Maarten Hennekes, student Pabo

Ellemijn:
I’ve enjoyed working in this group. Everyone had his or her own task and that worked out perfectly. Normally, I’m used to a difference between the share of group members. It was nice to work like this.
Because of this investigation I’ve seen a whole new perspective on the world. You always see this images on Google maps, but you never experience those images are real. It’s very impressive that we have created such a beautiful image on the world with our group. Besides that I’ve learned a lot of new facts about birds.
I surely want to do this over with a group of children. I would connect this with geographic. I would first let them film with a kite in the air. After that they use those images to make their own map of the place they filmed from above.

Sebastian:
During the process of group working, I definitely improved my ability to work in groups and with technical devices I did not know before.
Furthermore, I became aware of the differences regarding perspectives  on the world. This means that we had a closer look on the perception of birds and realized that birds can see more than human beings since their eyes are constructed differently.
Regarding the subject of education, I realized that group work is of the utmost importance – not only for students at university but also especially for school children. This means that the method of practical practical work, i.e. doing one’s own research, should be used more often at schools. As a consequence, pupils learn to work on their own and their motivation is increased at the same time.
All in all, everybody can profit from doing their own research.

Bianca:
At the beginning, I was really curious and I had no idea how it would work with the short movie until we started to put the camera on the kite. Within no time I began to realize what we were going to do. I have learned that it is way easier to prepare everything first instead of just try and see how it works. Beside that I got to know that you reach your goal faster, if you are organized, share the work and help each other. I was really fascinating to see how the world looks from above. I think it could be a great project for a 5/6. grade class because the kids have to work together and organize themselves, otherwise it won’t work. Moreover, it would be a great experience to see how their hometown looks from above, how the birds see the world up in the sky or how to fly a kite. I can imagine not every child knows how to fly a kite. There are many option to put this into a school lesson. It could be a biology lesson, because of the bird: how do birds see the world?

Floris:
To start off, I enjoyed this excursion very much. Maybe it was because of the weather, or the international students or the accommodation, but probably all of this at once.
I really like how everything was organized, and of course the free time was great too, to get to know each other and learn about our differing cultures.
About the educational use of our project: I really think that by kiting and filming you can change children’s view of their surroudings, so geography becomes a whole lot better to grasp. Another thing children can learn from projects like this is teamwork. I think the teamwork was very good in our group. Everyone had their own role in the whole project and I really enjoyed the other’s company. We quickly divided the tasks so everyone could get to work fast. I think when working on this project children will come to see each other’s value and talents, which I think is really important in a group.

Jane:
The experience of working on this project was nothing like what I had expected before arriving in Texel. It was a lot more fun, challenging and worthwhile than I was prepared for! This project taught me a lot about myself as an individual, a group member and also as a teacher.
I learned a lot about nature after having the opportunity to experience it in a different way by looking at it from a different perspective. For the last two days we saw nature through the eyes of a bird and it was a dynamic and free experience.
Luckily we had great teamwork, so we could divide up the work evenly and everyone had the opportunity to play to their strengths. I learned a lot for my future role as a teacher on this trip. I will promote the 21st century skills we used in the classroom such as teamwork skills, technological skills, problem solving and our innovative skills, to ensure I can provide a unique active learning environment for my future classroom!