Welcome back to Pack Hacks for Faculty. Each month, a member of the NC State faculty will provide quick tips, advice and other insight <\/span>to facilitate your teaching, research, scholarship or engagement activities.<\/span> If you are interested in <\/span>making a submission<\/span><\/a> for a future Pack Hacks for Faculty, please review our <\/span>submission guidelines<\/span><\/a> and contact <\/span>provost-communications@ncsu.edu<\/span><\/a> if you have questions.<\/span><\/p>\n
Gary Blank<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n
Whenever I travel, I take my camera and look for things that are pertinent to the courses I\u2019m teaching. For example, when traveling in Europe I\u2019ll try to take pictures of different examples of uses of wood, forest issues and ecosystems for my <\/span>FOR 248 \u2013 Forest History, Technology and Society class. Mediterranean maquis vegetation is harder to describe than to photograph.<\/span><\/p>\n
I take lots of photographs \u2014 about 500-600 in a month \u2014 and organize them in a library that I can easily pull from depending on the topic I\u2019m talking about in class. If students can see something, rather than just hearing about it, that makes their educational experience more tangible and enriching. And you don\u2019t have to have a fancy camera either. Many cell phone cameras do an excellent job, or you can choose a dSLR camera like an EOS Rebel if you want better resolution.<\/span><\/p>\n
When I\u2019m traveling internationally, I\u2019m thinking about how what I experience impacts what I do back home. I try to take photos that illustrate points that students should be thinking about regarding what they will be reading for a class. Always be on the lookout for the connection between what you teach and what you can bring from the context you are in when you are traveling.<\/span><\/p>\n
When traveling abroad, think about how you can challenge students to think differently. Try to present what you\u2019ve seen and learned in a way that gets them to think critically about things that they take for granted in the U.S.. Get them talking about the similarities and differences between how people and systems operate here and in other countries.<\/span><\/p>\n
Most of the time when I present a lecture on my experiences abroad, I intentionally do not use a lot of text on my slides. Thinking critically about a particular situation through interpreting images helps students get a better grasp of what they\u2019re learning and how that impacts the world around them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
For example, I\u2019ll show a photo of a 120-acre wind farm in northern Sweden when talking about the issues we need to be conscious of when doing an environmental assessment of placement of wind turbines. It is great when they are able to respond to the images in a thoughtful manner.<\/span><\/p>\n
You don\u2019t learn by pulling open a drawer in a file cabinet drawer and slamming it shut \u2014 you have to look critically at a picture, a situation, and link what you see to what you\u2019re talking about.\u00a0 There is a connection between your experience and your education, and making those connections is what a university education should be about.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Regardless of where you travel abroad, you\u2019re sure to find unique aspects of each location to share with your students. By sharing your travels, you\u2019re both on a journey of learning about the wider world outside of NC State.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Gary Blank is an <\/span><\/i>associate and Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources in the College of Natural Resources<\/span><\/i>. He can be reached at <\/span><\/i>gblank@ncsu.edu<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"Welcome back to Pack Hacks for Faculty. Each month, a member of the NC State faculty will provide quick tips, advice and other insight <\/span>to facilitate your teaching, research, scholarship or engagement activities.<\/span> If you are interested in <\/span>making a submission<\/span><\/a> for a future Pack Hacks for Faculty, please review our <\/span>submission guidelines<\/span><\/a> and contact <\/span>provost-communications@ncsu.edu<\/span><\/a> if you have questions.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThis month, Gary Blank, <\/span>associate and Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources<\/span>, gives advice on taking travel lessons back to your classroom.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n
![\"Gary](\"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/November-2019-Pack-Hacks-Gary-Blank-Headshot.jpg\")
November is International Education Month, but at NC State, we Think and Do globally all year long. Whether leading students on a study abroad experience or introducing students to international ideas in the classroom, we seek to bring all corners of the world into our teaching, research and service at NC State. Here are a few ideas on how to share your international experience with students to enrich their education.<\/span>\r\nThis month, Gary Blank, associate and Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, gives advice on taking travel lessons back to your classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,18,24,25,8],"tags":[217,27,31],"class_list":["post-11238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-and-staff","category-homepage","category-international","category-newswire","category-students","tag-international","tag-pack-hacks-for-faculty","tag-teaching-mentoring"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11238"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11245,"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11238\/revisions\/11245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/provost.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}