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Combining Adventure and Academics: The Rise of Travel-Based Learning Programs

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Travel-based learning programs, which combine the thrills of discovery with academia, have become increasingly popular. These innovative teaching methods incorporate classroom instruction with real-world inquiry to offer a unique educational experience to their participants. They broaden cultural horizons while cultivating personal development and strengthening academic knowledge. Here is a comprehensive look at how travel-based learning initiatives are revolutionizing education.

The Concept of Travel-Based Learning

Travel-based learning (also referred to as study abroad or experiential learning) combines classroom instruction with experiential opportunities across several regions. In contrast to traditional classroom settings, these educational programs immerse pupils in different cultures, languages, and landscapes for an unforgettable learning experience that encourages academic excellence, cultural understanding, and personal development. The goal is a comprehensive educational experience that promotes academic performance, cultural awareness, and personal growth.

Academic Benefits

Travel-based learning’s chief advantage lies in its use of practical experience to deepen academic comprehension. Students become active participants in their studies rather than passive consumers of knowledge; history students might visit historical sites while biology students explore various ecosystems – both activities which foster greater comprehension and longer knowledge retention for difficult concepts, while simultaneously helping kids build critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities as they navigate unfamiliar settings and circumstances. If you will need additional academic help while traveling, ask, “Is essay writing service legit?”.

Cultural Immersion and Language Skills

Travel-based learning programs provide unparalleled opportunities for cultural immersion. Students live and study abroad, giving them firsthand experience of various traditions, customs, and lifestyles worldwide. Furthermore, travel-based language learning programs often include components to practice language acquisition outside a typical classroom setting by conversing with native speakers in everyday situations through conversation in foreign tongues.

Personal Growth and Independence

Travel-based learning programs can also play an invaluable role in students’ personal development. When immersed in unfamiliar circumstances, students are challenged to step outside of their comfort zones and gain independence – in addition to picking up skills such as problem-solving, time management, and environment adaptation. Such experiences help strengthen feelings of accountability, resilience, and self-assurance while often forging close bonds with host families and friends, which enhance social and emotional well-being. In case you will need more time for adapting, read an unbiased essayservice.com review for writing assistance.

Career Advantages

Travel-based learning initiatives also bring significant professional advantages. Employers increasingly value cultural competency and global awareness. Students who have studied abroad tend to exhibit flexibility, intercultural communication skills, and an ability to thrive in various settings – qualities highly prized in today’s increasingly global employment market. Furthermore, travel learning initiatives often include volunteer and internship programs that offer real world experience as well as professional networking that may pave the way to future employment prospects.

Types of Travel-Based Learning Programs

Numerous travel-based learning programs exist to accommodate a range of educational interests and individual preferences, such as study abroad programs. Such courses allow students to enroll at an international institution while earning credits toward their degree program. Field study programs involve practical investigation and exploration in appropriate regions, often emphasizing specific disciplines like environmental science or anthropology. Service-learning programs combine academic study and community involvement into one program that allows students to apply their knowledge directly. Furthermore, educational tours consist of shorter programs lasting a few weeks that offer participants in-depth research and discovery opportunities.

Overcoming Challenges

Travel-based learning programs offer many advantages yet can present certain obstacles as well. Financial constraints may become an impediment to participation. However, grants and financial assistance programs exist to help offset such expenses. Furthermore, safety should also be a key concern; reliable programs place their members’ health and well-being as top priorities by offering extensive assistance and emergency procedures. Academic preparation is necessary to ensure that credits earned abroad meet the criteria of one’s degree program, with advisors and program coordinators assisting in ensuring travel-based learning fits seamlessly into academic life.

Case Studies of Successful Programs

School pioneered travel-based learning programs that are both effective and serve as examples for others, like Semester at Sea’s hybrid program combining onboard coursework and on-land fieldwork to give students an immersive global comparative education while traveling on ships; another school pioneering these types of programs would be SIT which provides immersive programs on international issues such as sustainability, health, and human rights – both of which have proven their transforming power on student academic and personal growth over time.

The Future of Travel-Based Learning

Travel-based learning initiatives reflect an increasing recognition of experiential education’s significance, significantly as globalization expands and global citizenship becomes more vital. Technological advances, including virtual exchange programs, make this experience more accessible, allowing more students to take advantage of international study possibilities. A combination of conventional and experiential learning will shape education into the future by equipping young people for meaningful lives that contribute meaningfully to global society beyond simply academic success.

