Mr P’s iPod blog

We went off to camp for the first three days of this week. This time it was to a farm based camp with my grade and the other five grades in the unit, (120 students in all). As usual the children were very excited. To ensure the children had a chance to interact with as many others as possible the grades were mixed around so that the camp groups were a mix of children from each of the grades.

As usual I had in mind to take the iPods however this time the preparation and discussion with the children hadn’t taken place so most didn’t know that I had them with us. In retrospect, this was a big mistake on my behalf.

Our first activity was a foray out onto the farm and some interactions with the cows and sheep. The children were given the chance to move some cows from one paddock another and then feed them some hay. At a break I asked one of my children, Will to do a vox pop from the paddock which he readily agreed to. His reflection was really neat and then he asked a fellow student from another grade a couple of really interesting questions. I was quite chuffed.

The next activity was canoeing however in this group there was only one of my students and, well I could have got her to do some recording but the opportunity was lost in the learning of the canoe skills and then the need to get back to the camp for the next activity. From there, things went downhill and time and the moment seemed to pass even more quickly such that now back from camp we have only the one original sound file. This is disappointing and seems to suggest that maybe I am not as tuned into this whole iPod thing as much as I thought I was. Next time I must ensure that I tell the children that the iPods are available.

Having said this however the children have written some fine reflective pieces about the camp structured as a newspaper report at our class blog at Middle P Prattlings.