Digital gems help pupils get back to the great outdoors
An online treasure trove of videos and teaching resources is helping schools to support students with their outdoor learning and to enhance fieldwork knowledge and skills.
The Field Studies Council, which has its charity headquarters at Montford Bridge near Shrewsbury, has launched its new Digital Hub to support secondary school teachers and students with the fieldwork element of geography and biology.
Scott Wycherley, Education Manager for the Field Studies Council, said: “Fieldwork was one of the casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic, so we want to support secondary schools as they begin to reintroduce field trips and fieldwork skills to the curriculum.
“During lockdown, the FSC’s Fieldwork Live digital programme provided a vital solution for more than 450,000 students and teachers. We have combined the highlights from this virtual field trip multimedia archive with a range of newly-created resources to form the Digital Hub.
“There is nothing like hands-on outdoor fieldwork – our aim with the Digital Hub is to support teachers as they help equip their pupils with the skills they were not able to develop fully during the disruption of the last few years. We also wanted to support experienced and new members to the teaching profession with follow-up ideas and inspiration once back in the class.”
The Digital Hub includes accessible, student-friendly resources for all fieldwork topics required for the main exam boards in 14-18 geography and 16-18 biology.
Resources include a range of bite-size, captioned videos, presented in the field by the FSC’s own experienced tutors, as well as downloadable worksheets, GIS story maps and CPD resources.
The hub resources help students to develop investigative skills or encourage deeper thinking, both while preparing for fieldwork and for reflection and consolidation of learning afterwards.
The Digital Hub is designed to complement the FSC’s existing free teaching resources, which can be found at https://www.field-studies-council.org/resources/
For more information, including the low-cost subscription rates, content lists, or to access a fee sample of materials, visit www.field-studies-council.org/digital-hub/
FSC operates a network for field study centres across the UK which are regularly attended by schools for outdoor learning trips.
For more information visit https://www.field-studies-council.org/centres/