Torre Guinigi: The Tower with Oak Trees on the Top

The city of Lucca in Tuscany, Italy, is famous for its medieval architecture and intact city walls.  Yet among all of its exquisite buildings one stands out.  The Torre Guinigi or Guinigi Tower in English towers over the city.

At the top of the 44.5 meter high tower is something of a surprise – a garden containing, of all things, oak trees.

High above the city this small wood has provided a haven of peace for centuries.

Image Credit Flickr User AJansen

The tower was built in the fourteenth century when there were over 250 in the city. Although that number has, over the centuries, dramatically decreased, this one has survived.  It was built by the Guinigi, then the most powerful and influential family in the city. The tower represented the prestige of the family and was the largest in the city even when the economic boom of the late fourteenth century meant that towers were springing up all over Lucca.

Go Delhi Go: Hyperlapse

Delhi is a city with so much history that one might need a lifetime just to appreciate its many different aspects.  However (a reluctant one, but still) in lieu of time to spend doing just that, soak in Delhi in all its glory by watching this fantastic hyperlapse by Ayush Dinker of Etheral Colours. Over 5000 pictures went in to creating this hyperlapse – and please watch it in HD if your connection will allow!

Add a comment

■

replies

The Last Hours of the Inca Ice Maiden

Over 500 years ago a girl was sacrificed to the gods in Southern Peru.  Her body was preserved by the elements and discovered centuries later in a state of preservation which astonished the world.  Yet what happened to her in the days and hours leading up to her sacrifice? This animation, made by Plazma for the Mummies Alive series, imagines her last journey up the side of the mountain to her fate.

Add a comment

■

replies

Fish Friend

Every child should have a pet or at least one that does not have too many murderous intentions.  Yet for ten year old Sally, the goldfish that she chose at the pet store is not quite what it seems.  The neighbourhood may never be quite the same again. Combining live action and animation, Fish Friend is inspired by 1950s Americana, Tim Burton, and the shorts of Pixar.  It’s a great combination and this short film certainly makes a splash.

Add a comment

■

replies

Białowieża Forest – Remarkable Remnant of Europe’s Primeval Past

Straddling the border of Poland and Belarus, there is a reminder of what Europe used to look like before the arrival of man.  Białowieża Forest is the largest remaining part of a vast primeval forest that stretched for thousands of miles from corner to corner of the European plain. Something very large and very rare still stirs within the forest.

Image Credit Flickr User keko64

Although the forest is shared by Poland and Belarus, the border running directly through it, it is now a single UNESCO World Heritage Site.  As these photographs show, little has changed here for thousands of years. It is still home to Europe’s heaviest land mammal – the Wisent. Yet the area has been witness to tumultuous social and political changes, one of which was to see the wisent eradicated from the confines of the forest. Białowieża saw little peace in the twentieth century.

Zalipie: Poland’s Painted Village

The secluded village of Zalipie in southeastern Poland is home to a charming tradition.  Over a century ago the women of the village began to paint their houses: however, it was not the single, uniform color one might expect from a traditional and conservative society.  The village, through the intricate and vibrant paintwork of its womenfolk, bloomed.

Image Credit Flickr User PolandMFA

Although no one is completely sure how and when this tradition began, it dates from when the smoke from stoves escaped through little more than a hole in the ceiling of the house.  Women would paint over the spots of soot with whitewash.  Yet the spots would still be partially visible and it is believed that the women, in order for their house to appear immaculate for religious festivals, took to covering the remnants of soot stains with paintings of flowers.  Once modern cooking and better ventilation came in to practice, these cover-ups were no longer necessary.  Yet instead the flower patterns became gradually more and more sophisticated.

Hybrids

Imagine a time in the near future when our seas have become so overwhelmed with our detritus that some bizarre kind of evolution takes place which fuses the denizens of the oceans with the discarded technology of our own species.  If you can then you might imagine something like this. Hybrids was created by five graduate computer animation students from MoPA animation school.   They wanted to draw attention to the pollution of our oceans through the use of captivating images.  It worked.

Add a comment

■

replies

On Scaffolded Descriptive Writing for GCSE English Language 9-1

Paper 1 Question 5 in the AQA GCSE English Language exam is worth 40 marks.  Put that in to a percentage and it’s worth 25% of the qualification.  So it’s vital that learners do well on this question.

Here, grandmother, suck on this egg… 

There is a however, of course (isn't there always?).  The however in this particular instance is that it is often quite difficult to give students a feeling of almost immediate success when approaching this question - this is a long-haul situation. The faint-hearted can give up almost before they begin. Not only that, a number of students have developed some very fixed ideas about what makes a descriptive text - I teach in FE - and quite often it bears only a passing resemblance to what examiners are looking for (at least in order to award it good marks!).

So I wanted to do something to address this. I did a little research (OK, I used a search engine) and found that some teachers were giving their students scaffolded writing tasks, at least for the first paragraph of a descriptive piece.  Here is an excellent article (the best I found, to be honest) on The Learning Profession blog about how scaffolded descriptive writing openings can work brilliantly.  The rest of this post details my journey from this point - it isn't advice about how to teach this part of the syllabus, it's simply about how I developed my ideas about scaffolding and how I then went on to embed it in my classes.

Dallol - The World's Weirdest Volcanic Crater

Image Credit Flickr User pbOOg

In the North East of Ethiopia lies the Danokil Desert.  At its heart is a volcanic crater, Dallol, little known and seldom visited but quite extraordinary.  

Surrounding the volcano are acidic hot springs, mountains of sulphur, pillars of salt, small gas geysers and pools of acid isolated by salt ridges. It makes for one of the most bizarre landscapes on planet Earth.

Image Credit PhotoVolcanica.com

Dallol is one of the most remote places on Earth and very few people live here. Little wonder. After all, who would wish to live in close proximity to such a vast and alien backdrop as this? Even the name, in the local language of the Afar people literally means disintegrated. Even today the volcano is not mentioned in most books on the subject of volcanology.

Frost Flowers: Nature’s Exquisite Ice Extrusion

It is as beautiful as it is rare.  A frost flower is created on autumn or early winter mornings when ice in extremely thin layers is pushed out from the stems of plants or occasionally wood. This extrusion creates wonderful patterns which curl and fold into gorgeous frozen petioles giving this phenomenon both its name and its appearance.  This feature contains all the science but if you want to see more pictures, don't forget that we have a new collection of frost flower photography that you can see by clicking the red rectangle above (there's a link at the bottom of the post too).

Image Credit Flickr User Cotonis

Conditions have to be just so for frost flowers to form.  Early winter and late autumn are the optimum time to come across them as although the weather conditions must be freezing it is vital that the ground is not.