Theme – Urban Environment
Study Task
Physical Characteristics
My local urban environment is a is a town called Troon which is in South Ayrshire. Troon is situated on the west coast of Scotland and is about eight miles away from Ayr. Troon is a small town which is known for its beautiful sights of the coast and its views of the isle of Arran which can be seen from the beach. Due to the stunning scenery Troon has become a popular spot for holiday makers. Troon is made up of mostly detached houses with loads of large properties overlooking the sea front recently more and more apartments have been built by the sea front as well.
This map clearly shows where Troon is situated.
Transport
There is loads of transport in and out of Troon. As there are loads of small Ayrshire town and villages around Troon there are many buses which come into Troon as for some people this is there many town which provides them with loads of shops and restaurants which they will not have in their local villages. The town also has a train station called Troon railway station which has regular trains going into Ayr town centre and Glasgow city Centre. As well as all that Troon is is only three miles away from Preswick International Airport. There also use to be a ferry service that sailed from Troon to Ireland but unfortunately it closed down earlier this year.
Community Spaces
There are loads of community spaces in Troon. One of which is the town hall called Troon town hall and Walker hall which is situated in the middle of the town and it is occupying a corner site fronting onto Academy Street and South Beach. The building is a category ‘B’ listed building of architectural and historical interest. The town hall is used for many events such as Christmas fairs. Right across from the town hall there is a library which is open six days a week. In the town there is a primary school and a high school called Marr College.
Industry and Work
There are many places to work in Troon as there are loads of restaurants as well as coffee and ice-cream shops. These places are perfect for young people to get their first jobs in a I know many people that have worked in the restaurants in Troon while they are studying at university. Up until January 2016 there was a P&O ferry service that sailed from Troon to Ireland. This meant that there were loads of jobs in the ferry services. However this closed earlier this year and is now fenced off and used as log storage. Along the sea front there is a hotel called the Marine Hotel which is positioned right beside the golf club, both of these places offer many jobs for the local community. As well as the club house the golf courses offers many jobs as it roughly hosts The Open Golf Tournament every 7 years. The Open offers many jobs for all ages of people and is a great experience. Both my brother and uncle worked at the 2016 tournament. The Open website
Recreation Spaces
Troon can be said to be most famous for its magnificent golf course which is called the Royal Troon Golf Club. You can become a member of the gold club if you sign up for annual memberships. The course was founded 137 years ago and has grown in size since then as it first opened with only 5 holes and now has 45 holes. The golf course brings a lot of people to Troon as people will travel along way to play a round of golf on this golf course. In the town there is a swimming Pool which is open seven days a week and offers loads of different classes such as kids swimming lessons or water aerobics. As well as a swimming pool there is a tennis club which has 6 outdoor artificial grass courts, this tennis club has over 300 members and hosts many social events. There is also an activity centre which allows local people to hire the hall out to use it for parties or events and sporting events as it can be used for football or squash. Here shows the website for the activity centre.
Population Density
The Population of Troon is roughly 15,030 which was announced after the 2001 Census. In the past three census the population has went down in the past years which can be seen on this website.
Troon’s Population
Using the neighbourhood.statistics.gov website you can see that in South Ayrshire which is where Troon is situated that there is 92 people per square meter which you can see here.
Air Quality
Troon is not measured on the Air Quality in Scotland website however I have looked into Ayr Harbours air quality as I thought was the closest to it. The most recent pollution level was measured today at 11am and it was a LOW(1) which is the lowest measure possible.
Learning Log
Theme: The Urban Environment
Key Learning:
One of the main concepts that I learnt from this weeks class was how important it is to include outdoor learning in you classes. We discussed the advantages to having lessons and tasks outside as opposed to completing them inside on a computer or writing them in jotter. As well as discussing this we spoke about what lessons would be extremely important to have outside as having them outside would not be as beneficial for the child’s learning.
