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TEACHING EARTH SCIENCES ● Volume 30 ● Number 1, 2005 Raising awareness In November I attended the Geologists’ Association Local Groups and Affilitated Groups meeting at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff on behalf of ESTA, as ESTA is an affiliated group of the Association. The Geologists’ Association (GA) has almost 100 local and affiliated groups in total, of which more than half were represented at the meeting, including representatives from North Staffs, South Wales, NW Wales, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Bath, Farnham, Hertfordshire, Chester, and Kent also UKRIGS, Geology Trusts, and Rockwatch. The Geologists’ Association (GA) was my neighbour for nearly four years, in an office next to the office I had in the basement of Burlington House (when I was the Education and Parliamentary Liaison Officer for the Geological Society). The GA has about 2,000 members and publications include the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, field guides in the UK, Europe and further afield, the GA Magazine and the Rockwatch Magazine. Rockwatch is the geology club for children, which is run under the auspices of the GA. You can find out more about the GA and Rockwatch by checking out their websites www.geologist.demon.co.uk and www.rockwatch.org.uk Back to the meeting – Robin Cocks (Geologists’ Association President) gave a welcome and introduced the meeting. A number of issues had been raised in GA Council and the GA sought the opinion of local groups and affiliated groups. Local groups and affiliated groups were also invited to suggest topics for discussion. You may be interested to know that David Bone and Geoff Swan are putting together an A4 guidance sheet to raise awareness of the benefits of documenting temporary exposures and the importance of doing so. Although guidelines have already been published by BGS and others, the GA guidelines will be aimed at the amateur rather than professional and will include guidance in how to write up information for publication e.g. in GA proceedings, magazine, newsletter etc. Keep a check in TES and the GA website for further details. Another key concern that ESTA members share, is that of health and safety on fieldtrips. I wasn’t aware that ESTA, as an affiliated group, benefits from the GA insurance package that covers fieldtrips and site visits. Prior to visits, letters etc. can be provided which name the individual group covered. ESTA members who are involved with the GA, UKRIGS etc. are already working in conjunction with QPA (Quarry Products Association), English Nature and CCW (Countryside Council for Wales) preparing guidelines for quarry managers. I hope we will be able to publish an article on this in a future issue of TES. It seems that Bill French, who edits the GA magazine, has the same editorial problems with articles received, as I do with TES – particularly as a result of the increased used of digital cameras. Points that were raised and which I would like to reiterate are: ● Publishers cannot use emailed photos taken using digital cameras, unless they are of the highest resolution. Re-saving emailed photographs can also diminish the resolution of the pictures. Photos must be minimum 300 dpi and sent as jpg or tiff files only. ● Photographs and diagrams must be sent separately. The publishers cannot deal with photos of diagrams embedded in the text of a word document. It is best to send one file with text and photos and diagrams (to show placing of figs) and others with text and figs as separate files. ● The best way to submit photos is to send negatives, slides or prints, which can be scanned by the publishers to retain resolution. ● Photos must be submitted well before the copy deadline, as poor photo quality etc. noticed by publishers, often causes delay and results in re-sending or even re-photographing images in order that they are suitable for publication. Please don’t let this put you off submitting articles, news or views – the magazine is for you and should include your contributions as well as my own! Looking to the future, several Earth science groups, including the Geological Society, British Geological Survey and Geologists’ Association are already planning events as far ahead as 2007 and 2008. The Geological Society will be celebrating its 200th year in 2007, and the GA will be celebrating its 150th “birthday” in 2008. It has been suggested that the GA have some “Earth Alert” type event (Earth Alert 2000 Brighton, Earth Alert 2002 Scarborough were both very successful, with thousands of attendees including the general public). Get your thinking hats on and get in touch if you have any good ideas for events in your area. The meeting I have mentioned, was a precursor to the main events of the weekend – the GA and National Museums and Galleries Wales GA Reunion and Cardiff GeoFest. Susan Beale (ESTA Secretary) and I, manned the ESTA stand throughout Saturday and then joined in on the fieldtrips on the Sunday. I visited the Penarth sands and collected a fabulous specimen showing ripples and filled-in mudcracks, which I then used with a group of teachers at a Science Learning Centre East of England event – it proved a superb specimen to initiate debate about “the order of events” and scientific evidence. They were quite jealous and the Director of the Science Learning Centre asked if they could keep it. I thought it was too good a teaching piece to part with. www.esta-uk.org 4
TEACHING EARTH SCIENCES ● Volume 30 ● Number 1, 2005 Susan visited Ogmore-by-Sea and has written this up for TES (see page 25). The ESTA stand was looking good with its new brightly coloured banners and some new publications, including the PEST resources “Working with Soil” and “Working with Rocks”. Although these are aimed at KS2, they are a useful resource for KS3. I also took along several copies of TES to show the visitors. Susan and I also tried our hands at introducing some practical activities to the stand. We managed to involve quite a number of the visitors in ‘making mountains out of sand and flour’ (an ESEU practical based on an idea by Duncan Hawley – who was there) and an occasional ‘brass rubbing’ of a fossil. The practical activities were a great success and served to grab the attention of passersby and involve them for several minutes, while they asked questions and we talked geology – most then left with an ESTA or ESEU leaflet to give to their schools. Our main objective was to raise the profile of ESTA in Wales, our second was to increase ESTA membership. With this in mind – do please remember to keep a look out in your area for prospective ESTA members and keep a few membership forms at the ready, you never know when you might have a chance to sign up a new member. You can now download membership forms from the website www.esta-org.uk There were a number of Cardiff GeoFest activities in addition to the GA meeting, but as both Susan and I were busy doing our bit for ESTA, we didn’t have a chance to sign up to the demonstrations, talks and walks. Eric Robinson gave a Cardiff building stone walk, which was highly praised by those who attended. Stephen Edwards (who provided TES 29.3/4 ‘useful websites’ see page 48) mentioned that he was asked to give a keynote presentation as a result of the talk he gave to the ESTA 2003 Annual Conference. Though we missed some of the events, the weekend was a great success and it was great to be able to represent ESTA. If you are going on any fieldtrips (UK or abroad), attending an Earth science meeting or another educational event that might be of interest to our readers, do please consider writing something for TES (with photos if possible). If you have to write it up or write a report for work anyway, how about amending it for publication If you are not sure, or are concerned that it won’t be long enough for an article, then how about sending in a paragraph for the ‘news and views’ section Cally Oldershaw Editor National Museums of Scotland Visit The ESTA visit to the Royal Museum/Museum of Scotland began at the impressive Geological Map of Scotland, constructed from rock specimens sent in by schools all over the country, to mark the Millennium. From then on, two parties toured behind the scenes, meeting briefly in the basement (mind your head!). It was a privilege to handle meteorites; to understand why a beautiful blue barite specimen had to be taken out of the light to prevent it fading any more, and to see the serried ranks of the fossil cabinets. The temperature was so high in the fossil store that the eurypterids probably felt at home, but several ESTA members visibly began to wilt! The Museum is taking the bold step of shutting its Geology section completely for several years for a major revamp, involving shifting hundreds of thousands of specimens to safe storage. A bad enough job in itself, but the Museum is subject to Government auditors, who can descend at a moment’s notice and demand to see any particular specimen. It’s a good job Ofsted haven’t thought of that one yet with regard to school pupils! All in all, it was a most interesting trip, and thanks are due to Suzanne Miller and Diane Mitchell and colleagues. Peter Kennett PHOTO BY PETER KENNETT 5 www.esta-uk.org
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