In November 2016 my class when to the Oreagon coast on a field trip. It wasn’t just fun, we also had to do some work while we were there.

We did field studies were we learned about land marks in the area. We had a book template (I’ll explain what that is further down) in which we added what we learned during these field studies. I didn’t really like the field studies because it was work, while the rest felt more like we were on a holiday. For example we were sleeping in cabins and yurts, and we went out for dinner every day.

There was one field study that I did enjoy very much. That was when we built our own ROV’s which stands for “remotely operated vehicle”. We had to build an ROV that would be able to pickup magnetic objects of the bottom of a big water filled tub.

To do this we got one bucket with the electrical supplies like the motor, a magnet, and the controller. And another bucket with pipes and corner pieces to connect the pipes. wIt’s those pieces we had to make the body of the ROV. We decided to make a square body because we didn’t need it to be streamlined. We stuck the magnet in a pipe and put the pipe at the bottom of the ROV.

Building the ROV (photo by Brian Hughes)

The remote was already connected to the motor with some wires. We put one motor on the top, and two at the back to steer the ROV. Once all ROV were done, we did a tournement to see whose ROV was best at picking up magnetic items, such as spoons, from the bottom of the tub. Our ROV made it to the third of four rounds.

Now back to the book. The book was a template that we had to fill in. So for every day and field study we had to add the information we learned during that day or field study. We added text, pictures, videos, and sound tracks to our books. I will not repeat here all that we wrote in the book, but simply give the link to the book: My book.

I found the writing in the book somewhat boring and difficult. So I waited a long time before finishing the book. Next time I would try to write everything in the book the same day that we did the field study.

The other thing we did was making three different ads, one for a company, one for a tourist attraction, and one about tsunami awernes. Unlike our other ads we only made two copies(I couldn’t find two copies for my tourist attraction add). Here are my two business adds in order of the first draft at the top and the second draft at the bottom.

Here are my two tsunami adds in order of the first draft at the top and the second draft at the bottom.

Here is my tourist add.

To make these I found some pictures and added some text to it. I don’t think I would do anything differently if I could do this again but differently.

But Oregan isn’t just a place to look at land marks and write about them it’s also pretty enough to take pictures of. Here are some of my favourite pictures.

Observation tower at Fort Stevens

Sunset at the Hawthorne cannery

Sunset behind Haystack Rock, Cannonbeach

So in the end we learned a lot and got to see some pretty places too.