Written specifically to help NSW teachers implement the new Preliminary Course in personal development, health and physical education. Provides a comprehensive coverage of the new requirements. This student friendly text is designed to help students develop skills and meet outcomes effectively. Book 2 due out September 2000.

Web 2.0 technologies create opportunities for distance learning with particular promise for students while they are on international exchange. The current generation of students departing for study abroad is electronically literate or "digital natives", who have thoroughly integrated internet and communication technologies into their daily lives. But their modes of interacting may not be adequate to really gain all that they might learn through study abroad. Many international exchange programs, at the same time, have not kept pace and are missing significant opportunities to reinforce intercultural learning while students are sojourning abroad. This paper reports on qualitative and strategic findings from the project "Bringing the Learning Home," an Australian Learning and Teaching Council-funded pilot project to develop reflection-based curriculum for improving study abroad outcomes. In particular, we discuss qualitative findings from in-country blogging and reentry workshops using photo elicitation, reflection-based learning, and meta-cognitive teaching strategies, with intercultural skills and professionalization as primary goals. Perhaps most importantly, we found that online tools and visual literacy, with adept instruction and practice, could produce a virtual "third space" where students could better reflect on cultural differences, sharpen their own intercultural skills, and gain the metacognitive skills necessary to become life-long learners from experience. (Contains 1 footnote.).

Today's Western culture is characterized by high technology, time compression and a disconnection from the natural world. What happens when a group of young adult students who are firmly embedded within this world, embark on a 6-day unassisted wilderness experience? When divorced from the structural support of the everyday, and placed in an emotionally and physically taxing environment, one would imagine students would retreat to the security of the known world upon return. However, our study sheds new light on this phenomenon by revealing its antithesis. These students manifest a strong desire for a simpler life. What is the nature of the simpler life they envisage? What is its innate appeal? And what are the implications for those involved in Outdoor Education? Even if such a desire for a more primal existence were expressed, is it possible or probable, that this notion can be executed? Our research proposes that a necessary precursor for sustainable living and a deep attachment to the environment is for educators to provide experiences that strip back the superfluity of everyday life and introduce bare subsistence. This facilitates the transition into a heightened and more sensitive environmental ethic. (Contains 2 tables.