I welcome the creation of a geographers' blog, particularly one established in Waikato. Thanks for the initiative Suzanne.

I think our course meeting on Monday revealed some of the issues students might face with 14 digit grid references this year, and I am happy to organise local meetings (and even school visits
to use the GPS) if this would be useful. I am not sure whether I will have time to get aerial photography of each school and organise a visit, but I think this would be useful; perhaps 2007 when we have some idea about how students will be assessed?

I have just seen an application form for KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network), and I am going to see if we are eligible to get some support for more (local) networking; much of the talking I am doing these days is in virtual communities, but I value the sort of face to face conversations we had on Monday.

An aside: those of you with long memories will be pleased to see that the Geographical Society recognised the life-time contribution of Chris Davidson to geographical education in this country. He was an important contributor from the 1970s through until the late 1990s, and is still a committed geographer. For those of you with shorter memories, I wrote a bit about him in a 2005 New Zealand Geographer.