Lesson video

Hello, geographers, it's Mr. Robertson here, and I'm delighted to be learning with you again today.

This is the fifth lesson in our key unit, Europe.

What is it like to live in Northern Italy? And so far we have explored the location of Northern Italy and plotted a route there from the UK.

We've looked at its physical and human features.

We've studied two villages, the town of Brescia, and today we look at a city, the city of Venice, a popular tourist destination, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

So today, do we have our geography caps? We might need those to keep off the sun.

Do we have our explorer backpacks ready to look around the Piazzas? Have we got our gondola ready? Let's go and enjoy the lesson.

By the end of today's lesson, you will be able to describe the location and features of Venice and explain how it is affected by tourism.

We have three key words today in our lesson.

I'm going to say the key word first, and I'm gonna ask you to repeat them back to me.

So our first words are; World heritage site.

Fantastic! Our next word is, sustainable.

Absolutely brilliant! And our final word is, solution.

Amazing geographers, let's find out what these words mean.

So world heritage sites are places on earth that are of outstanding universal value to humanity and are listed to be protected for future generations to enjoy.

Sustainable is about taking care of the world and keeping it safe for future generations.

And a solution is a way of solving a problem.

We're gonna use these key words as we progress throughout the lesson.

So our overarching lesson is Venice, a popular tourist destination.

And today's lesson is made up of two parts, in the first part, we're going to spotlight on Venice, and in the second part, we're going to think about tourism in Venice: problems, benefits, and solutions.

Are we ready to go? Let's go! So cities are the largest type of settlement we have.

In a previous lesson, we looked at villages, in another lesson, we looked at towns.

Today we are focusing on cities.

There's a photograph of a city there.

And how do we know it's a city? Well, cities have very large populations, there can be millions of people living in a city.

Cities have many different types of house, different types of transport, they might have trams, trains, undergrounds, buses, maybe even cable cars if it's a city and high area.

They have lots of services for their large populations, so more than one hospital, many different schools, lots of different restaurants, shops, all sorts of things to do.

Parks, maybe sports stadium for football or athletics or rugby.

There is lots going on in a city.

Do you live in a city or have you ever visited one? We have many cities in the UK such as Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and other cities all around the world.

So let's check our understanding so far.

Which of the following describes a city? And I want you to pick two answers.

Do cities have A, few facilities? B, good transport links? C, a large population? D, usually found in rural areas? Pause the video, have a think.

Let's see how we got on.

Yeap, B, cities have good transport links so they can get all the many hundreds of thousands or millions of people who live in them around and C, a large population, that might often be in the millions or hundred thousands.

Well done if you got those right.

So we are going to be focusing on a particular city, and that's the city of Venice.

You can see it's circled on the map of northern Italy there.

Venice is a city in the Veneto region in north-eastern Italy.

And as you can see from the map, it's located on the coast, and it's bordered by the Adriatic Sea.

Venice is a really famous city and it's famous because it's built on more than 100 islands, criss-crossed by canals and linked by bridges.

Venice is sometimes called the "floating city" or the "city of canals." Look at the photograph of Venice there, can you see why it's called the floating city? If you want to, pause the video and talk to the person next to you.

What can you see here that makes Venice unlike so many other cities in Europe, what might be special about it? What can you spot? When I look at this photograph, I'm struck by the beautiful historical buildings.

I could see a really wide river or canal that's absolutely enormous, and it's covered in all sorts of boats, all different sizes.

Some of those houses go right down into the water, don't they? Which means that to access them, I could only access them by boat.

Doesn't it look like the most extraordinary, amazing place? Venice is known as being one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

And because it's so beautiful, it's a very popular tourist destination, and millions of people visit the city each year.

Tourists are attracted to the city because of its physical and human features.

Again, look at that photograph, we can see some gondolas, which are a type of boat that you can sit in if you are a tourist, and a gondola will pull you around using a long pole to push into the water and push you around.

Wouldn't that be an incredible thing to do to lie back in the gondola and see the beautiful city of Venice going by and thinking about, "Hmm, what shall I do?" "Shall I go and have a wonderful meal in one of its restaurants?" "Shall I go and look at one of its fantastic historical buildings?" "Maybe I'll watch the sunset in the piazzas." I think I can understand why many, many people want to visit Venice each year, can't you? So let's check our understanding so far.

