Tag Archive for: course-ESRM_499

Next Tuesday capstone students embark on the week long trip to the research station. This will be a good chance to get many of the groves out liars pin pointed with GPS. Doing research on papers and articles looking into why oaks do what they do we may have a better understanding of what we are dealing with in these groves! The winter break off from school has allowed me to catch up on some much needed rest and reading for this topic.

Been looking around at the different teaching techniques to try and find out what will be the best way to give out the information to the kids. It is amazing how you can have a few different main ideas and yet there can still be a lot of different options for it. An example could be that I could give just a straight up lecture. To be considered a full on lecture I would be the only one talking while the kids are taking notes. However I can make it not as lecture like and ask them questions along the way have some small activities to help them understand what we will be doing or I can show them some videos. These different options are all considered a lecture but they have slightly different styles. I can also do demonstrations of what will be done, this would be more of an active teaching style. This would be where I am actually doing what will be done later on. Like I could have a clam gun (a metal cylinder) and do a quick little survey of sand or something else less messy so that they could have more of a reference for before they go out into the field. There are a few other examples such as a more direct teaching method which is where the teacher directly interacts with the students. For my project I want to try to get a good mixture of a few different styles at first and try to feel out what works best and try to narrow it down to one or two different methods by the end or if the mixture is working the best then I will keep it for the whole time. Only time will tell how I will be doing this.

Patrick, Micheala and I arrived just as the sun was coming up to a great event at Ledbetter Beach in Santa Barbara!  This ‘keiki’ surf contest was hosted by Surf Happens which is a local surf school in Santa Barbara dedicated to teaching kids the art of surfing with proper education, etiquette and history of the sport.  The group promotes the high five initiative where everyone that hits the beach picks up 5 pieces of trash before they enjoy the waves.

This weekend was special because Pro Surfer Lakey Peterson was there to host the event and had a special clinic session for Teddy Bear families with kids that have cancer.  It was pretty cool to watch parents and kids out there having fun in the waves with a pro surfer!