Please purchase a hard back notebook (A5 is best) for use in the field. Everyone will need to record detailed, georeferenced, observations and measurements not only for completing the individual reports but also to facilitate the writing of daily blog entries for your website.
Your field notebook will be submitted for assessment with your individual reports. Producing good field notebooks is an important skill. These two sites provide useful guidance:
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Exploration is fundamental to Geography and Geographers have a long history of sharing their travel observations with the public through publication in books and journals. In the 21st century, the Internet offers the potential for the immediate publication of material on websites and blogs.
For this group project you will merge the oldest tradition of Geography with the latest Web 2.0 technologies, including blogs, photo sharing, social networking and video. The end product will be an interactive, illustrated, real-time account of your travels and work in Crete. Your website will be created “in the field” and published on Wordpress.com. This presents considerable challenges and advanced planning will be all important.
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is considered to represent a second generation of web development and design that facilitates communication, information sharing and collaboration.
Examples of Web 2.0 inspired sites include, Wikipedia, social networking (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, ning), blogging (Wordpress, Blogger, etc), photo sharing (e.g. Flickr), and video (e.g. Youtube).
Each of these sites is characterised by how easy it is for ordinary people to contribute and share. You will all have been actively involved in communication, information sharing and collaboration using sites like Facebook and ning. You will all have accessed, if not contributed to, material on Youtube. Web 2.0 is therefore already part of your daily lives.
In this project you will harness Web 2.0 to deliver academic content as a “virtual field trip”. Your group project website will be created using the blogging platform, Wordpress.com. You are likely to utilise both Flickr and Youtube and may integrate other material, such as feeds from Twitter or content delivered through third-party gadgets.
This site provides introductions to each of these technologies.
References
O’Reilly, T. (2005) What is Web 2.0. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html.
You will be accompanied on the 20 minute ferry journey to Loutro by crowds of walkers heading for the Samaria Gorge – to walk the “lazy way” i.e. up the gorge a short way then back to the coast (you will do this later in the week).
From the ferry you can see the coastal footpath and take note of and photograph key landscape features.
Once in Loutro, to find the coastal footpath walk across the front of the tavernas. At the small kiosk in the middle of the beach go left. Keep going upwards and to the right. All the village paths lead to a metal stock control gate. Go through, and up behind the derelict house. After a few paces keep on the coastal path, ignoring the branch to the left, which goes zigzagging upwards to Anopolis. You now cannot get lost, following the undulating coastal path (marked in yellow and black) to a church on a headland and then down to Sweetwater beach.
The ongoing path from Sweetwater is marked in the usual yellow and black from the eastern end of the beach, climbing after a few minutes over a huge rockfall. Then comes the headland and a brief series of zigzags up to join the Anopolis road. Turn right and walk on the road to Chora Sfakion. You will pass the entrance to Ilingas beach on the right. Just before you reach the first house in Chora Sfakion take the steps down on the right. The path leads down to the harbour.
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As a finishing touch to your website we would like you to produce a 3-4 minute video or slide show capturing your field class experiences – something like the video produced in 2007 and shown below.
The mini-laptop supplied will have Windows Movie Maker installed. You could create a video slide-show entirely from still images, but most digital cameras also have the capacity to record short video sequences. Groups are welcome to take camcorders if you own them but this is not a requirement.
The video will require sound – music and possibly some narration. The music may be a backing track provided by Windows Movie Maker or you may use an MP3 or music file obtained elsewhere or captured from CD using Windows Media Recorder.
One way to publish your video is to upload the video file to Youtube and then embed your Youtube video in a sidebar widget or in a post or page. However there are some drawbacks to this approach.
We will discuss the video in more detail on the preparation day. One of the tasks between the two preparation sessions/days will be for each group to familiarise themselves with using Movie Maker and for making decisions on what if any music files will be required as you will make the movie while in Crete.
2007 Crete field class video:
Further Reading
Guidance on using Windows Movie Maker
Twitter is the latest fashionable Web 2.0 application and allows individuals to post updates via the Web, email, or mobile phone to friends and other “followers”. An RSS feed of twitter updates is also available and this can be added to other Web 2.0 sites like Wordpress.
On this site we take feeds from two Twitter sites (twitter.com/sfakia_crete and twitter.com/gg2fc). The latter feed is our way of posting notices about updates to this site.
It’s not compulsory but a Twitter feed may be a neat feature to have on your Wordpress website. Wordpress.com includes a more powerful Twitter widget than we use here.
The great thing is that posting via Twitter won’t rely on being “online” in Crete as you can post from your mobile phone. It may add a sense of immediacy and allow ad hoc observations to be posted quickly, which may otherwise be lost by the time you write your blog entries in the evening.
This is something for your group to consider.
Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application.
While in Crete a digital camera will be essential (each group will need at least one between them) and you will take many photos.
During the preparation day you will ensure that you’re able to transfer photos from your camera to the mini-laptop provided for each group’s use in Crete. Each day in Crete you will download your photos to the computer; they can be managed using the Windows Live “Photo Gallery” application and we recommend you back-up photos to a data stick.
You may add photos to your Wordpress website by inserting them into posts (without first uploading to Flickr).
However once uploaded to Flickr you can take advantage of the Flickr widget, which can be inserted into your website sidebar. You can also add photos to Google Earth placemarks (covered later).
The actual process of uploading to Flickr may wait until June 24th following your return to England as “online” time in Sfakia will be limited.