Impact on my views/lifestyle/practice:
The first lecture was the science input which involved being inside and outdoors carrying out a certain amount of science experiments. One of the experiments that I enjoyed the most was the plant experiment, where we had to plant two plants but put them both in different solutions and monitor them over the next couple of weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed this experiment as I like the idea that you see a progress over the next couple of weeks instead of just seeing an instant reaction. Another experiment that was carried was the dissecting of lilies which was very interesting cause you got to use a microscope to look at the Lilly in detail. After these experiments it made me realise that there is simple science experiments that you can carry out.
The second lecture took place outside and was all about looking at the different parts of the environment around of us such as looking at the different plants, leaves and birds in our surround environment. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the day as well as I loved being able to get outside instead of sitting in a room listening to a lecture and watching a powerpoint. I felt that this was so beneficial to our learning for this class to be outside and highlighted to me just how important it is for children to me outside and use all their senses such as actually seeing the birds and touching the plants and smelling the plants. One thing that really stood out to me was that everyday I walk from the car park to the university and I do not look up once, I do not notice any of the environment around me and realise how important it all is. I feel that this is something that I will do stop and notice.
Areas of interest to explore further/develop:
After learning all about the urban environment that we live in, I want to become more aware of it and how to look after it instead of ruining it. I also want to want to look further into the urban environment that I live in and the areas that surround me. I will do this by participating in the study task and researching my local town. I plan on asking my parents on anything they know about our urban environment and then looking online after I have gathered the information that they know of. After the science class today I would like to deepen my understanding of science as it had never been my strong point. I also want to learn how to teach basic science skills and experiments without being nervous of how they will turn out. As well as being able to teach I also want to have a chance to do all these experiments myself which is why I am looking forward to the future lectures and classes.
Theme – Climate Change
Study Task
Climate change can be defined as a change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular a change apparent from the mid to late 20th century onwards and attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels. It is something that is now having a major impact on our lives today, in recent years climate change has also been on the news more and more as we have to do something about it. The act included reduction targets for emissions, advisory functions, reporting duties, duties of public bodies, land use, energy efficiency and waste reduction and recycling.
After reading the Climate Change Act (2009) I have thought about how it all impacts my life and my choices in life. One point in the act was that as of October 2014 a legislation was passed that said that all retailers had to charge a minimum of 5 pence for all their carrier bags. This had impact on my life as it has meant that in the passed two years I have cut back on the amount of carrier bags I use. When it is possible I won’t take a bag or I will have just use the one bag for everything I buy instead of getting a new bag in each shop. This legislation was introduced so that Scotland could prevent their level of litter and combat our throwaway culture. So far this has had a positive effect on Scotland and has reduced their levels of number of single use carrier bags.
Using an app on the WWF website I found out that my carbon footprint was 217% of my share. My breakdown was Food – 17% Home 13% Travel 57% and Stuff 13%. Things I can do to reduce these levels would be to buy more seasonal food, check your house for insulation and double glazing, take up cycling, carpool or walk to work and recycle and buy second hand stuff.
I can see from this that my travel is my main problem as I am doing a lot of travelling to university and to work, I don’t drive yet so I am usually car sharing or getting a lift however this is still contributing to my carbon footprint. It stated that my annual carbon emission is 21.9 tonnes which is really bad my carbon footprint is also double what the UK average is. The tips that I got from the website to shrink my carbon footprint is to use the car less to do this I could try to take public transport more such as buses and trains. Another issue that was highlighted to me after taking this test is that I waste too much food in my house. To reduce this we will have to buy less food as we are obviously not eating it all through out the week.