Conclusion

Travel-based learning programs combine academia and adventure to create a dynamic teaching method. By exposing students to different cultures, settings, and real-life experiences, such initiatives improve academic understanding, foster personal development, and prepare them for successful jobs in global societies. Over time, these initiatives become even more influential in determining education policy.

Education

Stonehenge may have been built to unify the people of ancient Britain

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THE RECENT discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones originated in Scotland supports a theory that the stone circle was built as a monument to unite Britain’s early farmers nearly 5,000 years ago, according to a new study by researchers at UCL and Aberystwyth University.

In a research article published in the journal Archaeology International, academics analyse the significance of the recent discovery of the Scottish origin of the six-tonne Altar Stone, which confirmed that all of the stones that make up Stonehenge were brought to Salisbury Plain from many miles away. 

In their new paper, the researchers say that Stonehenge’s long-distance links add weight to the theory that the Neolithic monument may have had some unifying purpose in ancient Britain.

Lead author Professor Mike Parker Pearson from the UCL Institute of Archaeology said: “The fact that all of its stones originated from distant regions, making it unique among over 900 stone circles in Britain, suggests that the stone circle may have had a political as well as a religious purpose – as a monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”

Co-author Professor Richard Bevins of Aberystwyth University, said: “It’s really gratifying that our geological investigations can contribute to the archaeological research and the unfolding story as our knowledge has been improving so dramatically in just the last few years.

“Our research is like forensic science. We are a small team of earth scientists, each bringing their own area of expertise; it is this combination of skills that has allowed us to identify the sources of the bluestones, and now the Altar Stone.”

The study has been published (on 20 December) the day before the winter solstice, when the setting sun dips below the horizon over the middle of the Altar Stone and between the two largest upright stones (one of which is now fallen).  During this winter period, Neolithic people feasted close to Stonehenge at the great village of Durrington Walls, and the midwinter solstice was probably central to these events.

Stonehenge is famous for these solar alignments on the solstice and even today attracts large crowds to the site on the shortest and longest days of the year. In addition, it was also the largest burial ground of its age. Some archaeologists think it might have been a religious temple, an ancient observatory and a solar calendar, and this new research adds a political dimension.

Professor Parker Pearson, a Professor of British Later Prehistory, added: “We’ve known for a while that people came from many different parts of Britain with their pigs and cattle to feast at Durrington Walls, and nearly half the people buried at Stonehenge had lived somewhere other than Salisbury Plain.

“The similarities in architecture and material culture between the Stonehenge area and northern Scotland now make more sense.  It’s helped to solve the puzzle of why these distant places had more in common than we might have once thought.” 

Stonehenge’s 43 ‘bluestones’ were brought from the Preseli Hills in west Wales some 140 miles away, while the larger ‘Sarsen’ stones were hauled from their sources at least 15 miles away to the north and east of the stone circle.

Transporting these massive monoliths was an extraordinary feat. Although the wheel had been invented, it had not yet reached Britain so moving these massive stones must have required the efforts of hundreds if not thousands of people.

The researchers point to how Stonehenge’s horizontal Altar Stone is similar in size and placement to the large, horizontal stones of the stone circles of northeast Scotland, where the Altar Stone originated.

These ‘recumbent stone circles’ are found only in that part of Scotland and not in the rest of Britain, so there may have been close ties between the two regions. Megalithic stones had ancestral significance, binding people to place and origins. The Altar Stone may have been brought as a gift from the people of northern Scotland to represent some form of alliance or collaboration.

It is difficult to pin down a precise date when the Scottish Altar Stone was brought to Stonehenge, but it probably arrived around 2500 BCE around the time that Stonehenge was remodelled from its original form.

This is the timeframe when the Neolithic builders erected the large sarsen stones forming an outer circle and the inner horseshoe of trilithons – paired upright stones connected by horizontal ‘lintels’ – that is present today. The Altar Stone lies at the foot of the largest trilithon, which frames the midwinter solstice sunset to the southwest. This was the second stage of construction at Stonehenge, long after the first stage (around 3000 BCE) when it is thought the bluestones from Wales were erected.

This second iteration of Stonehenge was built at a time of increasing contact between the people of Britain and arrivals from Europe, mainly from what are today the Netherlands and Germany. The researchers suggest that this period of contact may have been what spurred this second-stage rebuilding, and the monument was a reaction to these newcomers meant to unite indigenous Britons.

