Why did the Chickenman cross the road?

Wow so we wake up in Satipo extremely satisfied – my roommate Matthias (the teacher from San Jose and me constructed a magnificent totem pole or like a pyramid of worship made from random pieces of furniture and baggage from our room at 1:30am! (it made us wake up with a smile anyway!) You may be asking Why we did such a thing? Were we still suffering the effects of altitude sickness or perhaps had we started drinking the manioc already? The reason however is none of the above it was simply to be able to turn our air con on so we didn’t sweat to death in the night! When I say air con I mean an electrical table fan however there was one slight problem the only plug socket was on the ceiling and the lead that powered this breeze machine was about 5 inches long.  When we placed the fan on top of our magnificent piece of modern engineering it was able to reach the socket and more importantly worked keeping us refreshed all through the night!

Anyway enough about the proud moment of two simple men! Actually before I carry on with the serious matter of travelling into the rainforest by tiny plane I really feel I must mention the other comedy moment involving showers with two ladies who shall remain nameless to protect them from the potential worldwide embarrassment (Ok I give in it was the two female teachers on the trip Emily from Cirencester and Clover from New York) So what basically happened was that Emily was taking a nice hot shower (the last for a number of days) when she turned the tap to get more hot water, unfortunately it then came off in her hand followed by a jet of water, Emily tried to put the tap on but had no chance she then screamed for Clover to help whilst trying to cover her nakedness. To add to the embarrassment obviously Clover was only able to call for the man at reception to come and switch of the water. Now this would obviously be a funny and embarrassing story as it is but it gets even better. Due to the problem with the shower the girls were given a new room without the knowledge of the old cleaner chap who then proceeded to walk in on Clover as she was naked in the shower! I saw the old fella in reception later and he seemed extremely happier than he had been earlier.

Ok that really is enough of embarrassing my colleagues on with the real stuff! So we set off to fly by very small plane via a tiny airstrip. We took a mototaxi which is a tuc tuc if you are in Thailand! Watch the video below:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qNyvIpEbM

The airstrip was amazing (see video below) just cut out of the landscape and all that was there was a tiny hangar, a very small plane and a 30 year experienced pilot that went by the name of Enrico (he also as you may have noticed looks similar to Fidel Castro but with a slightly shorter beard see the picture at the top of this post)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE0BCzoSnoI

Due to the very small size of the plane – we had to do several trips with all our luggage as a result we had to weigh ourselves and all our baggage. There was a 450kilo limit per flight and this is why we had to have the big weigh in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSqJmb82EY0

Sooner or later it was time to fly – the flight itself was definitely one of the highlights of the trip, the scenery was breath taking flying deeper into the Amazon rainforest. As you can see in the video below we flew over forest, rivers and we even spotted areas of deforestation and logging. There were definitely some nervy moments like the take off when we only just cleared the trees, the sudden drops in altitude because my knees knocked some of the switches (I sat in the front and my stupidly oversized legs made Enrico have to stay alert for sudden changes) and also the landing on a even more remote airstrip at Cuti. In the next few days I will tell you about our arrival in Cuti including our first near death experience and a visit to the local school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djc2ww2dR8Q

Well what a delicious drink the Pisco Sour! As you have probably worked out I am writing this having arrived in Peru finally after a very long journey. I left home at 1:30am to drive up to Bristol airport on Monday for a 6am flight to Lima via Amsterdam. I finally arrived at the hotel in Lima after losing one of our bags at the airport at about midnight Monday UK time.  We are 6 hours behind GMT so when we got to the hotel we freshened up & then headed at for something to eat at a local restaurant overlooking the sea. Lima looked pretty cool and we had a few Pisco sours then headed to bed. As I write this it is now Monday and we left the hotel at 8am to head to Satipo which is a 12 hour road trip over the Andes heading toward the Amazon rainforest where we stopped the night to fly out to Cutivereni  on a small plane.

