![]() Pinewood Junior School in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, organised a virtual tour for their Year 3 pupils. The aquarium’s resident ‘mermaid’ Marina narrates a short story live each week to focus on wellbeing. Just over 50,000 people tuned into the first broadcast, Underwater Volcanoes and the team received numerous comments from both teachers and parents about how much the children had engaged with the session streamed on the aquarium’s YouTube channel. Stu said he was overwhelmed at the response when they began advertising their Friday lockdown sessions. There have definitely been things to consider along the way and we have had to adapt and respond to changing situations.” We wanted it to be as simple as possible. “We had to think about how we’d maintain those connections. We originally set it up with Microsoft Teams but we had to go back to the drawing board in January when we realised we were potentially going to have hundreds of children connecting from home. “It has been an interesting journey and of course with any new project, there are teething issues. Stu Higgs, schools programme manager, National Marine Aquarium “As a nation we have come into this new way of being and we wanted to find a way to still being able to connect with our audiences.” “Schools want interesting things for the children to connect with. We began developing the virutal programme back in September 2020 and recently, we have really stepped it up.” “Before the summer we had a focus group of teachers to work out what would be the most important thing for virtual sessions – in terms of duration, the content, the balance between the curriculum, the environment and the wellbeing. “Education is part of the DNA of the organisation - we are keen to support personal development as well as academic studies. Stu Higgs, schools programme manager, explains how they adapted: “To give context, during an average year we have about 27,000 school visitors to the aquarium.
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