Out There Learning 2024 Highlights
A year of teaching, exploration, discovery
Here are some of the activities I have been up to this year:
First up was a South Island road trip all the way down the East Coast to the wilds of Steward Island which should be on everybody’s bucket list:
Teaching Geology
The start of the year always includes quite a bit of geology teaching and field trips.
In January I spent time with US Lewis and Clarke College students who had a 3 month educational experience of New Zealand. This included field trips in the central North Island such as a hike to Tama Lakes in the Tongariro National Park as well as some teaching sessions at Victoria University of Wellington.
Next up was Tongariro again, teaching geology to another group of school students. Along with some field trips I got them busy with designing earthquake resilient structures that we tested to destruction using the Quakecore Shake Kit shake table:
Then it was back to Tongariro yet again with Raphael House school to do several hikes including the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, with a close up look at volcanic geology:
Next was some geology teaching with a younger Raphael House class, including some field trips in the Wairarapa where we visited the Wairarapa Fault scarp at Pigeon Bush. Here you can see a stream crossing the fault that was offset by 18.5 metres in the 1855 Wararapa Earthquake. This is the biggest known offset for a single earthquake known on earth.
During this camp we also visited the Patuna Chasm. Here is a video about the chasm walk that I made on a pre-camp scoping visit with the teacher Lou:
A feature of working with schools this year was funding cuts in the Ministry of Education, so unfortunately my work helping teachers with Local Curriculum PLD (teaching hands on geology in the local environment) was dramatically reduced from March this year.
Teaching Science Communication Online
Another activity I have been busy with is teaching science communication online to students and scientists wanting to get upskilled in sharing their work with the public or with schools (see this link for more info).
In my next newsletter I will say a bit more about this, but in the meantime if you are interested to find out if I can help you with your science communication including working with schools or online, have a look here, or drop me a comment or personal message and we can chat.
But wait there’s Moa!
So in a bit of a lull of mid-year contract work I set off to make some more videos in Auckland and Northland, very kindly and brilliantly supported by geology guru Bruce Hayward who shared his expertise on the videos at a variety of locations.
Whilst filming at Kaipara South Head where some moa footprints had been found in 2022, we made our own discovery of a number of ‘new’ moa footprints. Such traces are incredibly rare and this was a huge highlight of the year for me. This video summarises the story:
Out There Learning YouTube 2024
Whilst on the topic of videos, here is a breakdown of some stats for the Out There Learning YouTube Channel 2024:
+16 videos, +2.6M views, +10,000 Subscribers
That’s a record number of views in a year and total subscribers up to over 28,000, so this is a pleasing result. What is especially pleasing is the number of very positive comments and questions under the videos.
Tour Guiding
In November I spent 8 days guiding overseas tourists on a glaciology and geology tour of the South Island. We had perfect weather and travelled from Milford Sound to Mount Cook, then across Arthurs Pass to Punakaiki and back on the Transalpine Railway to Christchurch where we looked at the earthquake rebuild and red zone.
A new way to appreciate landscapes
Finally 2024 was the year I got my paragliding qualification in the UK. My first NZ flight was at Castlecliff in Whanganui last weekend and it is seriously addictive. I am hoping for lots more flight time in 2025 - such a fantastic way to appreciate the landscape from above!
That’s it for 2024. Happy Christmas and New Year to you. All the best and here’s hoping for more good things in 2025!