Why is Venice sometimes called the floating city? Is it A, it's located on a collection of islands crisscrossed by canals? B, it's located on an island in the middle of the Adriatic Sea? Or C, it's located in the middle of a lake? Let's think geographers, pause the video, have a think.

Well done geographers, it's A, isn't it? It's located on a collection of islands crisscrossed by a canal.

Can you remember how many islands? That's right, it was over a hundred islands, wasn't it? What an incredible place! The floating city of Venice, The whole of Venice is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Now, World Heritage Sites are places that are thought to be of enormous value to our world and need protecting so people can continue to enjoy them in the future.

There's a number of World Heritage Sites around the world.

Here, we can see three photographs.

I wonder if you might know any of these.

They're all examples of World Heritage Sites in other parts of the world.

Why don't you pause the video, talk to your geography buddy and see if you can work out what they are? Off you go.

Oh, good thinking! I wonder if you could recognise some of these.

Let's see what you could find out.

So number one, is the Taj Mahal in India.

That's an amazing, awesome building, isn't it? I bet you knew that one, didn't you? Number two is a little bit more tricky, it's a place called Machu Picchu in Peru, which is an amazing settlement from the ancient South Americans, and it looks absolutely stunning.

And number three, is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is full of just amazing wildlife and corals.

So all these three incredible places are also world heritage sites, and Venice is one of them as well.

There are lots of places for tourists to visit in Venice.

There are cafes, art galleries, museums, special landmarks.

Tourists like to: ride on a gondola along a canal.

Well, I think that looks marvellous, don't you? They like to walk over the Rialto Bridge.

You can see the bridge there, can't you? It's a beautiful art shape, and you get amazing views down through the canals from there.

And they also like to explore Piazza San Marco, you can see that incredible piazza.

And at one corner of it, we've got this incredible beautiful church as well.

And there's going to be all sorts of restaurants and cafes around the outside, so you could explore, look at some of the amazing architecture, you could go for some fantastic food as well.

I think I'd have a pizza and a nice chilled glass of mineral water.

I wonder what you'd have? We can use different sources of information to find out about tourist attractions and activities in Venice.

We could look and find out about Venice in some information books, guide books to Venice.

We could look at some maps and that would enable us to discover a little bit more about what Venice looks like.

We could use the internet to search for images or facts about Venice.

And of course we can use tourist guides, which are produced by people in Venice to help you find your way around and give you lots of useful information about places to stay or places to eat, or the opening times of museums and galleries.

So if we want to find out information, what information could be used to find out about Venice? A, a map of France, B, a tourist guide to Southern Italy or C, a tourist guide to Northern Italy? Put your thinking caps on, pause the video, have a think.

Well done geographers, it's C, A tourist guide to Northern Italy, isn't it? Because Venice is not in France, is it? It's in Italy, but it's not in Southern Italy, it's in Northern Italy, so well done if you got that right.

So our first task is this, I want you to do some investigating for me.

I want you to use the information that you've learned so far from these slides, but also I'd like you to use some different sources of information as well.

And I'd like you to investigate a tourist attraction in Venice.

So you might want to go online for this and use the internet to investigate somewhere which you think might be really, really exciting to go and find out about.

You might have some information books in your classroom or at home, and you might find a book about Italy or Venice, you could find some information out.

Maybe you've got a globe or an atlas or access to Google Earth, and you could use that to find some information out.

Maybe your teacher or your family has got some tourist guides.

Spend some time investigating some really interesting places that you might want to visit if you went to Venice.

And then I want you to write a postcard, and I want you to imagine that you are on holiday in Venice and your experiencing some fantastic tourist attractions.

And I want you to tell your family about what your experience of Venice is like.

So in this imaginary postcard, I want you to say, "dear," who is your postcard to? I want you to describe some of the things you've been doing, you might want to say what they're like, what you discovered, what's amazing about it.

Maybe you've even include a little bit of information about what the weather's like.

If you can find a picture, include that too.

Paint a picture with words that shows the information you've researched, but also makes them realise what an amazing city Venice is.

I can't wait to see your postcards, off you go, and good luck.

