#586: Oxford Education Deanery - a CPD opportunity

The Oxford Education Deanery Climate & Nature Collaborative is a two-day professional development course for school teachers, based at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education.

Bringing together leading experts and dedicated educators, the Collaborative offers seven focused sessions designed to deepen your practice and broaden your impact:

• Natural history approaches, including a session at Oxford’s Museum of Natural History
• Cross-curricular frameworks with an expert from the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education
• Research-informed pedagogies for climate and nature education
• Climate emotions and student well-being
• Student voices in climate and nature education
• Subject-specific working groups, culminating in a showcase of participants’ projects and ideas
• Oxford’s leading Net Zero research and what it means for the classroom

Rooted in the latest research, the Collaborative foregrounds hope, solution-focused thinking, and emotional awareness — equipping teachers with practical strategies that carry directly into classrooms, schools, and communities.

The two days include a dinner at Trinity College, Oxford, lunch on Friday, and time at the historic Museum of Natural History — making this as much a celebration of Oxford’s intellectual and cultural life as it is a professional learning experience.

Booking, programme and all the details here.

#418: The Cambrian Explosion

The Cambrian Explosion is the name given to an important period in the development of life on Earth. 

Around 530 million years ago, a wide variety of animals burst onto the evolutionary scene in an event known as the Cambrian explosion. 

In perhaps as few as 10 million years, marine animals evolved most of the basic body forms that we observe in modern groups. This added massively to the biodiversity of the world.

The Oxford Museum of Natural History has a display on this period.

There is some debate of course about whether it actually happened as many think. Nobody was around to see it of course, and the fossil record is sometimes open to debate.

One of the most important sites is the Burgess Shale, where much of this activity can be traced. This was mentioned in books by Richard Fortey.

Image copyright: Brittanica

Publisher
Encyclopædia Britannica
URL
https://www.britannica.com/science/Cambrian-explosion#/media/1/90620/124131
Access Date
October 21, 2024

#175: Oxford University Museum of Natural History

This is a place which should definitely be on a list of places to visit for those who want to explore palaeontology and see a wealth of artefacts from various historical periods. It is next door to the wonderful Pitt Rivers Museum, which is an anthropological treasure house as well, and will have its own post on the blog. If you can get to Oxford, this is well worth a look.

 The Palaeontology page is good. They have artefacts from William Buckland and Mary Anning in their collection. The building is dramatic and impressive and based over several floors. The pillars are made from different rock types, which covers geology as well.

I've visited a few times.

Image: Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license

Over half a million of the museum's collection of items have now been digitised and can be accessed online.

The museum also offers a range of learning workshops, including some for GCSE. One can imagine that if the new specification offers a suitable structure for these that the museum might develop something specifically for the GCSE Natural History.