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My school recently partnered up with a college in the Netherlands called Maurick College, with regards to the topic of water security and sustainability. Mr. DJ Shrimp is the science teacher from my school. He and one of our Vice principals took a trip to the Netherlands, which initiated this partnership.
From that trip, my school also learned a new blocks schedule system that were used by Maurick College. Since the school was moving to a new building the next year, my school decided to model their system in the new school year.
As part of the partnership, we have established an exchange program with Maurick College. I was very lucky to be one of the students that got accepted to the first trip. We hosted students from Maurick College in April this year, and in October we got to travel to the Netherlands. We both did our scientific researches when the other group was visiting.
It was an incredible experience being part of the exchange. I met some awesome people and saw a lot of interesting things. I tried to post my awesome stories here sooner, but unfortunately I got caught up in other things. Hopefully I can post all the tings related to this exchange under this thread.
Water is life. One of the most fundamental challenges facing the world today is how we manage and develop this precious resource in the face of growing demand, to promote economic growth in a responsible and environmentally sustainable way.
The core of our exchange started with this “Water is Life” conference. It’s an international school conference organized by Maurick College and a school in Singapore that happens once for every two years. Schools from all around the world would prepare their own scientific projects and present them during the conference. Part of the purpose of our exchange is to get students from both schools to have a chance to be involved with the other’s project.
Here in my city, we have a creek called the Bowker Creek. It meanders through a few municipalities in our region. In order to improve the quality of the residents’ lives, cities in our region decided to restore the Bowker Creek Watershed. Restoration of a section of Bowker Creek that flows along my school commenced as part of the plan this year. It will build an environmentally friendly urban space for our community.
With the support of Mr. DJ Shrimp, we decided to survey the water quality of the creek before and after the restoration, as well as perform ongoing monitoring of the creek for this conference. By sampling water from different parts of the creek, we are able to learn about the health of the creek and give constructive suggestions to the Bowker Creek Initiative.
It was a fun experience jumping down the actual creek and doing the sampling. We had to all wear these big fat water proof suite and rubber boots. It was during the spring so the water was really fast. We had to walk quite a distance in the water, doing plant sampling on different sites.
We also did some sampling for water quality test. We went to the head water and a few other locations along the creek to get samples.
Unfortunately because of my graduation, I won’t be able to go to the actual conference. Also the project we chose to do is a long term project, and I won’t be able to be part of it when the restoration is done. But being involve in the project gave me some really good ideas about scientific researching. Although what we did wasn’t that serious at all, and we didn’t follow the exact procedures either, it still brought me a better understanding how science is done.