Water Babies Interactive
Water in Our Community: Scope for producting educational work plans
Contents
Historically, the building of many schools also involved the loss of the smaller wetlands, to which springs, ponds, and streams belong, and which are irreplaceable assets of wildlife. However, in the frequently monotonous, built up landscapes surrounding our schools, small patches and strands of water remain to provide community focal points for a variety of plant and animal life. They enrich the scenery, add variety to local nature, and offer, to those who are interested in biology and social history, a wealth of opportunities for local study and project work based on the community served by the school.
'Water in Our Community' is an environmental topic is centred on local water resources, with the following three dimensions;
- educational projects focused on environmental appraisal of water features in the neighbourhood of the school;
- history/heritage projects focused on the origins and management of local water supplies;
- action to improve local water-based landscape and wildlife resources.
In making an appraisal of local biodiversity it can be argued that springs, ponds and streams are the features with most visual, historical and scientific interest. This is obvious in the countryside, but in towns and cities the character of a neighbourhood and an area's water features are mutually dependent on each other, the link between them being closer than those between countryside and other elements of the environment. The starting points for this interdependence are the economic links between semi-natural water systems and the needs of local communities. In the past, unimpeded access of families to springs and streams was vital. Often directly connected with the distribution of natural resources that led to the first local settlement, villagers had a vested interest in keeping them in order. The local spring or stream was often a vital common source of water, with rigidly enforced penalties for its misuse. Community boundaries very often follow the lines of streams and their watersheds., and this legacy is often discernible in the curve of a street or an open space in a housing estate. Often considered as being without value, springs, ponds and pools have been filled in for land development at an alarming rate. Small streams and drainage ditches have been culverted, diverted, or turned into waste disposal channels.
Water is a major natural resource supporting world development and has to be managed by applications of knowledge from a wide range of specialised subjects. Every community, large or small, depends on industrial methods for water purification and recycling, backed by continuous monitoring of water quality to meet increasingly stringent ecological and public health standards
A school-based biological evaluation of the local water resources of its community involves a survey aimed at producing a long-term action or management plan for restoration, upkeep and protection of all water-based features. The role of the local school would be to participate in relation to opportunities for linking classroom targets, and resources, to practical actions. An environmental audit can be approached to obtain a comprehensive overview by finding answers to the following questions, each of which will reveal areas suitable for ongoing in depth studies.
WHERE DOES OUR WATER COME FROM?
WHERE DOES IT GO?
DOES OUR WILDLIFE DEPEND ON IT?
HOW DOES IT AFFECT THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR COMMUNITY: PAST; PRESENT AND FUTURE?
WHAT ARE THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE ANSWERS TO THE ABOVE QUESTIONS?
The following lists presents a range of ideas to encourage the widest possible involvement with 'water', at all levels of attainment, across the national curriculum.
'Water in maps'
A map based on a neighbourhood's river or stream setting is one piece of a regional water resources jigsaw, which when assembled defines the local river basin. River basins, or hydrometric units, are also important topographical reference points for collection of environmental data, and water management. They also link one community with others, the connections often being through an network of underground pipes.
'Water in art'
In 1818, the painter, John Constable, wrote:
"However one's mind may be elevated, and kept up to what is excellent, by the works of the Great Masters, still nature is the fountain's head, the source from which all originality must spring .... painting is another word for feeling".
It is appropriate to introduce the idea of a local visual appraisal of water in landscape by reference to Constable. His unique contribution to art was powered by an apprehension of the natural world as a living, dynamic force. Far from pandering to sentimental notions about the rural scene as a static haven of serenity he stressed environmental change. Many of the man-made water features he painted were expressions of the current rural economy.
We are all guilty of looking without seeing. The sky with its ever-changing sheets and masses of water vapour, is rarely the focus of people's attention, yet it provides the dramatic backdrop which sets the scene and highlights all features of a landscape. Clouds can encourage children to explore their depth, colour, shape and movement, and through their effects on the intensity, and quality of light, lead them into the interactions of water in the sky, with wet rocks, and reflections in ponds and rivers.
A collection of old pictures and photographs, updated to the present, could provide a powerful local stimulus to environmental awareness. A visual appraisal is also the best platform from which to launch a scheme to beautify the local environment.
'Water in words'
Miriam Rothschild in her new book "Butterfly Cooing Like a Dove" has made a very personal effort to carry conservation of the environment with its scientific heritage into the literary sphere. The following quotation is from Rothschild's book. It indicates the grace of literary style that can be combined with carefulness of natural observation. It expresses the continuity of the natural world, and kindles a desire to celebrate and conserve the commonplace life cycles of plants and animals.
"There is something profoundly moving and delightful when, for the first time, a young pigeon spontaneously says its piece word for word and tone perfect, a link in an unbroken chain of gently bubbling sound which has emerged from beneath a canopy of green leaves for thousands of years".
Small dramas unfold in nature without us seeing them. Water collected in the bole of an old tree stimulated a 10 year old Lara Mair to write:-
"Rainwater,
Collected in the stump of a three-way tree,
Ripples
Like a transparent blanket
Shaken between two people:
Only no dust is blow up.
Tiny fragments of bark falling,
Like melted icicles,
Gently slide into the water".
Her teacher says "Recognitions are exciting and need articulating. Old poems, travel books, and autobiographies can resurrect a vanished perspective of how local water features stimulated literary expression in the past. Recognising a literary connection with nature can become an expressive moment.
