Education & Outreach
The Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology is at the forefront of maritime archaeology education and outreach (E&O).
Our active and innovative education and outreach programme incorporates all sectors of the community. There are no age limits (lower or upper!). Where appropriate we are more than happy to adapt activities so they can be better enjoyed be people with special educational needs and disabilities. Indeed staff have recently undertaken training in this area, including training in the use of Makaton sign language. We have also been experimenting with multi-sensory equipment such as talking tins, talking photo album and smell boxes.
We seek to engage and enthuse people with the past and use maritime archaeology as an inspiring tool for raising aspirations and achievements.
What is education and outreach?
While there are, of course, areas of overlap, broadly speaking, we differentiate between education and outreach in the following way:
Education: associated with formal education systems.
Outreach: aimed at the wider general public, outside of 'traditional' formal educational systems and establishments.
HWTMA reaching far and wide
In 2008 John Staats, a history teacher from Australia, secured funding from the NSW Government in Australia to undertake a "Hands on History" study tour of the UK during 2009. John is researching "hands-on history" as a pedagogical tool to enhance student engagement and improve achievement. John first contacted the Trust back in early 2007 as he had heard of the "excellent work" being done by HWTMA in the field of education and outreach. In November of this year, John came to see us and we arranged an impromptu outing for the new Community Outreach Van in a Southampton Park so John could see our new outreach tool at first hand. Following his visit, John was very complementary, saying:
"Your outreach van is awesome and the people you have running it are brilliant. I am very impressed by what I saw and the vision you have. The van is addressing proactively a range of issues that others have identified, and I am sure that your project will become a model that others will learn from."
We hope to keep in touch with John who has promised to keep us informed with the results of his study tour.
See links to the left for further information on each of the listed areas. If you can't find what you're looking for here, please do not hesitate to contact us.