However each group should create a shared Flickr account well in advance.
Much like Wordpress, Flickr is intuitive and easy to use and has a number of potentially useful features. Anyone who can use Facebook will manage to use Wordpress and Flickr.
Experiment and explore in your own time.
Wordpress is a powerful blogging and website content management system.
Wordpress.com hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs and it is possible to download the software from wordpress.org and install it and run it from your own web server (as we have done for this site).
Each group will create their own blog hosted on wordpress.com. The procedure for creating your group blog is simple. One person must take the lead and sign-up with wordpress.com. This person creates the blog as part of the registration procedure. As part of this procedure they will be asked to specify the blog domain:
Please ensure you use:
(or gg2fcgroup2.wordpress.com, etc according to your actual work group).
The title is left to your discretion (and can be altered after the blog is created).
As soon as Wordpress has created the blog this group member has the status of “administrator”. They then invite other members of the group to join the blog as contributors. On the Wordpress dashboard, select “Users” from the menu and then from the sub-menu click on “Invites”. Complete the form:
Ensure the “Add user to my blog as a contributor” box is ticked.
Repeat this procedure for each group member.
Each group member will then receive an email from Wordpress with a personal link that sends them to a sign-up page. On this page they choose the option to create a username; not create a new blog. After the sign-up procedure is complete they will have become a “contributor” to the group blog.
All group members must be “administrators” so the original administrator (who created the blog) must upgrade the other members’ role from “contributor” to “administrator”. This is all accomplished via the “Users” menu. Each group member will then have equal power over the group blog and may add, edit and delete material.
Please also add me as an administrator by entering my email address a.howard@reading.ac.uk.
Using wordpress.com to create and manage content is simple and intuitive. The best way to learn is by trial and error, exploration and practice. A detailed user guide is available from http://spectacu.la/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-27_user_guide.pdf but this should not be essential reading.
The core features include:
APPEARANCE: Wordpress.com provides many themes (website designs) to choose from. You can normally change the header image in order to personalise it. A theme will include a main content area and 1 – 4 sidebars. This site has two sidebars. The sidebar contents are controlled by adding and arranging WIDGETS. These offer potential for easily integrating third-party content. For example on this site there are three “RSS feed” widgets, which display content feeds from external websites (including Twitter). The list of recent posts is displayed by adding the “Recent Posts” widget to the sidebar. The “Flickr” widget will enable you to add photos easily and again relies on the RSS feed from your group’s Flickr account. Your group will therefore need to create a “Flickr” account for the purposes of this field class.
POSTS and PAGES: Here is where you write your content. You can include photos, links and other media within posts. You can organise posts in categories and assign “tags” and they are clearly time stamped. They form your blog’s timeline and appear in your site’s RSS feed. Pages look similar but don’t use categories or tags, are not time stamped and do not feature in the RSS feed. They are useful for displaying “static” information but I recommend you generally add content via posts rather than using pages.
The remaining features of Wordpress will be used to manage your site – explore and experiment.
Before departing for Crete, your website will be complete in terms of design and it will be a matter of populating it with content while on the field trip. It is entirely possible to complete the task of creating a Wordpress blog and learning to use it in the week before we leave between the two preparation days/sessions. However groups should feel free to setup and explore the potential of their Wordpress site anytime between now and then.
Reference
Coveney, D. (2009) Wordpress User Guide. Interconnect IT Ltd (UK). http://spectacu.la/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-27_user_guide.pdf
The university pays in advance for such items as flights, coach transfers, and bed and breakfast for each student participant. As a rough estimate, we are looking in the region of £450 and this will be added to your university bill before the field class. Heather Browning is responsible for processing invoices and compiling the bill, which will not be finalised for some time. Staff costs are not part of the field trip bill calculation.
Clearly Britain’s economic crisis, including the devaluation of the UK pound against the Euro, has contributed to a significant increase in the base field trip cost. Even so it remains good value for money in comparison with other Part 2 field class destinations.
In addition to this bill you will need to take sufficient euros to pay for lunch, evening meals, drinks and any other day to day expenses. Food and drink prices are reasonable – a typical menu at a typical taverna is available here.
You will purchase ferry tickets to travel from Chora Sfakion to Loutro and Chora Sfakion to the Samaria Gorge (Agia Roumeli). A return ticket to the Samaria Gorge is 13 euros and there is an entrance fee to the gorge (last known price was 5 euros). A one way ticket Chora Sfakion-Loutro is 3.20 euros for students (normal cost 4 euros). You will make two (exceptionally three) visits to Loutro and one to the Samaria Gorge. On one visit to Loutro you will plan to return to Chora Sfakion by foot so a return ticket on that day is not expected to be necessary.
There are a couple of bars in the village which provide Internet access for a small charge. You may need to utilise this service in order to complete certain work tasks.
Mobile phones should get good reception (depending on whether your phone works abroad in Europe).
There is a single ATM in Chora Sfakion, however do not count on it being operational all the time. We do not visit any large towns so there are no other banking facilities available and credit cards are NOT accepted in Chora Sfakion or Loutro. Therefore we recommend you take enough Euros with you, rather than counting on changing money in Crete.
The only accepted currency is the Euro.
Clearly the personal expenses you incur in Crete will depend on various factors, including the work programme your group agrees with the field class convenor. Please utilise the information here for planning but also build in some contingency for unexpected costs.
Source: Paleochora Weather
Sfakia Twitter