Planning for fieldwork

Today's class was very interesting. I had some blank stares and some really excited students.

I deliberately divided the class into 4 home teams. Each team had one content expert, on pedagogy expert, one instrument expert and one logistics expert. After some initial disucssion, the experts then went to their expert groups to discuss how they would plan for the coming trip next Tuesday.

While the pedagogy experts seem to be the most lost (I don't blame them as they have very little to start with; they are probably the ones to contribute the most during the fieldwork), the logistics people seem to be very hyper. The content people have decided what to do but seemed a little unsure at times. I'm sure they will get through it. THe instrument people had the most headache as they discover that calibrating and configuring dataloggers can be quite a chore.

While they all seem to go in each of their own directions, I was happy taking it all in.... truly I want to get them to experience the various aspects of planning a fieldtrip. I hope the diversity of views and issues arising from the trip on Tuesday will provide some perspective to the trainees and help them in their long road to planning even more fieldwork.

I must say that most of them are game to try out this seemingly disorganised (well, they have to take some charge to organise it) activity. Let's see what they have to say....