a fact I was alerted to by a teacher in Scotland. To avoid the stress being on 'less' or 'more', the idea is that these countries could then be called ELDCs or EMDCs. This would put the emphasis on the ECONOMIC aspect of the name.

This would mean a change to the terminology from LEDC and MEDC to ELDC and EMDC.

7. A posting on SLN Geography forum back in 2004ish led me to 2 fantastic resources which you would be able to use in the classroom. They would both be guaranteed to get a response from students.

It is called DOLLAR STREET, and is a street full of animated houses. You can either view it online or DOWNLOAD it to your machine (it's a 128Mb download though for those of you on dial-up...) You can explore a series of houses in South Africa whose occupants' income ranges from $1 a day up to over $100 a day. There are images which you can click on, and a series of hotspots are set up on a plan of the house. Click on one of these and you can then look round the house on a series of headings, including

This has a very simple interface. All you have to do is put in an annual income in either $ or £. These could be based on real wages, or on values obtained from sites such as NATIONMASTER on average income in particular countries. They could also be provided by the teacher, perhaps even based on calculations from some of the incomes in DOLLAR STREET.

I looked at the site recently and put in my approximate wages - well I'm not going to tell you exactly how much I earn.

I discovered that I was one of the richest people in the world relatively speaking (although being an enlightened geography teacher this didn't come as too much of a shock...)

8. A recent PANORAMA programme called the DOLLAR A DAY DRESS looked at the issues surrounding world trade as it applies to the production of textiles. The programme was excellent, and a transcript of the programme is available from the BBC PANORAMA site. A BBC NEWS page on the programme is available by clicking the link above.

9. Check out the progress made at the newly redesigned UN DP site, which has animated graphics: check out the

This allows you to see an INTERACTIVE HDI CALCULATOR. Recommended.

10. A recent discovery was the website to accompany a magazine which we get into school now and again: PEOPLE AND PLANET It has some marvellous articles, and also a range of other features such as a picture gallery.

12. More games here - 2 in fact - all of which would be rather useful for spicing up a set of lessons. Check out GEOGAMES page for the necessary links..

If you want to explore the issues surrounding Child Labour, you can visit the INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION website. You can obtain statistics and case studies of child labour, notably of children working in mines and mineral extraction. There are links to the World Day against Child Labour, which is on 12th June 2005.

Check out UNICEF's END CHILD EXPLOITATION website. This has a range of materials: Exploitation the Facts, Real Lives section, or you can see a film with Robbie Williams. There are various links to ways in which children are exploited.

How do you tell if a country is developed ? - use Indicators: you could try a useful site for this: YOUR NATION or NATION MASTER.

This allows you to compare almost 200 countries using over 40 indicators. A WORKSHEET to use with a lesson is here. Recommended.

15. NEWLY INDUSTRIALISING COUNTRIES

Some countries are rapidly industrialising: one could say 'catching up' with the more traditional MEDCs. They are called Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs) - and at one time were called the Asian Tigers...

Here is a page containing resources and lesson details for a lesson on NEWLY INDUSTRIALISING COUNTRIES (NICs)

This is a site I came across in early 2005, and which has recently been picked up by a few blogs recently. I featured it as part of my SAGT 2005 presentation on Virtual Communities.

The idea is that you put some personal data into a FLASH file, and it generates a barcode. You need to 'scan' the barcode and it provides you with "how much you are worth...." Try generating a number of people and investigate what difference it makes when the people are born in different countries, or have different ages. What determines how much a person is "worth".

DEVELOPMENT LESSON PLANS & STARTERS