LOST @ SEA ACTIVITY

In this activity we had to prioritize the salvaged items below (these are my personal ranking):

1. A 25 liter container of water
2. A case of army rations
3. A small transistor radio
4. 20 square feet of Opaque plastic sheeting
5. A 10 liter can of oil/petrol mixture
6. One bottle of 160% proof rum
7. 15ft nylon rope
8. 2 boxes of chocolate bars
9. A fishing kit
10. A sextant
11. A quantity of mosquito netting
12. A floating cushion
13. A shaving mirror
14. Maps of the Pacific Ocean
15. A can shark repellent

While pretending to be stranded on a life raft

with matches in themiddle of the ocean. I chose water and the MRE's because I was thinking about basic survival, food and water.

I had a difficult time prioritizing the shark repellent because I wasn't sure if shards would be a problem if you were in a raft.

The only exact similarity in my groups ranking and my personal ranking was the nylon rope at #7. Our group worked together well except for disagreeing on the number one choice. We all thought water, except for one of us and that one thought the mirror should be #1. As it turned out the mirror was #1. The #1 priority our team agreed on was water. The group put more importance on the fishing kit then I thought was necessary and it turned out that it wasn't very useful.

My priorities were slightly off compared to the Coast Guard experts, they put water @ #3 and the mirror and oil/petrol mixture first with the idea that you need to get someone to rescue you because the water won't last forever.

I learned that in this situation being found is very important.

TENNIS BALL ACTIVITY

• Our team developed a plan by presenting all the ideas thenchoosing what we thought was the best, using a democracy style to make the decision.

• The challenge was to start the ball in one persons hand and end the activity with the tennis ball back to the same starting persons hand as fast as possible.

• The constraint was the ball had to touch all team members hands before returning to the starting person.

Our team executed the task skillfully and with good use of team work but lost because we used two hands to roll the ball around the hand circle, instead of only putting one hand in, which would have shortened our time.

Time evolved the game so we decided on a better strategy, because we wanted to lessen the amount of time the activity took.

I would keep the tennis ball game the same but force the players to try three different strategies.