Ever since I joined PLP I was excited for the trip to Oregon. At the beginning of the year, it was planned that PLP 8 would depart in late October. However, one of the teachers our bus driver had suffered a terrible injury earlier in the year had not recovered enough to drive. The field study was moved to middle of November so that he could drive the class down to oregon. This made the weather less than ideal, but not worse that what we get in Vancouver sometimes.
The point of this trip was to learn from different people and to go to diffrent places to learn. The trip was quite interesting and I thought it balanced learning and having fun. The two main assignments we worked on during the trip, were advertisements and a scrapbook. For one of the ads my group interviewed the volunteers at South Beach State Park. The other two were about tsunami awareness and tourism at Cannon Beach. The other assignment was to create a big scrapbook full of pictures, drawing, and writing from our trip. We learned a lot from the people we met and from the places we visited on our trip.
Advertisements
Creating
Before we began the journey to Oregon, We were all put into groups. Each group had the same topic for their ads. Originally, my group was supposed to interview the first campsite we stayed in “Astoria”. Due to some stormy conditions, we interviewed the next campsite we stayed in. Our ads were to highlight the selling points for “South Beach State Park Yurts”. My group interviewed some of the volunteers at the park about how they would like people to see their resort. I used some info from the interview and things I learned while visiting to create an ad for this business. There were two other ads I had to create. One was to raise awareness to tsunami’s and to inform the public on how to act in the case of one. I was supposed to gather photos that could be used in this ad. I was also supposed to learn about the important things you must do in the case of a tsunami. The final ad I created was a tourism at Cannon Beach and its main attraction Haystack Rock. The third largest intertidal rock on the earth is a big attraction, so I made that the focus of my ad. I used some of the the great photos I took of the pacific that I took when visiting Cannon Beach. After I gathered all of the photos I needed, I used the things that I had learned when in oregon to make my ads appealing and persuasive.
CRITIQUING
After I created my ads my class peer reviewed them, we used constructive and positive feedback when critiquing. I made plenty of changes to my advertisements and improved them significantly. After the peer review it was time to submit to my teachers Mrs. Willemse and Mr. Hughes for review.
Reflection
The truth is, our ads weren’t very good. I wasn’t able to use most of the concepts that I had learned during the advertising unit. Since I didn’t do this, my ads were very bland and not very intriguing. The ads weren’t completely awful, they had some bright spots. For instance I used my photos really well, the way I formatted them in my ads was intersesting. However, the ads lacked some essential persuasive concepts. Overall, my ads were a failure, but did teach me a lot about learning from my mistakes.
Scrap Book
Throughout the whole trip I was supposed catalog my experience with pictures and paragraphs about things we saw and did. My teacher Mrs. Willemse gave us a template to start with and from there I was supposed to make it my own. I worked during the trip on perfecting my scrapbook. Throughout the trip I needed to take photos, videos and write text about certain events and places visited to and learned about. This allowed me to learn more about the places than I would have without the scrap book. After writing I understood the place I went to much better than if I had not documented it. You can see my book here
Here is the daily itinerary for trip
In the end, I thought the trip a very interesting journey and I was very happy that I went. This was a great opportunity for me to learn in a setting that is different than my home city
