The field trip to Crete (June 16-23rd 2009) involved three staff (Dr Alan Howard, Richard Tegg, Ken Beard) and 28 students registered for the degree in Human and Physical Geography at the University of Reading.
We were based in the village of Chora Sfakion in the Sfakia region of south west Crete. Fieldwork was undertaken in the village, at Loutro and in the Samaria Gorge.
Daytime temperatures ranged from 28 to 36 degrees and, whilst not in the sea, work was undertaken to model the extent and impact of a major flood in December 2000 in the Ilingas Gorge and the potential impact of tourist development on society in this area (Sfakia remains largely untouched by the mass tourism associated with northern Crete).
During the field trip our students made use of various Web 2.0 technologies in order to produce group blogs and videos of their experiences. These were completed in the field utilising ubiquitous wireless internet access available in the village of Chora Sfakion and the mini Dell laptops we provided. The students did an excellent job and the process of writing daily entries on their group blogs (hosted on WordPress.com) enabled them to reflect upon the educational experiences they encountered. The blogs have been compiled here:
http://www.cretefieldtrip.com/sfakia/
where you will also find all the light hearted videos each group produced while in the field. A random choice of video is displayed here:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqwB-uqkc-w&w=425&h=344]