Wow! I'm overwhelmed by some amazing postcards that you've seen there.

Here's an example of a postcard that Jun wrote.

He wrote to his friend Sophie; He said, "Dear Sophie, the weather is warm and sunny in Venice! We had a ride in a gondola around the canals.

A gondola is a flat bottom boat made out of wood, and the gondolier is the person who propels and steers the boat.

We saw many beautiful buildings including the Bell Tower on Piazza San Marco, from Jun." So what Jun has done here, he's done a little bit of research about the weather in Venice to find out what it's like.

He's taken the photograph of the gondola, but he's found out a bit more information to find out that it's a flat bottom boat, and it's made of wood.

And he's also found out that the person who propels the gondola is called a gondolier.

And he's also mentioned a really famous tourist attraction, the Bell Tower in Piazza, San Marco.

I wonder what tourist attractions you found out about? Did your postcard manage to convey some information about your research, but also make it an interesting postcard? Well done for all your hard work! And let's find out what we're going to study next.

So the next part of our lesson is going to be about tourism in Venice: Problems, benefits, and solutions, let's go! So tourism, as we've said, is really important to Venice, and many hundreds of thousands of people come to visit Venice every year.

This could bring some benefits to the people who live there.

Benefits means it could have a positive effect and bring some good things to them.

In the photograph, you can see some people riding a gondola on a canal.

And in the end, other photograph, we can see tourists walking through some shops.

Can you think what some benefits might be to people who live in Venice? How might people visiting coming as tourists to Venice make their lives better? Pause the video, have a think, use those photographs to help you work it out.

Oh, I can hear lots of interesting information here about why tourism might be good for people in Venice.

Now of course, many people in Venice depend on tourism for their jobs.

I wonder what kind of jobs there might be.

Hmm, you might want to pause the video at this point and speculate.

Of course, there are all sorts of jobs that you can do.

You might work as some waiting staff or servers in some of the many cafes or restaurants.

You might be a taxi driver because there are roads and paths in Venice as well as water.

You might work as a member of the hotel staff to help people settle in and cook food or organise room bookings.

You might act as a tour guide, giving tourist tours and telling them about the amazing history of Venice and the beautiful buildings there.

And finally, you might act as a gondolier, propelling people around the canals and allowing them to see the beautiful city.

So there are lots of jobs that tourists bring.

And so therefore, many people in Venice work in those jobs and earn money.

And the more tourists that come and spend time in Venice, that helps secure their livelihoods.

And of course that money helps bring money into Venice as well, because tourists will spend money on things like going to cafes and restaurants.

They'll spend money on accommodation like hostels and hotels and leisure activities, so they might go on a gondola, they might go and spend money in galleries and looking at museums. All of this money can help be used to run the city and build things like schools, hospitals, and roads.

So tourism can bring a lot of good to Venice and tourists bring in a lot of money, which gives people jobs, spend money in the local economy and they can use that to help improve the city of Venice.

Now, we said before that Venice is a world heritage site.

And that means it's seen globally as a really precious and important place.

And that it needs to be conserved and protected.

These beautiful buildings need to be maintained.

We need to make sure that for future generations it stays looking as beautiful as it is now.

And World Heritage Sites might receive funds to help look after them.

So they may get some money to make sure that the buildings are repaired and that if there are problems or flooding that that's dealt with to keep them looking as beautiful as they do now.

As we've said before, millions of tourists visit Venice each year.

If you look at the photograph, you can see a really crowded area where lots and lots of tourists have gathered to look around at the amazing architecture.

Now, as well as bringing benefits, tourism can also bring problems as well.

I wonder if you can think of any problems that tourism could cause? That photograph might help begin to give you some ideas.

I'd like you to pause the video, talk to the person next to you about any problems tourism might cause for Venice.

Off you go! Oh! Some amazing thinking there geographers, I can hit all sorts of ideas about some problems. Let's examine some of these problems. So if there are lots of visitors, this can have a negative effect on the environment.

So for example, a lot of the boats on the canals are motorised, and this can cause pollution because the boats might run on diesel, and so as they chug along, they're putting fumes into the air, which creates air pollution.

