Hydrographic surveying with the Royal Navy

Hydrographic Surveying - 17 March 2011, a set on Flickr.

A very productive and enjoyable day had by all for a photographic shoot intended to obtain content for materials in the newly formed Hydrographic Academy with Plymouth University.

Thank you to Cdr Andy Swain and his team (Royal Navy) who provided the Pat Barton training vessel; Dr Richard Thain (HA Project Manager); Dr Victor Abbott; Gwyn Jones; Dave Hurrell (Film and Broadcasting Manager, Plymouth University); and Becki Vickerstaff (fellow Learning Technologist).

Where did we go to take the footage?

View March 17th 2011 - Hydrographic Surveying in a larger map

Mohive training, for online train materials

Dr Richard Thain (Project leader), Becki Vickerstaff (fellow Learning Technologist) and myself spent the last two days training, under the careful tuition of Alan Payne (Fugro Subsea Services). These sessions were to familiarise ourselves with Fugro's own Mohive environment. The Mohive platform is used by Fugro to develop content for their geoscience, survey, and geotechnical services. This session, for me, marked the start of a much larger collaboration with, CENORE and Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) HM to develop distance learning content for a Hydrographic Surveying module here at the University of Plymouth.

Mohive is a SCORM compliant Flash based content development system that allows various forms of teaching and learning materials to be developed efficiently within an online interface, which is ideal for collaborative work. It also has the ability to allows users to create anything from simple quizzes all the way to adding interactivity to embedded video content. All this in a rather tidy interface.

During the training we were given a mini project in which we had to create a teaching and learning guide on how to sharpen a pencil; we even covered elements of health and safety! Exampled below is a quick (tongue and cheek) video I created as part of the training, which encompassed each of the stages to sharpening a pencil... I think with only two days of training, using a simple concept as sharpening a pencil really helped us to focus primarily on using the interface. All an all a very fun and extremely useful couple of days. A big thank you to Alan's efficient tuition. We will certainly all be looking forward to future collaborations on this initiative.