Copyright

Avon Wildlife Trust

Summary

A virtual forest that grows as children add their wildlife experiences to it – with faces as the buds of the trees. These faces are portals to the experiences of the visitors to Folly Farm.

Description

When children visit the Folly Farm Nature Reserve, they will have the chance to record their findings and feelings as they explore. Using handheld devices they can make a short recording, or take a picture and record their own thoughts about what they found. They will then take a picture of themselves back at the centre and their findings and faces will be put onto a central computer. The idea is to collect children’s experiences and thoughts to show others.

In a yurt (round structure), the faces are projected onto the walls (360 degrees) as part of a growing forest of trees – the more faces there are, the more the trees grow. At the beginning of this project, the trees will be small saplings at ground level – as more and more ‘face-buds’ appear, the trees will start to grow. As well as faces, there are pictures of wildlife projected into the trees – birds, badgers, bees etc. Visitors to the woodland yurt can then physically move around and touch each face to play that child’s recording, or they can touch an image of an animal to link to the wildlife cameras around the reserve. By linking to the wildlife on the reserve, children feel a part of it and it strengthens the link of outside to inside.

The clips that are used in the yurt could be short recordings from children that support their learning that day – for example a picture of the pond life they found and a voice recording about what it is. This is an instantaneous use of the yurt and would work well with groups that visit Folly Farm for the day. On residential visits, young people could spend longer on their clip and make a little film to go in the yurt. Using simple media software, children can film, sound record and edit their own short natural history film to contribute to the growing forest.

How it might be used

On a visit to Folly Farm, we went out into the woods to learn about wildlife. At the end of the day, we were asked to choose our magic spot – this was somewhere or something we liked in the woods. I chose a mossy stone by the stream because it was soft and the noise made me feel relaxed. The teacher came around to each of us with a handheld recorder and I made a 30-second film of the stream and I said why I liked it. My friend took a picture of a butterfly she saw on a flower, and another friend recorded the sound of the birds.

When we went back to the centre, the teacher took us to a big round house. When we walked through the door we saw a forest of trees covering the walls inside, with pictures of woodland animals in the trees – it was like an outside inside! There was a computer at one end of the room where we could upload our pictures. As we did, the teacher took a picture of our face to accompany them. One by one our faces appeared in the trees. The teacher told me to touch my face in the forest – which was on top of a stump on the floor. When I touched it the recording I made by the stream came on to the big computer screen and everyone could hear what I said. We each touched our faces and our pictures and stories were shown to the whole group. There were faces of other children that had visited before us – we touched their faces and watched their clips. We were then told to touch the animals – when we touched the bird, live pictures were shown from the nest box. We touched a bee and a live close-up camera in the beehive could be seen.

Contact

Lucy Owen

Avon Wildlife Trust

lucyowen@follyfarm.org
0870 122 4377