They can also create erosion, because as these boats go through the water and cut through the water, they create something called a wash, which means there's lots of little waves.

As those waves spread out, they can hit against the banks and that could erode the banks and also erode the buildings.

And that can cause real problems over time for the environment and for the buildings in Venice.

Having millions of tourists means that a lot of waste is created, and this might mean that the bins overflow, as you can see in that photograph there, or people might not put stuff in bins and they might just drop litter, and so that means there's gonna be a lot of litter, which could also create a lot of problems for people who live there.

Are these ideas that you thought of? Another problem is this: We've already said that lots of people in Venice depend on tourism for their job, however, of course, tourists don't necessarily come all year round, there's gonna be lots of tourists want to come to see Venice in summer when it's hot and they can wander around.

But that might mean that those jobs don't exist in winter when there are much fewer tourists, and so it might be really hard if the jobs aren't there all year round.

Another problem is, lots of the jobs connected to tourism don't necessarily pay very well.

If you are earning money as a gondolier or in a restaurant, it might not be a very well paid job.

And then if the restaurants are really quiet in winter, you might not have a job then.

So although there's benefits to the jobs, it might mean that the jobs are very insecure or poorly paid.

Another problem is about accommodation, because so many people want to visit Venice, they want somewhere to stay.

And that means that lots of the houses and flats in Venice provide accommodation for tourists.

So during the season, they've got somewhere and they want to stay in a really beautiful house or flat or apartment.

Now the problem of that is, that local people can find it very, very hard to find somewhere affordable to live.

Because so many of the flats and apartments are used by tourists, the rents are really, really high because the tourists will pay the rent for a short time.

But that means if you are in a low paid job in Venice working as a gondolier, or in the wait as a waiting staff, you can't afford to pay the price that's being charged.

And because of that, the population of Venice is decreasing.

More and more of the houses and the apartments are taken over for tourists, which means that local people can't afford them.

They have to live further out of Venice and come in every day.

And that means that the population of the city gets less, and it means that people have to spend money on travel to get into work.

And so this is really a very unsustainable position for a city like Venice.

Because we want our cities to be livable places where people live all year round and not just for tourists.

So let's check what we've understood so far.

We've got some impacts here of tourism, and I want you to sort them into positive impacts or negative impacts.

Positive impacts means that they provide something good, negative means it's a problem.

So we've got four things here, provides jobs, littering, overcrowding, and brings in money.

I'd like you to pause the video and sort them into positive and negative impacts.

Off you go! Oh, amazing geographical thinking! Let's see where these went.

So providing jobs, that's a positive impact, isn't it? Because it brings jobs to Venice.

Littering, that's negative, isn't it? Because tourists drop litter, the bins overflow, and it looks really, really messy.

Overcrowding, that's a negative impact, isn't it? Because all these millions of tourists make the streets really, really busy and make the city a very crowded place.

Brings in money, is a positive impact, because tourists come in, they spend lots of money in the local economy, and that means there's more money for hospitals, schools and repairing roads.

Well done! If you managed to sort those out correctly.

You think of any other possible impacts, anything that we've not mentioned.

We talked about some of the negative impacts, like house prices being very, very high in Venice, so local people can't afford to buy a house, is a negative impact.

We also talked about a positive impact about the city being a world heritage site, and so it might get money to look after and conserve the beautiful buildings.

There might be some other impacts as well that you've thought of that we didn't mention as well.

Now we've talked about some aspects of tourism being a problem, but there is something called sustainable tourism.

And this is where we have particular type of tourism to try and reduce the negative impacts of tourism and protect the environment.

Sustainable tourism aims, tries to reduce waste and use of energy by recycling and using renewable resources.

For example, it encourages people to walk or cycle rather than travel by vehicles that produce polluting gas.

So rather than getting taxis around Venice, we might say, encourage people to walk or cycle.

We might encourage the development of things like electric boats, which don't have fossil fuels, but go around and can be charged by batteries, and that's a much more kinder way to look after the impact on Venice.

How can tourism be sustainable? Which of these do you think would be a sustainable option? A, offer walking tours, B, provide recycling bins, C, transport people on motor boats, D, use renewable energy.

Pause the video and have a think.

Oh amazing thinking there! Yes, we could offer walking tours rather than relying on taxis.

