In Defence of IT

Modern smartphones have ever improving cameras and can be a valuable tool in taking 'spur of the moment' pictures not just of your friends doing silly things but of plants, invertebrates, or in this case a grass snake either for identification later on or just because you can.
This picture was taken with a the camera from a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone.

I recently blogged on the topic of the use of IT and expressed my elation at finding that in an age where the smartphone and tablet have largely replaced the penknife and string in the pockets of  young people that a group of students were more interested in being outdoors than watching a video. However I have found that a group of students I have been involved with this year have been using their phones to great effect and are demonstrating a commendable level of enthusiasm. Just today I have been asked to identify pictures of fungi and seen another student talking animatedly with another lecturer about the picture he had taken on his phone of what he thought was a privet hawk moth.

Picture Courtesy of countryside management students Brady Chabot and Joe Noble of some fungi they had seen. 

Spider !!!

 While taking some students on a walk to identify cover and food value in  a pheasant cover crop yesterday morning we saw this;

I'm no expert on spiders but the students are now determined to work out exactly what it is. On the same day some of the students found stag beetle larvae in a tree stump while setting traps for grey squirrels. It's great to see that they are interested in the things they find outdoors not just what they are being directed to concentrate on.

Can IT enhance outdoor teaching?

Up until the end of the 2012-2013 academic year I have always, as part of my teaching timetable at the college where I teach countryside management, taught a special needs group once a week. The lesson I take them for is their countryside and conservation lesson and effectively what they do with me is a 35 week long forest schools course. This includes animal tracking, firelighting, campfire cooking, willow coppicing, shelter building, woodwork, taking care of quail and pheasants, environmental art and other activities.

I was encouraged at one point to try and include more interactive technology in my lessons (not specifically these sessions) but I thought I would give it a try with this group, I got hold of a bunch of video cameras and asked the group to film all the signs of spring they could find. This was in late March, and they walked around the colleges farm filming buds bursting, shoots emerging, birds nests etc.. They really enjoyed to process of looking for signs of spring, taking turns operating the camera, and for those who were able making a commentary on film. I promised them that I would compile all their videos and make one film that they could watch out in the woods the following week. 

When it was time for their next lesson and I sat them down in the woods around our campfire site to watch the video they had made on an ipad, it took them all of about 20 seconds before they were bored with the technology and wanted to watch the birds in the woods. Using the technology was fine, they were happy to go and try and film birds and plants and tractors and anything else they could find but watching the videos even though they had made them themselves WAS NOT AS INTERESTING AS BEING OUTDOORS! When they were making the film they were in an environment where their attention was automatically on the task at hand (Jensen 2008). There was no need for a special strategy to engage the students, they were meant to be learning about the countryside and they were in the countryside, they had a fun activity to do and they got on and did it and as a result some students with very special needs learned in the course of about two hours to identify several different plant species just from their buds and twigs.  

I was delighted that at a time where computers, smart phones, ipads, ipods and TV seem to rule the lives of so many young people that this group of students found nature more interesting than a video.  

References;

Jensen, E (2008) Super Teaching; 4th ed; Corwin

Nature Enthusiasm

In the Digital Age, How to Get Students Excited About Going Outdoors

This fantastic article by Holly Korbey (follow the link above for the full article) highlights the need to get students excited and enthusiastic about the outdoors before depressing them with stories of rainforest destruction, pollution and global warming. Why would they care about the environment before they love it.

The problem with modern education is that this excitement can't be cultivated in schools unless there are big changes. My love of the countryside and environment does not come from geography field trips or biology lessons but from recreational activities such as participation in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, taking part in the Exmoor challenge, working as a pest controller shooting rabbits at golf courses and learning bushcraft in my parents back garden.  I was never advised at school that I could pursue a career in the countryside but was more often than not chastised for not focusing in class and not concentrating on my academic work. I eventually went to a college to study game and wildlife management (which I loved) after putting up with school all the way through GCSE's and A levels but I only found out about options to study a vocational subject at college because I was skipping school to buy ammunition from a local gunshop and heard about courses at Sparsholt College from the owner of the shop.