Learning Log
| Theme: Climate Change |
| Key Learning:
The first point in the climate change was ‘what is climate change?’ which made me realise as much as I hear about it on the news or in conversation I never actually knew what it was in depth and I had never thought about how it played a part in my lifestyle. We looked at the evidence of climate change which was :
After this we explored what was causing change and how anything that affects the amount of energy being absorbed from the sun or the amount being absorbed from the sun or the amount being radiated by the earth – the planet’s energy balance – may produce long – or short term cooling or warming. We looked at the Climate Change Act (2009) which was introduced by the Scottish parliament and their main aim was to reduce emissions from 1990 levels by 42% by 2020 and then by 80% by 2050. Following on from that we look at the governments actions in detail and what they are doing / planning to do so that they can follow the legislation. After the theory side of this theme we got to complete some experiments which linked into climate change. I found this very useful as it allowed us to complete these experiments ourselves and see how they work and what you can learn from them. This was an interesting part of the day and this will now allow me to take these experiments and try them out in a classroom with pupils so that I can teach them about climate change. One of the tasks included in the class was to fill an empty fish tank up with water and leaving it for several hours then place a couple of pebbles into two cups so that cups will sink to the bottom on the tank, in one of the cups we were to fill it with cold water and drop a couple of drops of blue food dye in it and in the other cup we filled it with warm water and dropped some red food dye in that one. At the exact same time we dropped the cups in the tank and watched as the warm water and red dye rose to the top where as the cold water and blue dye stayed in the bottom on the cup. This highlighted that the warm air is less dense than cold air which we could easily link into the theory we learnt earlier on in the day. I will definitely we using this experiment in schools as I found it extremely useful and interesting.
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| Impact on my views/lifestyle/practice:
I can honestly say that before this lesson I ad never really thought about how I am having an impact on climate change. Along with a large number of people I thought that since it was not personally impacted me that I could just ignore it. However after this lesson I can now see that I am to blame for it as I am just adding to it and making climate change worse, One of the worst causes for me personally is the amount of driving I do a week due to the fact that I live in a place that I can not get public transport there. I can try and reduce these levels by sharing a car as much as possible and use public transport when I can. |
| Areas of interest to explore further/develop:
The part of this theme that most interested me was finding out my carbon footprint as I never realised how bad mine was and how much harmful gas emissions I was to blame for. Following on from this theme I am making my family take this test so that they can see how big their carbon footprint is too and so that we can all improve it together as we are in the same house. I will also be looking into other ways of teaching climate change in the classroom as I am really interested to find fun ways to show children the effect climate change is having on our planet. |
| Theme: Interdependence |
| Key Learning:
The learning outcomes for this theme was to explain how interdependence relates to sustainability and to state some key concepts and terms relating to interdependence. I feel that the lectures and the workshops helped to highlight these learning intentions. The main points which I learnt from this theme was that interdependence is the way in which two or more living things depend on each other to grown and remain healthy. An example that was given to us was that we have a relationship with the community we live in and we need the community to help support our own growth and the community needs us to help it grow and survive. There are three ways in which we are interdependent; economically interdependence, socially and environmentally. The first way would be economically and there are many factors in which affect our society such as global market and trading, the stock market, multinational and global finance institutions, IMF and world bank, The EU and legislation within areas. The second way would be socially and out society is affected by factors such as cultural integration like USA TV shows and movies. These shows and movies are created in america and this causes a higher demand for them as they are shown across the world which helps Americas economy. The third way is environmentally and these are the factors in which it affects our society. One of the main ways in which we can see how it affects our society is global warming this is down to the worlds increasing use of fossil fuels and how this affects different species, the weather and the sea level. |
| Impact on my views/lifestyle/practice:
Before this lecture I never actually understood what interdependence was and how it affected me and my life. After learning all the main points and completing this study task I can say that I will pay more attention to my interdependence relationships that I have with my society. I now understand that I have I need respect these relationships and be careful now to misuse them as I reply on them as much as they reply on me. |
| Areas of interest to explore further/develop:
I feel that I learnt alot from these lectures and workshops that I will just want to expand on the knowledge that I have learnt from today. I am very interested in looking into my personal interdependent relationships and how they are affected the world today. I plan on looking into this further in my own time by using the internet and books from the library. |
- Biodiversity
