OCR 'PILOT' GCSE GEOGRAPHY RESOURCES
PEOPLE AS CON$UMERS: the impact of our deci$ion$
Updated July 2007
Check out the PILOT GCSE BLOG for more
PILOT GCSE CONSUMERS QUESTIONNAIRE (to be asked on Monday 30th April !)
We all consume things all the time. The choices that we make are important as they dictate the decisions made by some of the largest multinationals on the planet. We also respond to the power of ADVERTISING and 'pester power'.
A rather useful selection of photos looking at MALL CULTURE in Indonesia.
Will be using ideas from Liz Taylor's RE-PRESENTING GEOGRAPHY book, and also from a lecture at the SAGT Conference 2006.
Helen Griffiths, a PhD student from the GEES at University of Birmingham is setting up a project in Curriculum innovation based on this unit.
Update: Met up with Helen at a YPG meeting in Nov 2006 and there are now lots of new resources which are available.
http://www.exchange-values.org - website for the work of Shelley Sacks
Project involving "Material Culture" lecturers and school students.... Very interesting stuff ! Good sound files to download featuring the voice of banana farmers.
More also here at the MAKING THE CONNECTION page.
http://www.gees.bham.ac.uk/research/pgwg/Projects/Makingconnection/introduction.htm
1. McDonalds - are you loving it ?
McDonalds serves 2.5 million people every day, and over 35 million a day in the UK, and is visited by 90% of Americans each week.
A new page of McDONALDS RESOURCES is appearing HERE (this will be added to as the course progresses)
Other sites relating to McDonalds are listed on this page - there are many interesting angles to approach this topic.
A good place to use the PEE burger ?
2. Some COURSEWORK IDEAS from Pilot GCSE course I attended in Birmingham - thanks to the people who contributed these ideas - I hope to develop them further and post the results here....
3. NETWORKS OF CONSUMPTION
An excellent powerpoint resource produced by Simon Oakes, 'A' level principal examiner and writer for RGS
Check out GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS site (the school is also a member of the RGS-IBG)
Some of the key questions below are adapted from this and the specification....
SCHEME OF WORK OUTLINE
| LESSON OBJECTIVES | LESSON ACTIVITIES / RESOURCES | |
| The unit starts with 2 lessons either side of Christmas,
and the topic is then returned to shortly after Christmas. Introduction What is consumption ? What have we / you consumed recently ?
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To explore issues relating to
Christmas and consumption.
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Diary of all the items I
consumed over the course of one 'typical' Sunday PhotoJam of things being consumed - FLICKR or other source of images to make PhotoJam. Worldmapper - this has some wonderful maps of consumption and production.
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| Christmas
Lessons "A Green Christmas" |
What items are
specifically consumed at Christmas ? Choices that people make - Green Christmas |
Newspaper
articles relating to cost of Christmas Christmas dinner and food miles - ingredients
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| FAIRTRADE What can we as consumers do to help people in other parts of the world ? |
Fairtrade Bananas (see below...) |
http://www.face-online.org.uk/windwards/ - The Windward Islands as a global place - some excellent resources for different key stages... Fairtrade website
Fairtrade Fortnight - February 2007 |
| Bananas What do they mean to you ? Art installation - 20 sheets of banana skins dried out and stitched together - each panel from one farmer from Windward Islands and then pair of headphones and could listen to the people who grew the bananas. In middle was pile of banana skins with no labels. Images ?? Downloaded farmers' voices onto CD. Links to distant others. |
BANANAS: New resources Lots of resources available for this from various sources. Liz Taylor's RE-PRESENTING GEOGRAPHY has a section looking at packaging and links to Geography which would be useful here. Tony Cassidy has started work on translating some of the ideas into teaching resources, so expect some top quality work. Christmas is a time for buying: some informed choices need to be made. Recently discovered a link via my searchings to a thesis produced by Helen Griffiths. |
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| MOBILE PHONES
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Mobile Phone - linked to
identity
Mapping with arrows from UK to these places - our positions in the commodity change, and making the connections personal... (Similar to iPods...) - see iPOD page. Working conditions of workers |
Lots of materials from GEES Also some nice resources from Ian Cook and the folks from YPG.
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| To teach the ideas
above we will probably be using some resources produced as part of a
project in association with Birmingham University, adapted for our needs. See weblink at top of page.
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PEOPLE AS
CONSUMERS 5 Week Units as PDF downloads Powerpoints Mobile Phones and COLTAN.... |
Networks of consumption: a
very useful powerpoint produced by Simon Oakes. See links and questions above.... |
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Carry on at your Convenience |
Idea from Everytown Importance of Convenience and car journeys Shopping as leisure - Meadowhall etc.
OPEN ALL HOURS links coming soon.... "Granville !" |
Can write your own unit. Could compare SUPERMARKETS and LOCAL CONVENIENCE STORES. Buying local produce in the 2 places. Compare with MEDC: market shopping - FLICKR images Shops in Soaps: the Kabin / 'Kwiki Mart' / Minit Mart (sic) |
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Interesting article in Observer Food magazine. | How far has your food come ? Check out the POLAR FIRST website for some more details. Also more sites have emerged since then. Lots of FOOD MILES resources. |
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A new FAIRTRADE page which has been added. | Some good resources. |
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Product web: how do products reach the market... This is a key idea for this topic...
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Need to explore the idea of
consumption.
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INPUTS
PROCESSES OUTPUTS |
| TESCO vs Out of Town Superstores | Check out Tony Cassidy's weblog for all the detail you need here. | Thanks to Tony for the resources
that he has posted on his weblog. Also a PEER ASSESSMENT |
| ORGANIC FARMING | This is on the 2007 exam pre-release booklet. We will be using the resources from this as part of rebranding Cornwall too. | |
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THE STORY OF STUFF Thanks to Helen Nurton for telling me about the new resource from Free Range Studios: THE STORY OF STUFF. This is a great resource, and has a lot of potential for use in the classroom with a range of groups. There is a great annotated script which throws up loads of weblinks. Check it out... |
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Download the resources, or your own copy of the movie. This is a splendid resource ! |
| COCA COLA RESOURCES | From Tony Cassidy, for which many thanks ! |
http://pilotgcseradicalgeography.co.uk/pas/ Assessment - excellent resource http://www.radicalgeography.co.uk/consumers.html Coca Cola resources (ZIP file by Tony Cassidy) |
WEBLINKS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/2994122.stm - a shop only selling one food item, but which one ?
TESCO introduced a GREEN Clubcard points scheme to encourage people to re-use carrier bags.
Nice article by Carol Midgley in The Times magazine (September 2006) saying that this is "cissy stuff. Supermarkets need to use a stick not a carrot. Charge us 5p for every bag we use and watch how quickly we embrace the spirit of recycling."
Some countries already have carrier bag tax: Ireland notably. There are also efforts to cut down on the use of the "national flower of South Africa" as they clog drains and lead to urban flooding.
GEOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE
(from a session by Liz Taylor at student conference in Cambridge 2004)
To be geographically significant, an event or person might cause 'ripples' which make recognised changes to people and/or environments over space
A landform or place might be revealing through its representation of how a group think about place or space in general
A process might be required for systems at a given scale to function, or be recognised as causing major disruption to those systems
From time to time, ask yourself
In what way is this case study / process geographically significant
As a geographer, why should I be studying it ?
How does it fit into the bigger picture ?
