Fred Martin

Along with the Presidents, this blog has featured some of the many volunteers and activists who have supported the Association over the years.

Fred Martin was the PGCE tutor at Bath Spa University for many years, and has been involved with the GA for decades in various roles, with a long stint serving on the Education Group of the GA. 

He is a prolific author who has written many books, some of which were first published over twenty years ago, and remain available. They include the book here, published by the GA.

Fred was on the sub-group that was involved with the GeoVisions project, which led to many other GA projects over the years, and has appeared on this blog previously, along with further information about Di Swift.

This led to him writing the Cape Farewell resource, which I used when teaching the OCR Pilot GCSE Geography, and which has also been featured in a previous blogpost.

Fred served on the Secondary Phase Committee for many years, including the period when I was also on the committee.

I presented sessions with Fred several times at GA Conference including 2005 - the first time I presented at the GA conference in a session on Gifted and Talented Geographers. I was a bit nervous.

We also worked on a session exploring how to 'Transform Tired Topics' along with Tom Biebrach. It originally had a diffferent title...

In 2007, we also jointly presented on Future Fieldwork: a double workshop on GIS for Beginners which included some cutting edge GIS work (for the time) and also included future Chief Executive Alan Kinder.

Fred worked with a number of others, including Gary Dawson, who also served on the Secondary Committee to write 3 books of starters for Badger Publishing. You may remember them. I have them on the bookshelf in my classroom. 

Fred is now on the editorial board of 'Teaching Geography' and recently set me a challenge of writing an article about the teaching of GIS and traditional map skills.

Fred was also kind enough to provide a message to delegates at the first TeachmeetGeographyIcons when I did a keynote session.

Even in the Summer 2021 issue, Fred has an article, where he explores the progress made in pedagogy over the years through 'Teaching Geography' articles.

Image: Bryan Ledgard / Geographical Association

References

Martin, Fred, and Diane Swift. “What Can CD-ROMs Do for Us?” Teaching Geography, vol. 21, no. 1, 1996, pp. 20–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23753746. Accessed 26 June 2021.

Cape Farewell

Cape Farewell was a project that grew out of the GeoVisions project. Fred Martin was on the GeoVisions sub group and wrote the pack.

It was a resource pack which was an important part of the work that we used for the OCR Pilot GCSE Geography as it had a focus on extreme environments. It had a spiral bound pack and a CD with a series of resources and images. It had heavy use for three years that we taught the Pilot GCSE. Here's a trailer video for a later phase of the project.

Cape Farewell - An introduction from Cape Farewell on Vimeo.

Cape Farewell changes the way we think about climate change. Climate change is a reality. Caused by us all, it is a cultural, social and economic problem and must move beyond scientific debate. Cape Farewell is committed to the notion that artists can engage the public in this issue, through creative insight and vision.

Artists and authors were taken to the Arctic, and there was also a link with Svalbard, which became a focus for my teaching.

The project itself explores the cultural response to climate change.

References

Mitchell, Alistair. Teaching Geography, vol. 30, no. 1, 2005, pp. 59–59. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23756577. Accessed 29 Mar. 2021.

Thanks to Fred Martin for his memories of the creation of this pack and the images which brought back a lot of memories for me. I left these packs behind when I left teaching - wished I'd kept a copy now, as there don't seem to be many around...