Go the Extra Mile

or, what iPad has to do with Outdoors' activities?

The answer: perhaps this is the enabler for building complex, challenging, smart, innovative outdoor workshops. No less.

What the idea is?

Take iPads and/or iPhones, upload content that is relevant to the workshop. The content is now available to the players via the iPad, during the outdoor activity.
Example: the outdoor is conducted in the Masada area; The iPad content includes teams instructions, Masada’s stories and pictures, walking tour map, pictures, movie clips, and more. In short, the iPad is an instant library, available at the users’ fingertips, any place any time during the workshop.

However, this is the simple, straightforward use.

The real benefit of such combination, is the ability to run multi-locations outdoors by taking advantage of the connectivity in real time, between the outdoor participants, a centralized server and the facilitator.

The following example demonstrates a glimpse of this combination: let's say we run the workshop in Tel Aviv. Teams start the outdoor scattered in the city: one is on the beach, one is in old city Jaffa, one is in Tel Aviv University, and so on.

The teams get their instructions via the iPad; they have team's tasks (let’s say, learn about Jaffa by walking in a certain trail, get information on Jaffa's points of interest, upload video clips taken by the team and more) and cross-teams shared task (let's say, create a presentation, made of pictures, sounds and text about Tel Aviv by using materials created by all of the teams). In order to prepare the shared task, the teams need to, plan together, construct the presentation, while being apart from each other. They do it by using the iPad, for taking pictures, shoot movie clips, search items, call other teams, getting updates from HQ (the facilitator). The cross-team project is presented when all teams meet together at the end.

The iPad in such outdoor is an essential, integral part of the workshop.

If one wants to really fly with possible uses of such a combination, then outdoors where teams scattered across a certain country, or even globally (teams in Israel, UK, France and India, for example).

The idea above is not mine. The workshop in Tel Aviv was not yet developed or tested. A small company out there builds outdoor workshops using iPads – the simple, informational iPad usage, approach.
We collaborate in an effort to offer an outdoor, using the complex approach, to the company I work for.
Once we run the more complex workshop the first time, I’ll tell you how it went, and will disclose the company’s name.

Stay tuned

Amir Karmin