• Question: What interesting places could we go on in school trips?

    Asked by sambam to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I always liked getting out into the countryside – there is a huge amount of wildlife to be seen if you are careful. Although, you can also see a lot of wildlife around your town and even in your school.

      One crazy option that may actually be possible for a school trip in the future is a trip into space: http://www.virgingalactic.com/

      This won’t happen while you’re at school but for schools in the future who knows…? They are actually taking bookings at the moment for trips – they are very expensive though but perhaps if you asked your teacher really nicely they might let you…. 😉

    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I agree with Edd – anywhere where there’s wildlife is always worth a visit! Is there a nature reserve or a national park near you? Maybe you could go on a trip there.

      It’s also worth visiting museums, I used to go on school trips to a natural history museum near me and I learned a lot. Also, there are lots of hands-on style science centres around these days. I’m not sure where you live but I’m sure there’s a good chance there’ll be somewhere like that near you.

    • Photo: Jessica Chu

      Jessica Chu answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Yep, agree with Edd and Zara- museums or to some nature reserve. I remember a geography field trip to look at river banks! that was pretty interesting- see all sorts of water creatures living there that I have never seen before!!

    • Photo: Christine Switzer

      Christine Switzer answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      If you are studying geology or ecology, a trip to the countryside or the coast would be great. There are lots of interesting things to see and relate back to your lessons.

      My canoe club runs an adopt-a-river programme where we choose a home stream to monitor through the year. Organisations like the Environment Agency or SEPA do some really complicated monitoring but there are simple ways of seeing how healthy a stream is. Bug counts are great indicators of water quality. If you pan along the stream bed and then pour what you have collected into another pan, preferably something clear or white, you can count the number and types of bugs that you see. If you get just small numbers of little bugs, the stream is not very healthy. If you get lots of bugs in all sorts of sizes, your stream’s water quality is pretty good. Monitoring over time is useful because you can see if your stream is getting better or not, and possibly do something about it. You can take your results to the regulators and see how your data compares to theirs. You can also see if there is anything you can do to help your stream, such as litter cleanups.

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