Archive for 02/05/2014


7 online games for understanding international development: let the edutainment begin

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02/05/2014

One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?

mpg-with-text A major challenge for those working in international development is being able to understand the lives and needs of people in developing countries and being able to understand the challenges facing global decision makers. More and more online games are being developed by the international development community to help us gain insight into global development challenges and increase engagement around these issues, albeit in a virtual world. Here’s a list of some of these online games.
  1. Cyber Nations – Allows you to create and rule a nation, choosing a government type, a national religion, tax rate and more. You can choose and purchase infrastructure, land to expand your borders, technology to increase your effectiveness, and military to defend your national interests. You can build trading ports to enhance your ability to trade with other nations, build clinics and hospitals to increase your total population, invest in schools and universities to…

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Land use change to increase livestock productivity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions

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One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?

ID-10013909 Land use change, while most often associated with the loss of natural habitat, could be a cost-effective method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving threatened species. A new study in Nature entitled, Cheap carbon and biodiversity co-benefits from forest regeneration in a hotspot of endemism , investigated carbon stocks, biodiversity and economic values in the western Andes of Colombia, a threatened ecosystem rich in endemic species where land is predominantly used for cattle farming.

Results of the study found that if farmers were to allow forest to regenerate on their land, foregoing cattle farming, they would match or increase their current incomes through receiving payments for carbon. Under current carbon markets the price per tonne of carbon dioxide trees remove from the atmosphere is $1.99. Farmers’ land would be leased for 30 years and they would be paid for the carbon grown.

Aside from the benefits for climate change…

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Jen’s Fritillaries

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Filed under: Feature plants, PicPosts- great photographs, Wildlife and Nature — 4 Comments

Jen's Fritillaries

Snakes Head  Fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris– both purple and white flowered forms) at the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green, Hertfordshire, taken by my friend Jen on a recent visit.

Old School Gardener

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New Norfolk Gardening Courses – last few places

Filed under: Design, Gardening techniques, Grow your own food, Pests and diseases, Soils and soil improvement, Style Counsel: snippets on garden styles, This and that, Wildlife and Nature — Leave a comment

Gardening-Boots2Two new rounds of my courses on Garden Design and Grow Your Own Food for Beginners start soon, and I’m also offering a new, one day course on Wildlife Gardening. I ran the last Garden Design course earlier this year and had great feedback on it (I even had a thank you present from the students!). All the courses feature a lot of group discussion and some practical tasks as well as useful tips and tricks to help particpants apply what they learn to their own plots.

The Garden Design course takes students through a customised design process, prompting a fresh look at participants’ own gardens, giving them the opportunity to develop their own ideas in a systematic way and benefitting from ideas generated in the whole group. I support participants to draw up their own scale plan design for their garden and supply plenty of useful background information and links to helpful web sources as well as the opportunity to borrow from my own garden book library. The course can also feature a visit to a well known garden to look at design ideas in practice.

The ‘GYO’ course is aimed at food-growing beginners or novices and gets off to a flying start with making paper pots and sowing broad bean seeds. It also prompts students to look at what they want to eat/grow and how they might do this most effectively in their own plots – this can include growing in containers for those with little or no garden.The course includes a visit to Old School Garden to look at my own approach to food growing, and covers topics like soils and soil improvement, growing under glass, encouraging beneficial wildlife into your garden and how to effectively control pests and diseases.

Narrow beds in the Kitchen Garden at Old School GardenNarrow beds in the Kitchen Garden at Old School Garden

The one day Wildlife Gardening course, taking place at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum, makes use of the Wildlife Garden at the Museum and includes some practical work to help develop the wildlife -friendly features there as well as helping participants to focus on their own gardens and gardening practices. The aim is for them to develop  their own action plans for the future.

The Wild life Garden at Gressenhall Farm and Museum

The Wild life Garden at Gressenhall Farm and Museum

The courses are fast filling up but there are some places still available if you’re quick!

They are running as follows:

Garden Design–  6 Monday evenings, 7pm-9pm at Reepham High School & College, commencing on 12th May.

Grow Your Own Food for Beginners – 6 Wednesday evenings, 7pm-9pm at Reepham High School and College, commencing 14th May.

Get more details and how to enrol at www.reephamlearningcommunity.co.uk

Wildlife Gardening- Sunday 18th May, 10am-4pm at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum, near Dereham.

For more information on this and other short courses at the Museum see www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk

Old School Gardener

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PicPost: Curly Queue

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PicPost: Curly Queue

picture via Green Renaissance

Old School Gardener

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