So 11 of us set off in our little van to travel up to the highest point in the Andes at nearly 5000 meters. In the party we have Frank and Jose our drivers, Carlos and Dilwyn our guides from ecotribal (A sort of diverse ecological company who do various projects including write for travel guides and even import local Peruvian coffee to the UK) Have a look at their website http://www.ecotribal.com/ there are some great photos and information on the Amazon. Also in the party is Jemma and Ruth who are the representatives for Cool Earth who have organised the visit, Jemma is also filming us while we are out here to go on the website and possibly some TV news. We also have Stephen who is the founder of the Cool Earth teaching fellowship (will talk about this in future posts). And finally with myself there are three teachers travelling as part of the group – Matt a history high school teacher from San Diego who teachers at a school called Branham High School http://www.cuhsd.org/ Clover a Biology middle school teacher from New York who teaches at Salk School of Science www.salkschool.org and finally Emily a Citizenship secondary teacher from Sheldon School in Cirencester http://www.sheldonschool.co.uk/

 So we left Lima and it took us today about an hour to get about 1 mile which was a bit worrying but after that we started to make better progress up the Andes. As the altitude increased most of us started to really feel it and some started to get a bit sick. At the highest point of nearly 5000 meters around 16,000 feet I felt awful. See the video clip which is extremely funny watching it back now where I absolutely lose it and don’t seem to know what the hell is happening. I guess that what altitude can do to you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAK1sUpN1U4&feature=channel_page

As we started to work our way down to the town of Satipo which is nearly at sea level we started to feel a bit better. We stopped for some lunch and tried some local soup and coca leaf tea which helps ease altitude sickness and it was really nice and refreshing. (As you may know the coca leaf contains cocaine among other things!)

Satipo which is at the bottom of the Eastern side of the Andes is an old frontist town established in the 1940’s. The road from Lima was built in the 70’s and tarmac appeared in the 90’s which cut the journey time by half and also then increased the population. Satipo has a population of around 20-30,000 people and is a base for logging, citrus growing and provides services for the local rainforest area. It is from here that we will fly deep into the Amazon tomorrow and land on a tiny airstrip at Cutivireni which is a strategic community with an air strip and small port with about a hundred people. It was a former mission and is where we will fly into to stop for a day to meet the people who live there. The following day we will trek a further two hours into the rainforest to live with the Ashaninka tribe.

Mmm well time is counting down till we head to Peru – not long to go now just a few days. We leave about 2am on Monday morning to get to Bristol for our flight to Lima via Amsterdam will be a long day travelling but definitely worth it.

I wanted to take some time to tell you a bit more about the visit. The trip is a pilot for beginning the Cool Earth Teacher Fellowship, the goal of the Cool Earth Teacher Fellowship is to support teams of teachers from around the world in collaboratively deigning curricula in biodiversity and rainforest conservation, based on their travels to scientifically significant regions of the world.  Stephen Brodbar from New York will be one of the representatives from Cool Earth leading the fellowship next week. He has put a link together of where we will actually be heading geographically.

http://tinyurl.com/ngmkjd

I wanted to talk a little about the people we will visit the Ashaninka tribe. Here is some information below that I have taken from some of the background information provided by Cool Earth.

The Ashaninka tribe is one of the largest indigenous groups living in the Amazon today. Their home territory is relatively high jungle region directly east of Lima in the Gran Pajonal plateau and along the rivers Apurimac-Ene, Tambo, Perene and to a lesser extent, the Urubamba. Traditionally the Ashaninka are semi-nomadic, living in scattered communities of 50 to 200 people in an area a little bit larger than Wales, UK. Despite fierce resistance to acculturation by the outside world, in the 21st century there are few communities without at least limited and sporadic contact and trade with non-Ashaninka people.

As a tribe, the Ashaninka are still not well covered by anthropologists, but they have a rich culture tied into knowledge of plants and medicine, including the teacher plant (or hallucinogenic entheogen) ayahuasca, an important key to the tribe’s spiritual wisdom and plant lore.

The entire territory is covered with a dispersed network of small communities. The nearer the community is the closer the kinship connections. So villages within a day or two’s walk consist mainly of cousins, aunties and uncles. Beyond that, the kinship relationships get weaker, non-existent or lost in the depths of time. Every couple of weeks, a few villages get together for a party, drinking manioc beer and dancing.