It was studying at Sparsholt that really enthused me about the outdoors and the countryside and I have worked in the countryside industry ever since. Now I enjoy watching my students develop a passion for the outdoors, whether they study agriculture, outdoor education, countryside management or are just taking part in an activity as a bit of fun, getting them excited and enthusiastic is the key. I often teach friction firelighting to students during their freshers week as a team building activity and I once taught an agriculture student who was so determined and enthusiastic to succeed that he refused to stop trying until his arm became so stiff from trying to work his bow drill that he could hardly move it for two days afterwards. This is the kind of enthusiasm that we need to instill in students who will be the next generation of outdoors professionals.

This diagram by the Swedish Friluftsfrämjandet explains the principle marvellously;

this picture explains the objectives of a skogsmulle (equivalent to Forest School in the UK and aimed at young children) programme and points out that you have to be in nature and enjoy it before you can influence society about the environment. 

The Cavemans Theory of Reflection

In a rather sarcastic comment in response to the being told "Schon is the father of reflective theory" (referring to Donald Schon and his theory's on reflective practice in education) by a tutor while I was studying for my Certificate in Education I said that cavemen had been reflecting on things long before anyone wrote it down and made 'reflection' into a theory, (in my defence it was late in the evening and I had been teaching for seven hours that day) now having thought about it further I present to you;

The Cavemans Theory of Reflection.

Example 1;
Prehistoric man may have started off sleeping under the stars with very little to protect them from the cold, they may have seen animals with thick fur coats and 'reflecting' on the nights they spent shivering with cold made themselves a coat or blanket from animal skin.

Example 2;
Having been eating tough raw meat for ages prehistoric man discovers that the bodies of animals killed by forest fires smell quite nice, not long later after a bit of 'reflection' prehistoric man  starts chucking meat on his own fire to eat.

I know it's not really a theory and my assumption in the examples above are merely that, assumptions, they are not based on fact or a detailed knowledge of prehistoric man or their habits, technology or society. They are merely generalizations and guesses as to how things may have been. This kind of reflection is an interesting principle to apply to teaching bushcraft though (something I will be looking at over the next few months as I experiment with the use of 'learning logs' with students learning friction fire lighting) as it is how most of us learn our bushcraft skills in the first place. I certainly never had money to spend on going on a bushcraft or survival skills course and what I know now is a result of thousands of hours of practice and trial and error. Trial and error is a wonderful way of developing bushcraft skills, time consuming, but wonderful. I strongly believe that it also makes us better teachers, if we can remember back to the time that our technique was poor or inefficient or both we are better able to direct our students to make the same improvements that we discovered for ourselves. Better still if we can encourage students to reflect on the difficulties they are facing, identify areas of strength, notice things that may be holding them back, and experiment with other options they will be able to make those same discoveries themselves and as I said in an earlier post then they will 'own' that knowledge, it will be theirs.

The Origin of Friction Fire

I was talking over the weekend about friction fire lighting and how it may have been discovered and expressed the opinion that it might have been the accidental result of using a hand drill for boring through a piece of wood which created the first ember from friction. I'm sure that I have read something along these lines before and so had a search online and found  of Primitive Ways.

It's interesting isn't it that you can use one relatively simple technique to achieve so many different outcomes. 

This principle can be useful for the teacher too; I have taught bow drill fire lighting for years now but have also always encouraged my students to 'think outside the box' in terms of what they can achieve with the basic tools they have. So in reverse of the way that friction fire might have been developed as explained in the article above the bow drill that students have learned to use to make fire suddenly becomes a drill for boring holes in a piece of antler to make a fishing hook. 

Other examples might be the flint tool which is used for cutting and providing a spark for firelighting, the elm bark that is used for making string and containers, the birch bark for tinder, containers, oil, medicine, tar and on and on. Instilling this idea that that almost everything can be put to more than just the obvious uses helps when teaching bushcraft but it can also be put to excellent use when teaching students about sustainability. 

For example; students may at first see a willow coppice as a bunch of trees, after a bit of practical work they may be able to list a few uses; willow hurdles, duck baskets, pea sticks but after a bit more thinking and teaching and they will realise that the possibilities are endless and that it can even be turned into pelletised fuel for heating houses and firing power stations. Thats what experiential learning is about, once enough experience has been facilitated then students will start to work out the answers for themselves, and if they have worked out the answers for themselves then they will remember it because it's 'their' answer, they will own that knowledge. 

Moulton College Countryside Management: Survival of the Fittest!

Check out what some of the students at Moulton College have been doing as part of freshers week;

Moulton College Countryside Management: Survival of the Fittest!: New National Award Countryside Management students were getting to know each other this week as they tried to make fire by friction. Frictio...