Each day I find that there is so much I am learning and doing, that I often don't know which direction to take the blog because it is all happening so fast and on so many different levels. I still have two RA's to feature and three more volunteers, but I want to take a moment to reflect on what it is we are doing daily.
The thing I am most often stuck by, is that every moment here seems to be an intense learning experience. Even simple task like ordering ice tea, require creativity, new language skills and currency decifering. Without trying to sound to sing songy, I will walk you through a day.
We typically wake up early because our jet lag has not totally resolved itself. We do not have internet in our room, so we will typically go into the guest house lobby to check in with family, Facebook and update the blog. One by one we start gathering at the outdoor seating area. I have been in charge of getting fruit to supplement breakfast, so we usually start in on that while enjoying each other's stories. Then, one of the RA's rides up on their motorbike with a large plastic bag with 15 to go boxes hanging from their handle bars. Breakfast is served.
On the days that I am in the research group, two other volunteers and I will he'd up to the research site with a couple of RA's around 8:10. If it is not my morning to do the experiments, I would head into the office about 8:30 and as a group,we would compile data and enter it. Getting to run the test with the elephants is a real treat. I have not been up close to them enough to be jaded about their magnifigance. What is interesting to me though is how causal one can be around a captive elephant. I am used to being around horses, who can cause great injury just because a fly landed on them. These elephants, for the most part are gentle giants. Granted, they have a mahout who is right there who has spent 1000's of hours ensuring that their elephant knows how to behave. They do, however, have very distinct personalities and temperaments. So while I might be running a stop watch, or getting food rewards ready, I find that I am very unscientifically enjoying the sociology observations of each elephant we get to work with. In all seriousness, I love that Connie and I are getting to be participants in a group science experiment. I like seeing how intentional TEI is about the roles of each of the volunteers, how they randomize the trials, and the incredible attention paid to minimizing unintentional variables. Despite the fact that they have been doing this for a while, they always debrief with sincerity. Questions are asked like, "do you think we are asking the question in the right way?" Or, "how could we set up the next trial to show the elephant xxx." Then the research staff deliberates and modifies. I feel like this is something that I will be able to bring back to my classroom consistently and across all units.
On the days we are in the office processing data, I find fascinating as well. I lie seeing how they have devised their protocol and how they deal with discrepancies in subjective observations. We have a lot of group labs that have subjective observations, so I am glad that it am seeing how this is addressed in the current research community.
We also are participating in a journal club. One of our classes was about "how to read a scientific paper." We then were given a paper published about Asian elephants responsiveness to visual cues to find hidden food. We have also been given another article looking at the same skill but with African elephants and a different result. Yes, the nerdy teacher in me loves the scientific literacy portion of this experience. Yes, future students, you will be seeing these articles, so I will not go into detail about our findings.
After lunch we all load back into the van and back to the research site. Three random elephants are brought into an area about the size of an acer and we spend forty minutes taking detailed nots on the interactions between the three elephants. One of the interesting challenges TEI has is that all of the elephants they work with, have jobs. So, they have to schedule research trials, vet checks, and behavioral observations around the elephants trekking schedule. When we were first trained on how to do the obs, I thought, how am I going to stand doing this for 40 min? Surprisingly, it is so fun to see them in real life that the forty minutes flys by.
After the observations we typically get some time to explore. I often joke that I am at summer camp for grow ups. Each and every little thing is such an adventure. So,e afternoons we go to markets, temples, museums, or nearby towns.
The TEI staff typically arranges a family style dinner at a local restaurant where they order a variety of food, and we try a little bit of everything. Much to Connie's excitement, they even had a couple little pizzas in addition to traditional Thai food last night. After dinner, one the RA's typically does a presentation about an area they have done research in.
By the end of all that, it is morning time in the US. We put in a quick call or text through Viber to our families and call it a night.
In all reality, I feel like I have learned a semesters worth of stuff in a ten day expedition. My goal is to keep this blog going throughout the year as we find ways to apply all this to our 7th grade science classes.
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