Creating local opportunities for independent investigations

Using professional surveying equipment, students have fixed datums from survey markers and global positioning system (GPS) units, accurately recorded changes in the levels of shingle beaches and assessed impacts upon flood/erosion risk at three sites: A local issue News reports in the Eastern Daily Press outlined local people's concerns about the impact of the coast road closure on communities in the Salthouse area, so we raised this with students: 'Will residents living on the north Norfolk coast be at increased risk from coastal flooding in the future?', bringing together different aspects of physical and human geography. The Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm exhibit demonstrated developments in the economy of the north Norfolk coast; we followed this up by viewing the same wind farm from the museum's observation tower. The Geographical Association's Classic Landforms of the North Norfolk Coast, allowed students to place their own studies of north Norfolk coastal systems into the context of geomorphic processes taking place during thousands of years of glacial and interglacial periods along the eastern coast of England.