Media releases

Release date: May 2003

Bristol pupils help to teach the world about conservation

Children from three Bristol schools are helping with the development and launch arrangements for a new city-based conservation project which is being hailed as the Noah's Ark of the 21st century.

The £3m ARKive project will be launched on 20 May, by veteran wildlife presenter Sir David Attenborough, to provide a digital safe haven for films, photographs and sound effects of British and globally endangered species. At the same time, Sir David will launch the ARKive website - www.arkive.org - offering worldwide internet users free, click-and-view, access to multi-media portraits of almost 1,000 animals, created from the digital records and backed by fact-files and other information.

The website includes a zone called Planet ARKive - designed to encourage children under 12 to learn about plants, animals and conservation through fun facts, project ideas, and a range of interactive games. It is with Planet ARKive that Key Stage 2 pupils at Bristol Grammar School, Luckwell Primary School, Bedminster, and Christchurch CoE Primary School, Staple Hill, have been helping, by advising on the design and content of the zone, and by evaluating the species profiles and games other children all around the world will soon be accessing, to learn about wildlife.

ARKive’s senior education officer, Karen McDonnell, says: “There’s a fine balance to be struck in designing content and games which are fun to view and easy to use yet which also help children to understand more about wildlife and biodiversity. As adults we can only go so far in deciding how well our fact-files and games are doing this job. So we asked local children to give us their feedback on how appealing, enjoyable and informative they found different styles of design, presentation and games, and then made adjustments to suit. The zone which is about to go ‘live’ is a tribute to their enthusiasm and thoughtfulness. They’ve been amazingly helpful.”

Other elements of the ambitious ARKive website include a zone for school teachers and other educators, offering lesson plans, downloadable worksheets, project ideas and useful reference tools. In addition, all species portraits are hot-linked to other sites, providing further information.

As well as helping with the games, the schools are making wildlife masks and models to be used at the launch ceremony. In addition, representatives from the classes which have helped with games-testing will be invited to the launch, to receive personal thanks from Sir David, ARKive’s patron.

ARKive is an initiative of The Wildscreen Trust, a UK registered educational charity. Main funders are the Heritage Lottery Fund, Hewlett Packard Laboratories (Europe) and the New Opportunities Fund.

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