The new arrivals brought with them knowledge of metalworking and the wheel and, over the next four hundred years, their descendants – known as the Beaker people on account of the distinctive pots they buried with their dead – gradually replaced the population of indigenous Britons, and people with this European ancestry became the dominant population across the island.

The geological research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

Ends

Picture: The Altar Stone, seen here underneath two bigger Sarsen stones. Credit: Professor Nick Pearce, Aberystwyth University.

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Education

Tutor banned after Pembrokeshire College drug incident

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A PEMBROKESHIRE COLLEGE tutor has been struck off after admitting to police that he had cocaine on college premises but later denying the offence to authorities.

The Fitness to Practise Committee of the Education Workforce Council (EWC) found Phillip Lewis, a former tutor at Pembrokeshire College, guilty of unacceptable professional conduct. The committee said Lewis provided inconsistent explanations about how he came into possession of the Class A drug.

Lewis accepted a police caution in January 2023, which is considered a full admission of the offence. Despite this, he later challenged the allegations, raising concerns about the police’s handling of the matter.

Maxine Thomas, the safeguarding lead at Pembrokeshire College, told the committee that CCTV footage from November 23, 2022, captured a packet of cocaine left on a counter shortly after Mr Lewis had been in the area. The footage also showed Lewis retracing his steps as if searching for something.

The committee reported that Lewis gave conflicting accounts of the incident, including differing accounts of where and when he claimed to have found the packet. His explanations did not match the evidence from the CCTV footage.

“He provided inconsistent details about the circumstances in which he came to possess the packet, none of which aligned with the CCTV evidence,” the committee’s report stated.

Lewis claimed he had discovered the packet in a corridor but lost it shortly afterward. The panel, however, concluded that he should have reported the find immediately if his account were truthful.

“The committee concluded that Mr Lewis brought the packet onto college premises himself and did not hand it in because of its illegal nature,” the panel’s findings read.

The panel deemed that possessing cocaine on college grounds and accepting a police caution constituted unacceptable professional conduct. While no direct harm to students was noted, the panel highlighted the significant risk posed by such actions during working hours.

In deciding to remove Lewis from the professional register, the committee acknowledged his prior good record and his participation in the EWC process. However, these factors were outweighed by aggravating considerations, including his attempts to cover up the incident, providing contradictory accounts, and failing to demonstrate insight or remorse.

Lewis will be eligible to apply for re-registration in two years.

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World of engineering and welding SPARCs interest in Ysgol Harri Tudur’s female learners

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AN EVENT hosted by Ledwood Engineering gave girls from Year 8 and 9 at Ysgol Harri Tudur first-hand experience of the world of engineering recently. 

Engineering is a booming sector in Pembrokeshire with a high demand for skilled workers in exciting career pathways associated with the development of low carbon and renewable energy industry and the Celtic Freeport. 

The young women heard from industry experts on the importance of engineering in Pembrokeshire, and had hands on experience using a welding simulator, at the company’s Pembroke Dock site. 

The learners are part of the County’s SPARC (Sustainable Power and Renewable Construction) initiative aimed as inspiring and empowering young females to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pathways where females are under-represented in the workforce. 

SPARC is funded through an alliance comprising Blue Gem Wind, Ledwood Engineering, Port of Milford Haven, RWE Renewables, Pembrokeshire County Council, Pembrokeshire College and the Swansea Bay City Deal. 

Mrs Laura Buckingham, SPARC practitioner at Ysgol Harri Tudur said: “Our learners had a fantastic experience at Ledwood Engineering.  They were given lots of advice by industry experts on the different career options and pathways within the engineering sector.  

“They appreciated the opportunity to ask their questions and found the session very informative. Having the chance to trial their welding skills on the simulator was an experience they continue to talk about and has definitely piqued their interest.”

Poppy Sawyer, Year 8 SPARC learner added:  ‘It was a really good trip. Talking to the different people there has helped me know more about the jobs we could get which will be very useful when making choices for my future.”  

 “They helped us a lot by giving us lots of information. We were able to look around and try welding. It was really fun,” added Tianna Marshall, Year 8 SPARC learner.

The Regional Learning and Skills Partnership also launched its Explore Engineering interactive website at the event.

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