Stranded travel-writers

Lloyd Nebres: Although to many the idea of living on Maui might seem like paradise, the island is really a microcosm of society at large, with its own problems and perils.

Striving to find a balanced view of a place’s identity strikes me as a really worthwhile research project. Scraping beneath the surface of the perceived reputation, good or bad, media-driven or anecdotal, would demand research and thinking skills and quite probably the ability to use the web as a platform for getting firsthand information and evidence from ‘experts’ on the ground. Students would be doing much more than simply regurgitating the contents of the local tourist board’s website.

The key to the success of this kind of research is to first give students experience  of exploring and analysing the identities and reputations of their own environments.

People constantly tell me that Nottingham is the ‘gun crime capital’ of the UK. That is its reputation – how true and representative is that statement? Wikipedia has some views that could be worth examining. A simple search reveals the negative stuff but the challenge is to find some positive balance. Paul Carroll has started to scrape below the surface as has Dave Severn. How though do I find balance in my own views?

In my view, Lloyd reports both the positive and negative aspects of Maui, not like a text-book writer but rather like a travel-writer in-situ. In the course of his habitual writing about a whole range of subjects, he also makes time to both record (both in writing and in photos) and make his own sense of the geographical, economic and social landscape in which he finds himself.

Through his posting, classification and responsible linking to related sources over a long period of time, he has built a reputation through which others can ‘measure’ his objectivity or balance. By sharing his views he provides welcome insight and a springboard for others to research and come to their own conclusions.

I’m sure that this ‘exploration and examination’ of his home environment, helps him understand, or at least ask the right questions, of other places and issues that may be removed from him geographically.

I like the idea of students as ‘stranded’ travel-writers who are encouraged to write regularly for assessment purposes to make sense of their surroundings. I also love the idea of using of photography in this whole process, not only as a record but also as a stimulus for questions that beg a search for answers. I’m meeting with Dave on Wednesday to think about how we can encourage both aspects in an online project.