- Economy and Industry
- Community Impact
- Political elements
| Theme: Disasters |
| Key Learning:
The learning outcomes for the lecture and workshops was to explain the political nature of disasters, describe government actions relating to disaster response and rebuilding and identify the role of key international agencies in disaster relief. Firstly we looked at all the different types of natural disasters:
We looked at disaster classification which showed us that it is only a disaster when human society is impacted such as social disruption, material damage and loss of life. A point that was covered in this lecture was that it can only be considered a disaster when it costs more that $ 1 million or 100 deaths (Burton et al, 1978). I found this shocking as if there were 85 lives lost then it would not be a disaster. After that we looked at the human impact on natural disasters which was extremely interesting, These impacts included:
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| Impact on my views/lifestyle/practice:
I found this lecture and workshop really interesting and we got asked how we felt about teaching disasters in primary schools and whether or not we feel that it should be taught in classes. I believe that it should definitely be taught in schools as it something that affects our planet every year and can have major impacts on everyone living on this planet. I feel that just because we live in Scotland and have never experienced a natural disaster such as an earthquake or a tsunami people never really think about it consequences that this has on the world. However if a natural disaster does happen in the world we all should play a part in helping the country that was affected so that they can recover from the damages that were caused. |
| Areas of interest to explore further/develop:
The area that I was most interested about would be how the country that was affected by the natural disaster recovers from all the damages caused. We looked at how just days after the disaster has hit the country is already trying to resume normal life and repair as many damages as possible. In Louise’s workshop we saw that when a disaster hits there are many countries that will help financially or with help with search and recuse parties or even send aid to help the survivors. I would love to look into these point in more depth and look at case studies which show how other countries can help when a natural disaster hits. I would also like to see how you could actually teach this in a primary school setting as when we looked at natural disaster there were loads of points on how many deaths there were and this obviously is not acceptable to teach to certain age groups. Therefore I would need to look into this topic in a lot more depth so that I can assure that if I ever did teach this topic that I would have enough information to teach and would cover the topic from loads of different angles.
Theme : Energy Key Learning : In the morning lecture we looked at renewable energy and how it has changed over recent years and how it is going to impact our lives in years to come. First we discussed the use of fossil fuels that we use today. We have become dependent on them and become the generation of electricity as we use coal, oil or gas to heat our houses. We also use a number of fossil fuels when it come to transport as we are using petrol, diesel or kerosene to run our transport which we use a lot of nowadays which is different to previous years as they wouldn’t of had cars or buses etc. After looking at the many different fossil fuels we discusses how many different ways we would use fossil fuel before even leaving the house. This made me actually think about how much energy this would be using up as I used a lot of different things which require fossil fuels. This then linked into looking into global warming which we have already looked at however this learning helped me to understand how the use of fossil fuels are having a major impact on global warming. The solution to the amount of fossil fuels we use in everyday life would be to use power vehicles instead of fuel based cars. Even though there has been a rise in the amount of power vehicles purchased it is not as high as it should be so that we can actually see a decrease in the amount of fuel used. Another solution that was discussed was to generate electricity through the use of wind turbines which would be able to generate a lot of electricity for a large number of people without too much harm to the planet. We then looked in to the use of fuels that don’t have a negative impact on the planet. One of the fuels was hydrogen which is said to be the one of the ‘fuels of the future’. Hydrogen can be produced from water and will have high energy efficiency which will have a much better effect that using a fossil fuel, it also will have no carbon emissions. After the lecture we went on to have a class debate on the use of wind turbines which was looking at all the pros and cons of having them. Impact on my views/lifestyles/practice : After this lecture I got to look at how the use of fossil fuels are personally going to affect my life as we looked into detail about how fossil fuels can have negative effect on the world and will cause global warming to get even worse than it is right now. I also reflected on how much energy I am using daily as we discussed what we use in the morning before we even leave the house and my list was a lot longer than I expected which was a shock to me. It has also impacted my life as I am learning to drive right now and as we looked at all the negative impacts that the use of fuel is having on the planet I would seriously consider buying a power generated vehicle instead of buying on that is powered by fuel. Areas of interest to explore further/develop : The area of interest that I would love to look into more would be how we can solve this problem or at least improve it slightly. I feel that this is a major issue as we use so much fossil fuels in everyday life so I would look into what the governments plan is in the upcoming years to solve this issue. |
