This page archived in August 2008
Click the picture to enlarge. Picture by Mister P. But how can it be when he's in the picture ....?
Born on a sheer mountain side in South Yorkshire in the early 1960's during a blizzard, Mister P was educated at the local 'comp' and enjoyed moderate success (9 'O' & 5 'A' levels) before moving on to Huddersfield Polytechnic (when 'poly's were 'poly's) and spent the next 3 years pushing the Atterberg limits, enjoying the mid-1980's price of beer, checking tensiometer readings at Bicknoller, criss-crossing the Pennines in a land rover with a radioactive soil moisture probe, failing to climb the hill to Newsome, appearing on 'Blue Peter' just behind Simon Groom and Peter Duncan (and I now have the mpeg to prove it), and sitting on a saggy settee in Bent Street with a bunch of builders, LARPers, fledgling authors and Vikings and an unfinished flat-pack wardrobe lodged at the bottom of the stairs, and a lop sided 'Greenslade Sea' poster on the wall. He also travelled during this period, notably a hitch-hiking tour around the fjords of Norway, a midge-infested week in Glen Etive, and an even-more-midge-infested period on the Isle of Rhum. This was followed by a year doing a Computer Science course in sunny South Yorkshire, where he produced a rather good teaching package for Meteorology, and played a lot of golf, and lost a lot of golf balls; and a PGCE at Hull University with the late, quietly inspirational and sadly missed Vincent Tidswell, which he passed with Distinction, despite being recommended (perhaps rightly) to do something else instead....
He taught at various schools in Derbyshire (the good old Amber valley), East and South Yorkshire, and did 20 years at King Edward VII School: a specialist Sports College, in King's Lynn, Norfolk where he was Head of Geography amongst other things. In his time at the school he oversaw the introduction of the Geography National Curriculum, ran the Duke of Edinburgh's Award group, was Activities Day Coordinator, Deputy Head of House, and for a year was acting Examinations Officer. He also taught ICT to Key Stage 3, GCSE and 'A' level, plus History, Maths and General Studies.
A founder member of the sadly-missed Boiled Onions Climbing Club, he enjoys foreign and UK travel, hill-walking when he gets the chance, landscape photography, obscure travel literature, Scandinavian Jazz, open fires, a good tight end in a game of bowls, beachcombing on the North Norfolk coast and fine malt whiskies (the Ardbeg 1977 is particularly recommended if you have £100+ to spare...) The Old Hunstanton side he plays for won the Countryside League Knockout cup in 2005 and the Eddie Hipkin Cup in 2006, and reached the cup final again in 2007 and 2008. His form group's Fantasy Football league was triumphant in the 2006-2007 season in the Year 13 league.
The fore-runner of this site: "Mister P's Geography page" went online in January 2001. After a slow start, 2003 saw a surge of interest, especially following an appearance in the Geographical Association News and recommendations by SLN Geography. The site now averages close on 3000 visitors a day during term time, and served 1.5 million page views last year.
He completed a DfES Best Practice research scholarship on the use of ICT, particularly the Internet in improving the quality of teaching in Geography (2002) which is published online and has been referred to by other academic researchers, and also completed an Online course on Climate Change run by the University of East Anglia. He is an ICT consultant to 'silver surfers' in the North Norfolk area. He has also been involved in various web-based interests, including 'Evaluate' (his software evaluations are featured on the website and have been published in 'The Guardian' as have contributions to 'Brainstrust') He has also appeared several times in "Best of the Web".
In November 2003 he was awarded a Royal Geographical Society Innovative Geography Teaching Grant to develop the GEO BLOGS project. Blogs have come on substantially since 2003 and are now almost so mainstream that they are commonplace, but it was good to get in there at the start.
In May 2004 he was invited to join the Geographical Association's Secondary Education Committee (now Secondary Phase Committee). He had an article published in the October 2004 issue of 'Teaching Geography', and was an E:port representative of the DfES/Evaluate/Schoolzone at DfES ICT in Geography roadshow and BETT 2005 and 2006. He has also been a contributing author to GeoProjects (http://www.geoprojects.co.uk) and has also done consultancy and writing work for Hodder and Pearson and 3 or 4 other publishers. He was Editorial consultant on the new Longman School Atlas, which was published in April 2006, and has also contributed to ideas and materials for the BBC Digital Curriculum and BBC Jam (both sadly are unlikely to appear in the near future...)
He has delivered ICT workshops at numerous Norfolk Geography conferences, and network meetings, and has also presented at the GA Conference, and the SAGT Conference in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In August 2005, he became a Teacher Consultant for the Geographical Association, and is currently doing far too many 'consultancy-type-things...' for publishers and media types...
In October 2005 he was awarded a second Royal Geographical Society Innovative Geography Teaching Grant to develop the EARTH: A Users' Guide project. 2006 contributions to the milieu included: contributions to Brainstrust / Evaluate publication, Longman School Atlas published, article published in Pilot News, guest edited WebWatch section of GA News for May 2006 and invited to join the editorial committee of GA Magazine, teacher notes and curriculum maps produced for the RGS-IBG Discovering Antarctica website (launched June 2006), best of the web feature for Teachers TV (coming in September), contributions to working groups in Norfolk on SEN and Pilot GCSE. He is also involved in further Pilot GCSE developments to be announced shortly as part of the Action Plan for Geography as part of the Pilot GCSE Steering Group.
In 2006 he was awarded a 'Norfolk Geogers' award for contributions to Norfolk Geography. He is a member of the editorial board of the GA Magazine.
He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and in April 2007 was awarded the honour of recognition as a Chartered Geography (Teacher)
He is a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and the Enjoyment of Glaciers Group, and a supporter of the Passion 4 Geography campaign. All of this feeds in to work taught at King Edward VII School, where he also provides content for the Geography department website, and teaches across the age and ability range. He is a regular contributor to the Staffordshire Learning Net Forum, with over 2000 posts to his name. He is also involved in the PGCE training program for students from Homerton College, University of Cambridge.
Here are some of the comments on the GIS workshop that I led at the GA Conference in 2007
1) Excellent, hands on introduction
to GIS. Took away the 'fear factor'.
2) Gave me manageable ideas of how to tackle GIS.
3) Really good, well explained and hands on.
He also spoke at the RGS-IBG Student Conference in October 2007 and SAGT in October 2007, and is due to do the same again in 2008.
In 2008, a lot of changes took place: he was awarded the Ordnance Survey Award for excellence in geography teaching by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), and a few weeks later was appointed as Secondary Curriculum Development Leader by the Geographical Association.
He is married with 2 young children and a patient wife and is a firm believer in Parkinson's Law. His version...
BOILED ONIONS CLIMBING CLUB PHOTOS
Mister P in his potholing days. Note the phreatic tunnel...clothing not model's own... Picture by Simon Hathaway.
Mister P in front of Folgefonn Glacier, Norway in the mid 1980's. Picture by Conor Kostick. Nunatak not pictured...
Mister P on slopes of Moel Siabod, Snowdonia in Summer 2005. Picture by Simon Hathaway.
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