Adult education classes

[SDdave]

I have been asked to teach a class on maple syrup for the fall adult education classes. I am looking for ideas (videos, good talking points, etc. etc.) to keep the class more upbeat, or to not sounding like a boring college lecture. I do have a power point presentation with topics from history, a little science, tapping, basically the whole step by step process. I also was going to bring in a couple of bottles of syrup, and a bottle of name brand syrup for a taste sample/comparision. Youtube has some good and some really horrible (bad info) videos. But looking for some really good ones of tapping and tapping techniques. Any thoughts?

SDdave

[MapleMark753]

Mike Farrell of Cornell University has a series of short videos that you might like to use. They cover a variety of maple subjects, are 3-4 minutes each, and are all on one website.
Check it out at least, here's the link: http://www.extension.org/pages/71043/youtube-channel-maple-syrup-series#.U9vqY7HD-P8

Don't know if you can download and use them, but may be able to set a laptop up to play them direct from the website on a bigscreen.
take care, Mark

[SDdave]

Thanks Mark! That's what I was looking for. Pretty good vids.

SDdave

[gmcooper]

Good luck with the class Dave. Be prepared to be flexible with your topics. I teach an adult ed bee school and I can tell you adults can be worse than kids when it comes to staying on topic. Don' be surprised if you are talking about tapping trees and the next 4 questions are on how to make candy. The Cornell videos look like a good start. Have fun with the class!

[RC Maple]

I thought of this when I saw that you were looking to find videos to keep things upbeat. There were a couple of them that I thought of that may not be too "instructional" but might be for the lighter side of class. The first video is about the exploding maple trees that blow apart from buildup of pressure if they don't get tapped like they usually do. Here is the link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xUi92jFv9uA. The other video I thought of is the poem that has been posted on here before - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqreE_O6mBU. Neither are great for learning but may make class more interesting. Good luck with your class.