Lake District 2017

The Upper Sixth Non-Examined Assessment Field-work visit to the Lake District provided an excellent opportunity to test out our new drone skills in the field. We had a few scary moments in the rain and strong winds when the drone took on a life of its own but we managed to complete the filming without any damage to the equipment or landscape! We were delighted by the quality, colour and clarity of the footage and the ease of setting up the drone in the field. It did pose an additional logistical burden in setting up at the same time as teaching but we found that once the students had started to record their own data and work independently there was plenty of time to capture footage for them.

We were particularly impressed by how much having live aerial footage helped the pupils to understand the different glacial landforms from the drumlins to the eskers. They could see how each was shaped in all directions and therefore gain a better understanding of the processes involved in the creation and modification of the landforms. The drone was invaluable too in showing the pupils how different landforms were connected within the landscape and in helping them to identify the orientation of each in relation to the previous ice and melt-water flows. Several of the girls used the footage as secondary data in their NEA write-ups and it was clear from their descriptions and evaluation that that activity and videos helped them deepen their understanding and awareness.

We feel that there is still a little way to go in terms of making the footage professional and slick (flying while filming is still difficult!) but there is clear progress from the sports day footage and the educational benefits of the equipment far surpass the final video quality even though we are pleased with this too! We hope you enjoy seeing where we visited and studied and a few of the photographs (both drone and land-based) taken while on the trip.

Our completed video of the Lake District Fieldwork