A breakdown of the hours of work experience.
|
Date.
|
Work Experience
|
Hours completed
|
|
Oct 2020
|
Mammal App
|
3 hrs
|
|
Dec 2020
|
Conservation Day – Cumbria Wildlife
|
6 hrs
|
|
Feb 2021
|
Backyard Bird Count
|
8 hrs
|
|
Jan / Feb 2021
|
Zooniverse
|
33 hrs
|
|
Jan/ Feb 2021
|
The Lakes Plastic Collective – Litter Picking
|
10 hrs
|
|
|
TOTAL:
|
60 hrs
|
Overall Reflection:
It has been difficult to find work experience due to ongoing Covid 19 restrictions and lockdowns, with most Conservation and Wildlife charities closing down or not allowing volunteer groups. I have had to think 'outside the box' to achieve the 60 hours needed.
As Stephen Covey (1989) states in his book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People', I needed to be pro-active in making things happen. Many of the groups employees were working from home and that meant some frustrating lack of communication with them. In the end I decided it was up to me to make things happen by searching for online or individual work experience I could do from my home or the local area. I managed to complete the 60 hours by keeping the end goal in sight, taking steps to get there and trying different areas of interest to gain more experience.
'We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience' (Dewey, 1910)
Stella Cottrell (2011) in her book ' Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and Argument', .suggests two phases for reflection, phase one being reflection written at the time of doing i.e. my Blog posts, with phase two being reflection of the experience as a whole, analysing the end result.
Although through some of these experiences I felt I wasn't learning anything new, looking back they have all had a positive input on my journey to learn more about Countryside Management, Conservation and Ecology.
I have learnt many new skills such as: bird identification, how researchers need information presented, how to input Data onto digital platforms, communication skills between myself and organisations as well as other Citizen survey volunteers, teamwork and putting knowledge and skills learnt through the skills audit and this course into practice. These are all skills I can take forward onto my next step in education and employment. Many of these skills such as teamwork and communication skills were areas from my skills audit which needed improvement. Although most of the work experience was done individually I had the chance to use these skills on the Conservation day (see blog post) and now feel more confident to be able to do more of these in the future when possible.
References
Cottrell, S., 2011. Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and Argument. 2nd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Covey, S., 1989. The seven habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. D.C.Heath & Co., Publishers.
Comments
Post a Comment