Food-sharing is a fundamental custom among the Ashaninka. They live from harvesting the forest and rivers as well as having small clearings in the forest for gardens. Wild fruits, honey and nuts are gathered along with snails and insect delicacies. Fishing, both individually and collectively, provides much of the Ashaninka’s protein, particularly in the dry season. The rest of the year they’re more dependent on game from the forest, which they hunt mainly with bow and arrows, though most villages have at least one shotgun (even if they don’t often have cartridges).

Greed and private personal consumption just doesn’t happen. Everyone gets their fair share. When a large animal, like a Peccary is killed, it is cut up fresh and divided between two or even three villages along kinship lines. Each relative will then cut it up and divide it further within their family units before cooking their portion. Once it’s ready to eat it is shared again. The food is traditionally eaten from a communal bowl, thus sharing again as a gesture of solidarity.

The background to the Cool Earth partnership

The Ashaninka tribe today is on the edge of western industrial civilisation. Some of them, nearest to the frontier town of Satipo, are relatively acculturated. Along the Tambo and Ene rivers, the Ashaninka have permanent contact with colonists and river traders, coca growers and loggers. Deeper into the forest there are still some Ashaninka communities where the way of life has changed little in the last 600 years. These remote communities want only machetes and medicines from the outside world. Those Ashaninka who live along the main rivers have developed needs and desires for a wider range of western goods – from clothing to foodstuffs.

To pay for these goods they need an income. The most rentable cash crop by far in this region is coca for the illegal cocaine markets. This would be a dangerous and illicit economic strategy for the Ashaninka. The other obvious source of income is in lumber from the forest. For the first time in the Cutivireni area of Ashaninka territory, 2008 saw several mahogany trees being extracted with unauthorised permission given to illegal loggers by a handful of Ashaninka. Some of the local indigenous communities are angry at this. All of them have requested help in developing alternative, more sustainable products and markets for their non-timber rainforest and forest-gardens products. This is where Cool Earth, with its local partner, Ecotribal, have created Peru’s first avoided deforestation project.

I have had a quick look around on youtube for some video footage of the Ashaninka people and found some short videos for you to have a look at:

A video filmed in a school (I think) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_xypRgiu4I

A part of a documentary (In Spanish but good footage of the area and people) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWY2Ub9ppR4

Some general footage from ecotribal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieKSyoXR5is

I can’t wait to meet everyone now and I will be writing more whilst I am there and on my return. Keep posted! Also don’t forget if you are interested in getting your students involved in any of the projects around this on my return then please leave a message and I will get in contact.

Yes that’s right! the school now has its own tv channel saltashdotnet http://www.youtube.com/user/Saltashdotnet over the next year events and other videos that are created will be posted on here for us to share with the rest of the world. Here are three videos already on there:

Alice & her piglets

Synopsis

This is a short video of Princes Alice the pig and her 2nd litter of piglets.

Alice gave birth to this new batch of piglets which happens to be her 2^nd litter on Wednesday the 22^nd July straight after the last day of term. This is because she finally got some peace and quiet. She gave birth to 5 piglets – 4 male and 1 female. The piglets  have been named in a poll after 5 long term teachers who have just left the school – Peter, Gill, Phil, Colin and Dave. You can see her and the piglets on pigcam www.saltash.net/livestock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ4×3okdNeg&feature=channel_page

How 2 Use Audacity

Synopsis

This is a video that shows teachers or students how to actually use the software audacity to make podcasts etc.

This is one of the how 2 videos created by the Chicken Man AKA Dan Roberts for staff and students at Saltash.net Community School. It is also fr anyone who may find it useful anywhere in the world whilst accessing it via the tinternet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y91WXpplwE&feature=channel

Year 12 Shopping Online

Synopsis

This is a video created by some of our Year 12 students as part of their ICT coursework.

Here’s a video by some year 12 students as a part of their ICT coursework. It’s an original composition and demonstrates the sort of creativity the students here at saltash.net have!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw7bR4Agaww&feature=channel

I have made several How 2 videos for staff and students who are not sure how to use things like Twitter, Audacity & Sound recorder to make their own podcasts, Moviemaker and Photostory to make their own videos. Let me know what you think of some of the videos already on the channel. If your school has their own Youtube channel then please leave a comment so we can link them up.

