Time-zone mapping!

Time-zone mapping is a Travel-wise program where students take part in an activity, where we walk for 15 minutes around Wattle Downs to see how long it will take to get to and from school from different areas. The focus is to get enough data to create a time-zone map. A time-zone map is a map that shows how long it takes to walk to school. This map will be shared with our school community so everyone will be able to see how easy it is to travel with sustainable transport.

Armed with our pedometers on our hips and our clipboard by our side we were ready to walk for our first 5 minutes. As our group strutted along the streets and across the road we met our first destination, a house on the corner with a stunning water feature glimmering in the sun. We snapped our first picture spreading our hand out making a five. We then opened the green clipboard and marked down the number of our steps. After that we started our timer again and continued walking.

As we came around the bend to see the back of the golf course it had almost been ten minutes. We carried on strolling until finally the timer beeped ten minutes. We looked to the side and saw a house with tropical palm trees. We took another photo this time with both hands making a ten. Again we restarted our pedometers and began walking again. We went past house after house until we saw the mass of green grass. “We made it to the golf course!” we shouted with excitement. With that same excitement we kept on walking hard to get to our final destination. Our final photo was a photo taken of our group standing around a golfball cemented into the ground. We then turned around and started the 15 minute journey back to school where the other groups were waiting for us. 

As we got back to class we uploaded our pictures onto the computer and tallied up all of our foot steps. Amazingly we got more than we expected. Time-zone mapping was a fun day and a great experience. Hopefully all the families in our school will make use of our brand new time-zone map to see how easy it is to travel around our picturesque neighborhood with sustainable energy.

A huge word of thanks Haley from Travel-wise and the parents that walked with us for making this day possible.

By Jade and Siobhan