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FOR 2008 CAMPERS

Information for Parents and Teachers

What happens at the camp?

There are many many different views about just what the properties and characteristics of a gifted and talented student are. An argument that we will not get into here.

My conviction, based on 45 years of teaching in primary, secondary and tertiary education is there are a great many more gifted ( or let's say very, very able) students than have been recognized. They lie unexposed like gold nuggets beneath the soil. For some of them, someone digs or kicks the soil, in the right way or at the right time and they are exposed. For some this never happens.

I believe that the best that we can do as educators is to constantly search for new 'digging tools', some of which might prove to be appropriate stimuli capable of ‘unearthing’ other intelligent minds. Those stimuli that prove to be the most fruitful should be used and reused.

The Talented Students Forensic Science Camp has proved to be a most powerful stimulus for setting able minds on fire. It would be wrong to think of it as an entertainment to pander to the current forensic science craze. It employs the inherent interest in all of us to solve a ‘whodunit’ as a motivator, but it is much more than a simple whodunit.

Davis & Rimm (1989) stated that the goals of educational programs for gifted & talented students should be:
"to assist students in becoming individuals who are able to take self-initiated action. . . . . . and who are capable of intelligent choice, independent learning and problem solving.

To develop problem solving abilities and creative thinking skills; develop research skills; strengthen individual interests; develop independent study skills; strengthen communication skills; receive intellectual stimulation from contact with other highly motivated students; and expand their learning activities to include resources available."

G A Davis and S B Rimm (1989). Education of the Gifted and Talented. Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon.

If Davis and Rimm had the opportunity to assess the Forensic Camp's compliance with their goals they would give it 10 out of 10. It meets all of them
Underlying the camp’s design is my conviction that most children have depths rarely plumbed by traditional methods of education and that when they fail to perform, the conscious or unconscious reason is that they believe that, “If a thing’s not worth doing its not worth doing well”. When faced with the task of designing a four day residential science camp I knew that the primary task was to create in the students a need to overcome the difficulties of working together and to focus cooperatively on a common task, a need to do the job well.

A forensic science theme was chosen because of the inherent interest in solving a “whodunit”. Who can resist one? But the forensic focus has a number of other advantages:

• Forensic science encompasses a wide range of laboratory techniques, many of which are within the capacity of year 8 students.
• Students can clearly see that, in a forensic context, the laboratory techniques are a means to an end not an end in themselves. In normal school science, students often form the contrary view.
• Working toward the solution of a complex crime scenario involves many more 'scientific skills' than those encompassed by laboratory tests alone. Deductive reasoning is vital and the 'intuitive leap' or guess, has an important role. The discipline imposed on each group is the requirement, that in order to be awarded a warrant to arrest a suspect, they would have to convince a 'magistrate' that their case was sufficiently strong to justify the invasion of an individual’s privacy. The second discipline is that at the end of the Camp the campers must argue their case in a court trial where all of the evidence they have gathered will be presented in an attempt to obtain a conviction. Thus the Forensic Camp mirrors the scientific process in that there is no correct answer. The best answer is the one that is best supported by the evidence and that the only judge of that is a body of peers.
• The involvement of sources of evidence apart from the laboratory test results (such as interviews with witnesses and criminal associates or information from a criminal database) provides another dimension to the problem-solving exercise and enhances the atmosphere of reality. It also introduces other sets of skills that need to be mastered.

In summary the Forensic Camp operates like this:-

1. Before arriving at the camp students receive their Forensic Manual. This contains everything they need to know about the Law, laboratory procedures, the use of the computers, databases etc
2. Students are assigned in groups of four to a Crime Task Force (CTF). Every effort is made to create CTF’s with equal sex ratio, no students from the same school, a mix of country and city and a mix of private and state schools.
3. CTF’s are assigned a work space (“Detective's office”) in “Police Headquarters”.
4. Each CTF receives a package which contains a report from the police officer who attended the scene of the crime. With the report could be records of interview, photographs and some items of physical evidence.
5. What the group does from this point is entirely up to its members. They are cast in the role of detectives but they cannot leave police headquarters. Their sole contact with the outside world is via email and hard-copy mail links to the Crime Operations Centre. Through the Centre they have access to 'all of the resources of the national police force'. They can request interviews, premises searches, vehicle registration checks. They have their own direct access to a large computer database of criminal record and to the laboratories. If they act appropriately they will receive items of physical evidence from the Crime Operations Centre and eventually they will thread their path through the 'red herrings' and construct a case.The Crime Operations Centre is manned by the year 9 and 10 students who designed the scenarios and compiled the reports, database and items of physical evidence. This group, called Controllers, represents the other dimension of the Forensic Camp. They perform a role that extends over nine months and culminates in 5 days of intense interaction with the camper groups via e-mail and hard copy mail. Many of the requests and questions they get are anticipated and responses are prepared, but just as often they have to respond to issues that they haven’t conceived of and their responses must be consistent with the whole scenario. To see these Controller groups in action is something to behold. Few adults could perform their role more professionally.

The duration of the Forensic Camp is important. It could not be any shorter and would serve no useful purpose if it were longer. During the days that are spent actually solving the crime all groups seem to go through the same three-phase metamorphosis.

Phase 1 – Unfocused Activity

• Individuals of the group are uneasy with one another, their contact with one another is social not intellectual
• Problem solving is unfocussed, methods erratic, uncooperative.
• The computer is seen as the ‘source of wisdom’ – ill-considered questions are fired at the operations centre and database searching is random
• Laboratory work is superfluous and laboratory tests are performed on evidence without rehearsing the skill, this leads to corruption of physical evidence.

Phase 2 – Frustration

• Frequent disruption within the group, sometimes leading to fragmentation ie subgroups and individuals go their own way working on their own hypotheses.
• Much chasing of 'red herrings' due to guessing without confirmation by evidence.
• Much duplication of effort
• Frustration is universal

Phase 3 - Resolution

• Individuals realize that the task is impossible by themselves, groups reform and become task orientated
• Cooperation is high and individuals specialize in carrying out specific laboratory tests but group makes decisions together.
• In the laboratory, instructions are read carefully, techniques rehearsed to develop skill, then they are applied to the evidence.
• Questions and requests to the operations centre are carefully thought out and consequently elicit more useful responses
• Conclusions are based on cooperative group discussion
  

So far, over many camps, not one group has ever 'tossed in the towel' during the frustration phase. This is a testimony to the atmosphere of reality that the Forensic Camp creates. The students believe that it is a job worth doing and worth doing well.