Dr Alan Howard

Thanks for visiting my personal home page and web blog. I am a senior lecturer at the University of Reading, undertaking research in modelling aquatic systems, primarily the movement and growth of toxic cyanobacteria. For the past three years I have been predominantly occupied as Director of Teaching and Learning in the School of Human and Environmental Science. My teaching interests cut across geography in its broadest sense and I am a keen exponent of the use of Web 2.0 technologies to support teaching and learning. On this site you will find links to some of my Web applications, which were developed either to support teaching or other outreach activities. I am also Don McLean’s (American Pie, Vincent, And I Love You So, etc.) official biographer.

at last some decent snow and temps of -8.2 C in Brinkworth:

The Market Oracle, the influential Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication, has integrated an analysis of US recent economic history with the song “American Pie” , citing my book extensively.

“my bing map 2.0″ is a new Web 2.0 application that creates a live feed from sites like flickr, twitter and wikipedia based on the visitor’s chosen location. Unlike my previous interactive maps, this is based on Microsoft’s bing map api, which is likely to prove strong competition for google maps.

visit the new site here

lori lieberman’s experience of seeing Don McLean in concert in LA in 1972 formed the basis of Roberta Flack and The Fugees’ number 1 hit “Killing Me Softly With His Song”. However Lori recorded the song first and has now, in 2009, released a new recording of her great song on her new album, “Gun Metal Sky“.

Tom Watson’s failure to get down in three from the centre of the 18th fairway to win his 6th Open Golf Championship today at the age of 59 must rank as one of sport’s greatest tragedies. I remember his last Open victoryin 1983 when Peter Allis described Watson’s 2-iron approach to the centre of the 18th green at Royal Birkdale as ‘the shot champions are made of’. On that day I had urged Nick Faldo to go on to victory but today there must have been very few home fans who would have preferred a British (or any other) victor in preference to a Tom Watson triumph.

The field trip to Crete (June 16-23rd 2009) involved three staff (Dr Alan Howard, Richard Tegg, Ken Beard) and 28 students registered for the degree in Human and Physical Geography at the University of Reading.

We were based in the village of Chora Sfakion in the Sfakia region of south west Crete. Fieldwork was undertaken in the village, at Loutro and in the Samaria Gorge.

Daytime temperatures ranged from 28 to 36 degrees and, whilst not in the sea, work was undertaken to model the extent and impact of a major flood in December 2000 in the Ilingas Gorge and the potential impact of tourist development on society in this area (Sfakia remains largely untouched by the mass tourism associated with northern Crete).

Group Photo - 22/6/2009, Chora Sfakion

 During the field trip our students made use of various Web 2.0 technologies in order to produce group blogs and videos of their experiences. These were completed in the field utilising ubiquitous wireless internet access available in the village of Chora Sfakion and the mini Dell laptops we provided. The students did an excellent job and the process of writing daily entries on their group blogs (hosted on Wordpress.com) enabled them to reflect upon the educational experiences they encountered. The blogs have been compiled here:

http://www.cretefieldtrip.com/sfakia/

where you will also find all the light hearted videos each group produced while in the field. A random choice of video is displayed here:

If you would like to find out about how and why weblogs (‘blogs’) might be used to enhance learning watch this interesting video: http://lindsayjordan.edublogs.org/2009/05/29/blogging-with-students-how-and-why/ or read Lindsay’s full paper at:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddj42whm_48g4n924f6

I will soon be undertaking a field trip to Crete during which students will maintain a blog to enable individual and collaborative reflection on events and issues they experience.

Exploration is fundamental to Geography and Geographers have a long history of sharing their travel observations with the public through publication in books and journals. Blogging provides a new outlet for this oldest geographical tradition and the blogs written in Crete will feature other Web 2.0 technologies including photo sharing, video and twitter.

Results to follow…

a little late for this year’s energy resources exam…
BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Wind farm ‘kills Taiwanese goats’.

No surprise that Norway were run away winners on Saturday night and I would have liked Azerbaijan and the UK to have been 2nd and 3rd. The model correctly predicted the winning entry but, overall, there was a less strong correlation (r2 value 0.46 compared to 0.75 – 0.85) than in previous years between predicted placing and actual ranking. As usual, the winning entry was judged by most people, irrespective of geographical or political affinity, to be the best in terms of song and performance and it is unlikely that the modified voting system made any difference.

Our website songcontestvoting.com crashed during the contest due to unprecedented visitor numbers. We will be moving to a dedicated server for next year’s contest and accepting advertising!