On Monday 17^th August I fly out to Peru for 10 days as a special guest with the charity Cool Earth. http://www.coolearth.org/ “Cool Earth grew from a meeting of minds between Frank Field and Johan Eliasch. Frank is a true social reformer and Johan is one of the world’s most successful business people who decided to put his money where his mouth is and protect 400,000 acres of Amazonian rainforest by buying it from a logging company.”

Cool Earth is a charity that is set up to protect the most endangered areas of rainforest around the world. They try to combat global warming, protect ecosystems and provide sustainable jobs for the local people.

Why not sponsor to protect half an acre of rainforest? Each unit you sponsor secures protection for half an acre of endangered rainforest and keeps 130 tonnes of CO₂ safely locked up and it just costs £30.

We will be travelling to the Amazon with a small group of teachers from the UK and USA with representatives from Cool Earth to spend sometime with the Ashaninka tribe to look at things like deforestation and to hopefully develop some potential links within education and to raise awareness of these issues back here in Cornwall. You may have seen the Ashaninka tribe on the BBC’s Amazon programme with Bruce Parry

http://www.bbc.co.uk/amazon/index.shtml

the first episode was on the Ashaninka tribe see the video here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/amazon/sites/episodes/pages/episode1.shtml

I will be blogging whilst there but obviously due to the lack of the tinternet in the Amazon rainforest it may not be regular!

Please keep up to date as will be posting videos, pictures etc and will be looking for creating some collaborative projects with other students around the world so if you are interested then please let me know.

I have been using Ning with my students for the last couple of years and I have to say for a completely free service it is amazing! For any of you who have never come across it – you can sign up for free and for within a matter of minutes you can create your own online community that looks and feels like facebook or bebo. You can then make it completely private to protect say your students and you then can control who joins the community in fact you can invite people only if that is how you want to work it.

The site is www.ning.com and it is unbelievably easy to use as I said you could create a new online community in a matter of minutes e.g. say you wanted to set up a committee group to organise this year’s Christmas fair in your school then you create the address say www.xmasfair.ning.com customise what features you want such as discussion boards, videos, music, ability to upload files and even instant chat then press submit and it is all there.

I have about 15 or so set up for different groups of students – some have been culled now after just a few months of use as that was all they were needed for by the students such as when they were working on a specific project others have been going for over a year and even though the students have moved on to different classes they still contribute and collaborate and discuss their learning with me and the others on the community. Some of these communities have been fantastic especially for students to share their revision and resources.

Recently some of my students were creating podcasts or videos for their own revision, they then posted it to their ning community and other students looked at them and downloaded them for their own revision then left comments on what they thought of it and how it could be improved. This was fantastic to see this evolving like this with little interference from me – all I did was afterwards I wrote some feedback to them about what they had done.

More recently with the new instant message chat facility I have conduced some live out of hours revision sessions for students literally sometimes the night before an exam. I have even had parents on line too with their children doing last minute checks on their own revision. This was fantastic as I saw other students supporting their classmates and giving them the answers to questions that they asked me before I could even respond!

I have gone away from ning and tried other ways of working with collaboratively with students but I keep going back to it. It does exactly what is says on the tin! There is no messing it is sexy yet familiar with a facebook/bebo feel to it. More importantly it is free the one big problem with it and it is the only problem is that if you are under 13 you are not allowed to use it! Please reduce the age of this as my younger students do miss out and we don’t really want to get down the route of breaking the law.

Our school at the start of this year spoke to the people from ning and we were told that although it is the law in America about the age of 13 and it didn’t apply to the UK students our students still couldn’t use it if under 13 as they were using the American website.

I will continue to use ning with my classes as long as over 13, many other teachers are now using it in my school, we now have a staff one where they discuss issues about teaching and learning a bit like a 24 hour staff room: www.saltashrainbow.ning.com We also now have a community where teachers, students, parents and others from the community have started to discuss e-learning at our school. This is early days but more will come from this in September: www.ngkernow.ning.com