Sign inGetting to grips with the New Forest National Park
This project idea was contributed by Lisa Rabbetts
| Exam Board | Components that this project links with |
| AQA A | Unit 1, Section A: Rocks, Resources and Scenery Unit 2, Section B: Tourism |
| Edexcel A | Unit 1, Section A: ICT Skills Unit 3, Section A: Farming and the Countryside Unit 3, Section B: A Tourist’s World |
| Edexcel B | Unit 2, Section B: Changing Countryside |
| OCR A | Possibly Unit A673: Similarities and Differences |
| WJEC B | Theme 2: People and the Natural World Interactions |
Introduction
Virtual fieldwork is not meant to replace pupils getting out and seeing things for themselves. However, it can be used to support and enhance fieldwork or act as a substitute if real fieldwork is simply not possible, e.g. due to time, cost and accessibility constraints. This example centres on the New Forest National Park. It is a location close to the school I work in but pupil experience of the environment is variable. The PowerPoint is meant to remind pupils of the landscape, and the issues that go with it.
Key Geography Objectives
- For pupils to know where the New Forest is
- For pupils to be able to describe the landscape of the New Forest
- For pupils to know why people visit the New Forest
- For pupils to know what conflicts occur in the New Forest
- For pupils to know how conflicts can be resolved
Key ICT Objectives
To be able to put together a PowerPoint of maps, photos and graphs.
Planning the Activity
- Produce a PowerPoint of photos with associated questions to get pupils to think about what they are looking at (the instruction sheet that you may download below will give you guidance on this).
- The photos could be from a location that you have done actual fieldwork at and therefore could be taken by pupils.
- Alternatively the location could be somewhere you have visited or even somewhere you haven’t visited. Flickr is a useful source of photos, just check that you can use them first.
- Ideally this activity would be run with pupils all having access to a computer. You would need to save the Power Point on the school network so all pupils can get access to it. Pupils then type their answers onto the slides in normal view mode rather than slideshow mode. When completed the work could be printed out as a handout. Alternatively pupils could e-mail to the teacher or send it via a VLE.
Running the Activity
- A starter activity could involve labelling Britain’s National Parks on to a map.
- Explain to the class that they are going on a virtual fieldtrip to Britain’s newest National Park.
- Showing the first slide outline the objectives to the pupils.
- Pupils then complete the activities on each slide
- An extension activity could consist of completing a decision making activity based on whether Lyndhurst should have a by-pass or not. See this article from the Southern Daily Echo.
- As a homework task pupils could produce their own virtual fieldtrip of another location.
Instructions
The following download contains step by step instructions on creating a virtual fieldtrip in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Download: How to create a virtual fieldtrip in Microsoft PowerPoint (PDF, 99k)
Links
There are resources related to virtual fieldwork on the GeoResources website. For plenty more links to useful sites try the virtual fieldwork pages on Geography Pages.
‘It’s virtually fieldwork‘ is an article on virtual fieldwork in the Autumn 2005 edition of Teaching Geography (free to members).
