So far in the module,  the demand planning and logistics has been my favourite. I enjoyed the problem-solving nature of the activity and I think I was quite good at it.

Ever since, I have been looking for examples of this kind of activity in my everyday life. It is difficult to write about this one, as I am not  allowed to mention the company I work for nor the exact nature of my work, however I am going to try.

Essentially this weekend I had a 2-hour slot to go around 11 different pubs in the local area. This was a lot harder than you may think,  I had to plan my route around the city as I had to visit in three different post code areas. I admit that one thing I am really bad at is reading maps. I cannot ever seem to understand which way is North, what way round the map is, or where I am on the map. Usually I would just get someone else to do it, but this time I had to do planning for myself.

I decided to use Google Street-View to locate all of the places I needed to go and in what order. The time I had did not allow for doubling-back on myself, so I needed to get it right the first time. Initially I just put all the addresses in and thought it would do, but I found there was a lot of problems as I would have to drive up and down the same roads and it would not work in the time.

I found Google Street-View was a good tool for this kind of activity. I could put in all the addresses I wanted and then I could begin to switch them around until my route became as simplified as was possible and I could do all of the jobs in as short an amount of time as possible. I believe that this is logistics as I had information in the form of the addresses I had to get to and a problem in the form of how to get to them in a short period of time.

From a teaching perspective, this could be quite a good activity as it would teach children about planning routes themselves, especially if they too can’t read maps, it would also be a good problem solving activity, as it is fundamental mathematics but it does not require any maths skills in the academic sense, which could be a great activity to encourage confidence.

On a personal level, I have also learned that I should probably try to gain some confidence of my own in map-reading. This is something I am going tottery my best to do as  during the Outdoor Education workshop, I had to sit back and allow the others in my group to take the lead as I did not understand what was going on at all. I am going to make every effort to be able to do this.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/europe/scotland/dundee/