Monthly Archives: October 2011

Get accessing to UK postal code data for use in MapWindow.

The relationship between postal codes and latitude and longitude has only recently come into the public domain (see www.freethepostcode.org). This has been something of problem for users of GIS software.

Here are two ways to plot UK postcode data on a map in MapWindow.

  1. Method 1 is probably the easiest.
    1. Add the google Geocoder plugin by clicking on Plugin in MapWindow and selecting google geocoder.
    2. Add addresses and the points should be generated on your map. A bit more detail here. http://www.mapwindow.org/phorum/read.php?2,7770.
    3. Generally seems to work quite well, but was hanging when coping with larger amounts of data. The main problem is that it is limited to 2000 postcodes a day. A bit of a problem if you have a very large dataset.

Method 2: A work around using a free utility called batchgeo.com www.batchgeo.com

    1. Paste your data from excel into the area indicated on their website.
    2. (Optional) Validate data—good idea to check that the part it thinks is your postcode data really is.
    3. Press ‘Map Now!’
    4. You will be given the option of a public map or a private one just for you. If you give your email address you can edit your map later.
    5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on save as google earth .kml file. NB: It took my ages to find this bit!
    6. Save the .kml file to your hard drive.
    7. Map Window does not read .kml or. kmz, so you will need to convert your .kml file to a shapefile (.shp).  You can do this online at http://www.zonums.com/online/kml2shp.php, but I’m sure that there are other converters.
    8. Save you .shp (and the partner files it generates to your hard drive.
    9. Go back to MapWindow and Add layer selecting the shapefile you have just created.

 

I’m sure that someone has been able to find another way of doing all, but these are the ways I managed to get it done.

Map Window. Click to enlarge

The yellow symbols on the map above are the locations of the Links into Languages lead universities. Click to see it more closely.

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Thoughts on Alex Seffen lecture at the Royal Geographical Society

Last Thursday evening I was fortunate to be able to see Alex Seffen lecture at the Royal Geographical Society hosted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Steffen’s opening premise was that we have a tendency towards having a very in-depth knowledge of one particular area, yet with little understanding of how it fits into the broader scheme of things – in short we are unable to see how the world operatesas a system. Given my interest in interdisciplinarity I would be the
last person to argue with him about this.

The part I found of particular interest was Steffen’s focus on increasing densities of cities. Among other advantages increased city density reduces the need for transport by making goods and services more accessible. This is something of a contrast to the emphasis that is so often put on sustainable transport. I am not sure that the area of Southampton in which I live qualifies as a food desert,but access to services is an important issue. I live about twenty-five minutes’ walk away from my GP surgery and nearest post office; not a major problem for me personally, but a huge barrier to a person unable to walk the distances involved. My nearest high street is Woolston, or “the recession-hit Woolston High Street” as it is all too frequently referred with its boarded up shops. It is busier on a Saturday night with the takeways and bookmakers than it is on a Saturday morning.

Despite living in a city, I live further away from any post office,bank, supermarket or doctors’ surgery than I ever have living in villages and small towns. In the UK denser cities are usually associated with 1960s tower blocks which have become associated with social as well as architectural failure. Steffen showed us pictures of high density living arrangements which are much more attractive and enjoya ccess to goods and services (though I don’t recall him addressing the question of who has access to this housing.

Some more thoughts on the lecture are coming soon.

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The UK Citizenship test: Making sure that all new citizens have a good short term memory.


Valid
assessment is about measuring that which we should be trying to measure.

Phil Race Making Learning Happen.

The Guardian website quiz ‘Life in the UK: could you pass the citizenship test?’ has been provoking a lot of discussion amongst my friends. None of my friends, UK citizens or otherwise, have been able to pass the citizenship test yet.

I suspect that the Guardian has selected some ‘greatest hits’ amongst the questions and that most obscure questions have been deliberately chosen. But, if the citizenship test is really about assessing British values, British history and British culture it is a total failure. We can’t be sure that new British citizens are able to participate fully in British society, appreciate British history and understand British customs but we can be sure that all our new citizens are successful learners of trivia.

Does it measure what we are trying to measure? The Home Office need to read Phil Race.

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The case for open access to research and the problem of reputation.

For £25 you can buy a pdf copy of my 2005 article “Placing Quebec nationalisms: constructing English identities in Quebec’s Eastern Townships,” which was published in the British Journal of Canadian Studies. The article is just 16 pages long, but costs more than most 200 page books. I have no idea how many people have actually paid £25 for my article, as I do not receive royalties and I did not receive a one-off fee. The University of Southampton was not paid for my contribution and neither were the two peer reviewers. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which funded the research on which this work was based (with money from the UK taxpayer) won’t get any of that money either.

This is well known within academia, but those outside academia are mostly surprised to learn that neither we, nor our employers receive any payment for our work. This youtube video produced for open access week shows a conversation between a researcher who has been asked to assign copyright to the journal publisher and the publisher himself. (In practice these conversation do not happen—we just sign the form and stick it in the post).

Open access journals allow anyone with Internet access to have access to research. In some cases the researcher can pay the publisher a fee to make research open access, though this form of open access is scarcely really in the spirit of open access to research.

The aims of the open access movement are honourable. The researcher, reviewers, universities and government don’t make any money from putting research behind a paywall. This also means that the public, whether they be interested amateurs, independent scholars, advocacy groups or academics in universities without the funds to pay thousands of pounds a year for journal subscriptions—this is a key issue for academics working in poorer countries. The Open Access Pledge reads

I pledge to devote most of my reviewing and editing efforts to manuscripts destined for open access. For other manuscripts, I will restrict myself to one review by me for each review obtained for me by an outlet that is not open access.

Here, manuscripts destined for open access mean those that the authors or journal post on institutional or university repositories, or those that are made open access by the publisher within 12 months. Because I believe that access to publicly funded research should be free, I will also support open access in other ways.

At first glance it appears that the only winner in this process is the publisher. Therefore, why not just publish research on your own or your employer’s website? The answer is that academics and universities do gain from publishing research in good and prestigious journals in terms of reputation, prestige, potential for further research funding and promotion and rewards for the researcher him/herself. It is not the just the research that matters, it is where it is published. A pile of bricks in my garden is a pile of bricks—a pile of bricks in the Tate is art.

The reputation of journals is the principal barrier to Open Access.  As long as academics and their employers want to publish in the ‘best’ journals (of which few are open access) journal publishers will continue to make their profits from the labours of academics and taxpayers’ money.

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New article: Communicating the sustainability message in higher education institutions

A. Djordjevic and D.R.E. Cotton, “Communicating the sustainability message in higher education institutions,” International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 12 (2011): 381-394. Available from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1953898&show=abstract

This paper from the most recent edition of the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, provides a poignant illustration of the challenges faced by those promoting sustainability across their university.

Even in an institution known for its commitment to sustainability where (presumably) senior management buys into the vision, barriers remain:

  • Not seen as relevant to individual/ subject area
  • About recycling/ estates/ printing on both sides of the paper
  • Senior management enthusiasm/ support can be interpreted as ‘an agenda’ (‘agenda’ never seems to be viewed positively when used of senior management)
  • Different views about what 'sustainability'/ sustainable development means
  • Lack of dialogue/ too much communication is electronic
  • Attempted ownership by one discipline/ department

The authors’ recommendations can be found by reading the full paper (!)

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