Headlining the frontline

  Jock On The Rock 
  Originally uploaded by Perth Academy.

Neil Winton and his band of students and colleagues have hit the road and are currently experiencing the history (and bad weather) of the North of France as they explore the battlefields of the Somme and beyond - and they're blogging it.

Neil has for some time been wanting to live blog a school trip and this time he's managed it, together with Flickr photos and the promise of some video.

Personally, I'm a fascinated not only by the history of the area but also by the experiences of these students as, for some of them, they spend their first trip away from home without their parents. I loved blogging with my own kids when we went to France 2004, 2005 and 2006 for that very reason; it made things with which I was all too familiar seem fresh and new again.

Although the comments on Neil's students' blog are for community members (parents and school members only) it makes for interesting reading and no doubt there will be a school somewhere else who could gain from emailing Neil and the kids about their trip after the event.

Comments

[Lynne]

Great stuff - we'd so much technical problems blogging from Italy I began to wonder if it was worth it, but then I saw the comments from parents when I got back I knew it definitely was. Our next blogging venture will be S3 in Paris in June, where we're hoping to blog live from Versailles.

[Neil Winton]

Ewan,
Thanks for the mention! We are now back and I'm catching up on the inevitable backlog.

While abroad, I was struggling to get easy online access (for a variety of interesting and unforseeable problems...) but it's a learning process.

One thing that I have achieved is the start of a dialogue between myself and NST about making it possible for future schools to have an easier time doing what I was trying to do. I've volunteered to write them a guide for schools along the lines of my SchoolTrips2.0 post from last year. They appear interested, especially as our NST contact was very impressed in the limited posting I did manage whilst away.

[Ewan McIntosh]

Our company on school trips also wanted to get in on this about 3 years ago. They never lifted a finger on it, of course, either because it was too much hassle (their margins are tiny) or because others didn't see any value in it.

I hope that if you do a guide you send in your invoice. After all, it's not as if others can't learn to do it from the notes there already. If they want your hand to help them along they should show some green stuff ;-)

[Neil Winton]

It'd be nice... though they could probably get me for a free trip back to the area (for me + 40 pupils of course!)