Trip Planning Workbook now available

[Joseph Berkovitz]

Hi all,

Bob Levine and I, together with Margo Otway of BASK, have decided to publicly share the Sea Kayak Trip Planning Workbook that we used as the basis for our recent NSPN course that concluded yesterday. This way, everyone can benefit from it including those who didn't take the course, and we can receive valuable feedback from the community.

The workbook is available here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uY8i2L7OdBwiPnkAHmg8nguez-INWV6twn5kXLqKZ3k/edit?usp=sharing

It runs to about 75 pages. To quickly summarize what this is all about, I'll reproduce the first few paragraphs here:

Quote

 

This document contains material and exercises for a Trip Planning seminar, designed to be conducted in an online meeting format or physically present small groups.  However, the material also works for self-guided study. That’s why we call it a “workbook”. It allows a course or study session to proceed at its own best pace for the participants, without a rigid organization.

The emphasis in this workbook is on real-world problem solving. While foundational ideas and techniques are presented up front in most sections of the workbook, the goal is to quickly prepare students for doing exercises, rather than exhaustively covering each topic.

This workbook aims to ground paddlers in most of the areas essential for planning a safe, successful and enjoyable trip on the ocean. Broadly, these topics are divided into three parts:

1. Navigation: the space of land and water features where we paddle
2. Environment: the behavior of the marine world as it affects us on the water
3. Planning: bringing together knowledge of navigation, environment and ourselves to design a shared experience on the water

 

Please feel free to share it with others in the paddling community freely. Note that we have placed some commonsense licensing restrictions on sharing, to keep it non-commercial, freely available and ensure that all contributors (including future ones) receive credit.

Thanks to everyone in this club who made this possible, directly and indirectly!

Best,

Joe

Edited March 28, 2021 by Joseph Berkovitz

[prudenceb]

Wow!  Impressive piece of work.  Thanks for sharing.  I'll look forward to digesting it bit by bit.

[BigBird]

This is great - thanks Joe and Bob for putting this together and sharing with those of us who couldn't attend the seminar.

[Jim Snyder]

Joe and Bob, what do you think about putting this in the download section? It doesn't seem to fit in any of the existing categories but maybe a new category would attract some other good contact. 

[Joseph Berkovitz]

A google doc isn’t really a file that you download - it’s a link to a thing that keeps on evolving. If we turn it into a downloadable PDF that will “freeze” the content which is not desirable at this point. Perhaps there’s some appropriate place to post a link instead of a file... like one of the pages on the main website?

[EEL]

If someone wanted to have a local copy, then they could download the current version in their file format of choice from the Google Doc site.  However, I agree with Joe that it should be left as a dynamic/work in progress item on Google Doc as opposed to a static file to be downloaded from the NSPN site.

 

Ed Lawson

[Jim Snyder]

How about a new subcategory under "paddling with NSPN on the home page. "Trip Planning" could have a description of the workbook and a link. This would also be a place to land other trip planning topics. 

[Joseph Berkovitz]

I’m fine with anything you and the board like, as long as it links to the original document. 

[gyork]

This workbook can now be found @ NSPN.org  HERE.