If you're curious, if you have a sense of wonder or interest in the world around you,
then GeoCamp is for you.
And in order to get that where you have as much hands on activity as possible, try to
get as far away from the textbook as possible and actually try to bring science into the real world.
We focus on observation, description and interpretation which are just
the core things that all scientists use.
And so we focus on that for two weeks, it's very very hands-on we try and spend a day in the field
and then a day doing hands-on activities related to what they've done in the field.
I think the key thing that GeoCamp involves is developing a science programme
that actually demystifies science it shows that it's not a great big scary thing to do
it's something that absolutely anybody can participate in.
It doesn't have to be that they get really excited about fossils,
just thinking about the basic understanding of exploring the world around them and getting
more excited about that and thinking about how the world around them can teach them so
many things and they can learn so much just by looking at things in a different way.
My favorite day is probably when we went to Mangapouri Stream and we got to dig up fossils.
We went out to Lake Ferry and Pigeon Bush.
My favorite field trip was probably all of them because they were all so different.
We examined rocks and we just took samples and took them back here and that was really fun.
My favorite field trip was probably Pigeon Bush to
be able to go see the fault lines and see how the land had uplifted.
Learning how the fault lines work!
My favorite day of GeoCamp was probably going to Mangapouri station
and mining the fossils out of the shell beds.
My favorite trip would probably be the one we went around to Lake Ferry
and we looked at all the underground water.
My favourite day was going out to Lake Ōnoke and getting core samples.
My favorite bit about GeoCamp is to see the realisation on the students
faces about when they get to put it all together and the kind of penny drops and
they see that the earth they're standing on has a really really long history to tell.
My favorite thing it has been seeing these kids understand
really complex geology concepts and they just get it straight away.
This is stuff that I learned in university and these guys are learning it at intermediate age
and it's just so amazing to see how they've actually just understood it straight away.
First thing I thought I didn't really like science,
it was kind of a bit boring,
I didn't really do any science,
But when I started doing this I got extremely excited because I got to go to a lot of places,
I found out all these different ways to like look at science and do science.
The one thing that we really hope that the kids will take away is that science
is really cool and it's really exciting to do.
If they take that away then it means that they're most likely to carry on and do it a
bit more at high school and may even go through to university and undertake a science career.
Now I quite like it, might do it at college.
But super importantly with GeoCamp is also trying to provide the teachers with
the confidence that they can head back to their classroom and teach science.
Show them that you don't actually have to have your answers, you don't actually have to
know absolutely everything, because if we knew everything we wouldn't be doing science.
Well I think the most valuable thing that I've learned and I was talking to you about it that
you know what they've taught us about the way in which science can work through geology,
we can still take that back and use those key ideas across any other science.
And not just take the ideas of observation into science, but also taking it into
you know like anything, anything just fostering curiosity getting out in the world
seeing what's around us and why it's there and how things interact with each other.