Water in the world: Reflections on a zoom conference between year 7 geography students from Melbourne, Australia and a water professional

• Author: Vaughan White,Kenric Rowland,Ellissa Williams,Brydie Salisbury,Zari Kelsey,Ketsia Wakefield,Shanae Lindsay,Sienna Phillips,Tanae Kelsey,Twyla Smith,Camilla Trim,Wendy Rawson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wwp2.12016
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Date: 01 November 2019

World Water Policy. 2019;5:229–233. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/wwp2

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229

© 2019 Policy Studies Organization.

Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

DOI: 10.1002/wwp2.12016

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Water in the world: Reflections on a zoom

conference between year 7 geography students from

Melbourne, Australia and a water professional

SiennaPhillips

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ShanaeLindsay

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CamillaTrim

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EllissaWilliams

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TwylaSmith

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KenricRowland

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VaughanWhite

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KetsiaWakefield

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BrydieSalisbury

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ZariKelsey

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TanaeKelsey

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WendyRawson

Glenvale School, Yarrambat, Australia

Correspondence

Wendy Rawson, Glenvale School, Melbourne Campus, PO Box 285, Yarrambat 3091, Australia.

Email: wendy_rawson@bigpond.com

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INTRODUCTION

In May 2019, a class of Year 7 Geography students from Melbourne, Australia, and their Geography

teacher, Mrs Wendy Rawson, held a teleconference with Jeff Camkin from the University of Western

Australia, to better understand the topic of Water in the World. The students wrote this piece to share

what they learnt from the Conference.

Our academic article contains four sections. The first section shows you the inquiry

questions that we each wrote which Mrs Rawson emailed to Professor Camkin before our

Conference. The second section tells you different things we learnt at the conference and about

water. We took notes during the conference but we also had a recording so that we could listen

to it afterwards. Some of us also thought about other knowledge gained previously through the

course of the semester and how it all fitted together. Prior activities included exercises from

our textbook and going on a fieldtrip to a reservoir. After the conference we contributed to

a discussion thread on Canvas, so we could think about the conference and comment on our

classmates’ ideas. Since each of the inquiry questions are mostly different, the information

is presented in a general sequence according to the list of inquiry questions in the first sec-

tion. For example, many students commented on the vast amount of water needed to make a

hamburger but the details appear only once. Other questions were able to be consolidated, for

example, ones related to redistributing water in Australia. Many of the students took a broad

view when writing about what they learned whilst others had a narrower focus. The third sec-

tion is our vision for the future and last section contains final reflections and a pictures that

we took on the day.