'Water in local history'
How we got our water. County record offices are prime sources of correspondence between local officials and central authorities regarding improvements to the water supply. These letters and ancillary local records provide a wealth of starting points for delineating the past role of local people in improving their environment.
Historical journeys along streams and rivers. The journey along a watercourse describing the local landscape, natural history, man made water features and human settlements remains a popular way of expressing a local sense of place.
'Water in Memories'
If you want to know how life in a community is, or was, connected with its natural resources, oral history is an obvious way to find out. It is the only way of capturing authentic voices and unique experiences and opinions about 'the way things used' to be or 'how they should be'.
'The Pleasures of Water'
Starting with holy wells people have been encouraged to visit water for spiritual, medicinal, and recreational activities.
'Taking the system apart'
Every water feature is part of a larger system e.g. landscape, watershed, underground drainage, purification.
'Water and Weather'
The local interactions between rainfall, and topography can be a meeting ground for physics, chemistry and biology. These interactions can only be expressed with simplified models, expressed as flow diagrams, superimposed on maps. The simulations can be as simple as a picture, or as complex as a computer network.
A scientific perspective.
A straightforward academic perspective usually has three broad sections: the study of habitats; the study of wildlife adaptations to water; and the study of aquatic systems. Suitable subdivisions for project work are given below.
|
Habitats |
Adaptations |
Systems |
|
Ponds |
Niches |
Drainage systems |
|
Streams |
Feeding |
Chemical flows |
|
Springs |
Breathing |
Food chains |
|
Wet places |
Reproduction |
Dispersal |
A thematic menu
1 Silting Up
Accumulations of silt and biological decay are continuous and expressed in the long term physical and biological development of every water feature.
2 Is it Pure?
The concept of purity can be studied from the viewpoints of chemistry, microbiology, man-made pollution, and the history of public health.
3 Residents, Colonisers and Visitors
An inventory of plants and animals that live in, or near, water.
4 Water Diary
Records of daily, seasonal and long-term events at an aquatic site.
5 On the Surface
Many animals and plants have evolved special adaptations in morphology and behaviour to make use of the water surface.
6 Starting With Eggs
Eggs may be used as a starting point to show the total dependence of life on water, and the theme extended to detail the life-histories of common aquatic plants and animals .
7 Leaving the Water
Life histories of animals that undergo metamorphosis.
8 Drying Up
Small bodies of water may offer temporary opportunities for colonisations and permanent homes for organisms that can withstand periodic drying out of their habitat.
9 Problems with Breathing
There are many adaptations to the problems of getting oxygen from water; life without oxygen is also an important aspect of mud dwellers.
10 Who Eats Whom?
Quantitative ecology can be said to have started with the classic work of Odum on interdependence in the community of organisms that inhabits springs.
11 Living Closely Together
There are many aquatic examples of symbiosis and parasitism.
12 Moving Around
Life in water, and at the surface, depend on special adaptations to move in
these habitats, and many animal migrations are related to the availability of water for breeding and drinking.
13 Parental Care
From sticklebacks to moorhens there are many examples of parental behaviour designed to aid the survival of eggs or young.
14 Self-Protection
Making shells, building cases and hiding in crevices and under stones are all vital features of aquatic animal lifestyles.
15 Making a Living From Water
Water and its natural products have played an important part in rural economies. In modern times fish farming is an important local economic activity, and there is now the recent emergence of the 'water industry'.
16 Making Living Systems with Plastic and Pumps
Modern technologies allow people to assemble quite complicated models of ponds and streams in school, house or garden.
17 What is it?
Water systems offer much scope for sorting and classifying living things, particularly the microscopic ones.
18 What Can We Measure?
There are many simple practical methods for measuring important characteristics of water systems.
Just as social appraisals require a social survey support unit, a natural resource appraisal also needs centralised backup to provide specialised information necessary for survey and management. Perhaps, more importantly, to encourage sustained action, future reference and updating, communication channels are required to a national repository for the information gathered. These channels will also promote the uptake of good ideas, and hopefully counter the 'reinvention of the wheel' problem, where isolation leads to unnecessary efforts in the development of classroom materials
Although several community-based ecological surveys have been initiated in the past, their organisers paid little attention to setting up a cheap, practical, flexible, and permanent information network to collect data arising from the campaign and disseminating it to encourage a long-term local commitment. The most cost-effective way of establishing such a system for both schools and communities would be to base it on a national network of secondary schools, and their 'feeders'.
Each secondary school is a relatively non-overlapping focal point for a group of communities, and is part of a growing information technology network covering the whole of the UK with satellite links to Europe. .
An emphasis on electronic handling of environmental information is an appropriate practical application of information technology in schools. Many providers of data and information about water resources could benefit from such links, such as research establishments, the water companies, the National Rivers Authority, the governmental conservation bodies and the various educational establishments producing classroom materials and teacher backup. Project reports have to be linked with these providers, particularly in relation to the provision of formatted datafiles that are suitable for the standard hardware/software resources in schools.
This role will be fulfilled by the SCAN. SCAN is currently running several IT projects involving the collaboration of local industry and commercial organisations with schools to raise local environmental awareness and community understanding. This work involves turning paper media into electronic media and the assembly of the resultant datafiles on appropriate interactive software for use by teachers and pupils as exemplars of best practice.