Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Wednesday, 10 April 2013

Day Six - Back to School

After feeling refreshed after a weekend filled of relaxation, not too many steps and good food we completed our morning hydration tests (well drilled 6 days in) then we headed down to the stadium for our second of the trips 6 minute walk tests. It was already a hot morning so we all ensured that we conducted as many baseline measure in what little shade we had. Everyone put in a great effort and are feeling more acclimatised as the days are passing with less than a week till our big trek to Machu Pichu. By the end of the morning we had another set of great data to take back home with us to analyse. One more walk test to go!



After a quick stop off at the supermarket to save a few individuals from hunger who forgot their lunch, we travelled to Huarcapay for another day of the schools makeover! With a weekend away everyone realised how much we had actually achieved last week and this week we were able to relax a little on the digging to allow the more cosmetic tasks such as repainting the playground games, sanding and painting the benches and the large task of sweeping the entire playground with 4 indoor brooms! A new addition to the team were two brand new electric strimmers and to Alan and Luke's delight they got to work finishing off the edges and anything we had missed with our picks. The Dream Team were also working on building some real life Inca terraces next door to the chicken house with a monumental effort on their behalf enabling crops to later be grown, much better than the almost vertical slope that was there before.

The day stayed dry with no afternoon thunderstorms with 60 litres of water consumed and sun cream applied, re-applied and re-applied once more. Also seen around the playground were troops of workers armed with paintbrushes and paint pots sporting some fetching blue face masks to block out the rather strong aroma of paint!

Overall a productive day, with some interesting tan lines appearing, and lots of jobs nearly completed with the general consensus that its amazing how good a lick of paint can look! Great job team!

Laura

Thursday, 28 March 2013

Educational Use

Assessing the benefit of the project

Dr Angela Benson has been conducting interviews with the group over the previous two weeks. Angela is assessing the usefulness of the project for the students in regards to the educational benefit and also to their understanding and motivation for volunteering over the project. The students and staff found the sessions to be a very open opportunity to discuss what they hope to gain from the experience. Angela will then interview both the staff and students after arriving back. This will hopefully be used by others in the future to help them develop and plan volunteering projects abroad, integrated with education whether in HE, FE or school based groups. This will then be presented at the forthcoming Learning and Teaching Conference in July.