We could provide recycling bins so all the rubbish doesn't get put into landfill, but is sorted and recycled.

And D, we could use renewable energy, so instead of burning fossil fuels and pollution, we are harnessing the energy from water or the sun.

All of these things can create sustainable tourism, which is a much more positive impact on people and the environment.

So we're going to think about these ideas of the benefits and solutions around tourism, and we're going to use something called a consequence wheel to help us think through the idea of an impact.

I've got an example consequence wheel for you here.

So I'm gonna start with an issue, my issue is I might get up late for school.

Now that issue has a consequence.

And the consequence of that is that I might miss the bus because I've got up late.

Oh, silly me, that was really badly organised, wasn't it? Now the impact of that is that I'm going to be late for school.

So can you see what's happening here? At the beginning, we've got an event, in this case, getting up late, and then I'm thinking through the impacts and consequences of me getting up late.

I'm gonna miss the bus and I'll be late for school.

And so from there, I've got a chain thinking through the consequences.

Does that make sense? It's quite a clever way of thinking through a problem, isn't it? Okay, let's check that for ourselves, I want you to have a go at one of these for yourselves and you can choose anything, it doesn't have to be a geographical thing at the moment, but I want you to have a go at trying out this consequence wheel, so you understand how it works.

I want you to think of an event in the same way that I thought about one, about getting up late.

I want you to think of something, and then want you to plot at least two different impacts or consequences of that issue, they can be anything you like.

So you might wanna work with a person next to you, you might want to talk about this, but pause the video, choose your event, can you think of at least two impacts or consequences? And can you map it out in the same way that we did using the consequence wheel? Off you go, geographers! Oh wow, you've come up with so many amazing ideas! So here's another example for you, maybe you thought of something like this; "I might forget my lunchbox, I'm not doing very well today, am I?" "First I get up late now I forgot my lunchbox." Well, what's the impact of that? It means I'm not gonna have any lunch, great! And that means I'm going to feel really hungry and I'm gonna be really grumpy for the rest of the day.

What did you come up with? Did you think of your own consequence wheels? I bet you did, didn't you? Well done! Okay, so we're gonna try this idea of a consequence wheel to think about what we've been learning about the impacts of tourism in Venice.

So first of all, we're gonna start with tourism in the middle, and then we're going to have some consequence wheels coming off that.

I want you to think about some different consequences that we've thought about, and ideally think about some positive and some negative ones.

So if you can, can you think of two positive impacts of tourism and two negative impacts? So you might wanna start by thinking about something like the idea of having boats and what might be the impact of them, is that a positive or negative thing? Use the ideas that we've been thinking about in the slides to help you.

You might want to skip back and look at them, see if you can map out some of the impacts of tourism that are either positive or negative.

Off you go geographers, and I'm really excited to see how you've done this.

Wow, you've worked really, really hard, haven't you? Here's some examples that I thought of.

So I've said tourism can bring more jobs to Venice and that's great 'cause people can find work.

I've but on a negative impact, I've said one of the impacts of tourism is that homes are used for tourists, and that's a problem because it means that it's difficult for local people to find somewhere to live, so that's a negative impact.

A more positive impact is that tourism can bring in money, and that's great because money can be used for schools and hospitals.

So we can see that tourism can bring both problems and benefits to the city of Venice.

Did you manage to think of some other examples and what did you map out those in your consequence wheel? Well done if you've managed to think through some positive and negative impacts of tourism in Venice.

So let's summarise our learning today.

We've been thinking about Venice, a popular tourist destination.

We've learned that Venice is a city in Northeastern Italy and it's situated on 118 islands separated by canals.

Because it's such an amazing place, it's a World Heritage Site.

We've learned that many tourists are attracted to Venice because it's physical and human features.

We've learned that tourism creates problems and benefits for Venice.

Sustainable tourism tries to reduce the negative impact of visitors.

And we've learned that there are different solutions to the threats facing Venice.

Whew, I don't know about you, but I know a lot more about Venice than I used to, and I'll tell you what? I'm really looking forward to going to Venice and finding out about all of these things.

Thanks for being with me today, and I look forward to seeing you in our last lesson in this unit next time.

Thank you very much.