By Thursday of every week, you should have completed the activities associated with 1 project. You should blog about your experience as a comment to the blog posting of that particular project. Your blog comment can be largely experiential--tell us what it was like to do the project and what you learned. Products associated with the project and a more detailed analysis of the project will go in your portfolio (see the Portfolio blog post).
Project #13 Crime Scene Workshop
This project is a little different. I'm organizing a crime scene workshop for students in 9th-12th grade on April 6th, from 10:30-11:15am. Students will come in and rotate through their choice of 2 or 3 stations where they will learn a particular technique, and then rotate through an area which will be a mock crime scene. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) will be to develop and staff one of the stations. I have equipment and materials to help you out. Up to 3 students (psylaw students) could develop and work each station.
You can choose from the following stations: forensic memory collection (interviewing and composites), forensic photography, forensic entomology, forensic science (blood, fiber, fingerprint), and the crime scene itself.
For this project, given it's specific date and time and need for advance planning, I'll need to know ahead of time if you are interested. So post as a comment here if you want to do this as one of your projects and which station you are interested in.
I would be interested in helping out with this. I'm not sure which station I would like to help with though (it's a toss up between the crime scene and forensic science).
I kept my notes from my Applied Criminalistics class at Hawkeye, which was about investigating crime scenes (we actually had to collect evidence from our own mock crime scene as well), so I have a lot of information on blood splatter patterns, fingerprinting techniques, chain of custody, crime scene search patterns, etc.
I am interesting in helping out with this. I would like to participate in the group for forensic science or even forensic entomology. I have some ideas already for setting up a booth for the forensic science station.
I am interested in helping out as well! I would really like to work on the actual crime scene with others.
I am also interested in helping out with this! I would like to work on the actual crime scene station.
I am interested in helping out! I would like to work in the actual crime scene station, but any station would be okay.
I'd be interested in helping out with this! I'd be open to any station, and would also be interested in the actual crime scene.
I would love to do this and I would be open for any station, but my favorites would be the actual crime scene, forensic science, or forensic photography
I would be interested in helping out. I would be open to doing any station, but forensic science or the actual crime scene would be my favorites.
I'm interested in doing this as well:) I'm interested in the forensics science station, but any station is fine!
I'm interested in doing this! My first choice would be the actual crime scene but anything would be fine!
If there is still room, I would like to do this project, any station would be fine, but would prefer forensic science.
I helped out with the crime scene project today and manned the fingerprinting station. It was fun to get a hands-on experience with criminal investigation while also teaching it to others (high school students). Explaining my station to the students also surprised myself about what I knew in the sense that I could reguritate it to others. When you actually do these hands-on activities in reinterates the importance of training, perception, knowledge, background, etc. You really see the psychological aspect of criminal investigations when you actually experience it and are trying to explain it.
It was also fun setting up the crime scene and explaining to the students how to go about investigating it. Most of the students were like "I don't know where to begin!" So once again, I surprised myself in rattling off all the different apsects they could analyze. Just shows what we do in class is paying off ;)
I think this mock crime scene would also be fun to do as a class and use as a project. I know there isn't much time left this year but I would suggest it for future years.
I helped out today with the crime scene project, and worked the composite art station. I worked with the software the week before and tried to understand it better. I surprised myself with all that I knew about the software and while explaining it to the high school students, I felt I had a much better understanding than I thought I did. In the psychological aspect of composite art, there are bias not only from the witness and the person sketching or creating a face on the software, and that was an important part when trying to explain to them when it came to detailing the suspect.
I believe that the students had fun with the software and were amazed with all the details that a witness had to give in order to make a worth while photo to use on a wanted poster or a general warning to the public poster. There were several questions that were asked about how a witness can remember all those details and I tried to answer them the best that I could.
I agree with the comment above. I think that in future classes that mock crime scenes should be done. It was fun creating the scene and watching while people tried to collect evidence. I believe that it would be a great learning experience to have and students would enjoy participanting in that project! :)
I took part in the crimescene workshop and worked at the memory station. Going into it, I was actually kind of nervous because I thought I would have to know a lot about my station, when in fact I went into it knowing more than I thought it did. I pretty much had to explain the types of memory (procedural, semantic, episodic) and give them examples of each. The psychology part of memory came in when explaining how it's used for eye witness identification. On the table was examples that we used in class when we got descriptions of the suspect, and then had to pick we thought did it out of the line up. I explained to them how lineups should be be made fairly, and the suspect should't stand out as they did in most of the line ups they looked at.
Also, there was computer set up, with the homepage of the Florida Department of Corrections, which is the website we used when we made our own lineups. They searched on that, and a lot of them put in descriptions of themselves to see who they could find that looked like them, and some also put in their own last name to find people with the same last name as them.
It was nice to see the high school students interacting with all the different stations. The actual crime scene we had set up was also interesting. They were supposed to go the scene and find any evidence left behind, but I don't think they completely got this concept because they didn't find much! But overall, I think it was a good experience for both us students who took part in it, and also for the high school students.
Look, I'm not going to pull any punches here or try to be something I'm not. I'm a dead guy. Seriously, for this project I was simply a dead body.
The good news though is that I was able to experience a more holistic picture of all of the people that may be called in to investigate a crime scene. All of the presenters did a great job working their stations, and since it was my job to sit there with my eyes closed, I may have been the only person in the room listening the WHOLE time. I wasn't distracted by my neighbor, or pulled to the next station by somebody, I could just lie there and listen to the presenters from start to finish.
Each person did an excellent job explaining to the participants about their assigned specialty, and if they didn't know what they were talking about then they sure fooled me. Despite the corny name (Psychology with The MacLins!) I think the whole event was a success, and my primary source for this conclusion is the lack of attention to the dead body! Seriously though, the group spent a good chunk of time preparing this fake crime scene with blood splatter and "Police Line-Do Not Cross" tape and a murder weapon and the whole bit. Though my point of view was from the ground up (literally) I'm quite certain it looked really cool. HOWEVER I think I was the least popular attraction of the workshop, which leads me to conclude that the other presenters must have been on their game, and knew what they were talking about.
It is not easy to keep the attention of adolescents, and since the other presenters were able to do so, I submit the workshop was a success. PLUS I'm glad nobody poked me with a stick and said "I wonder how long this guy's been dead"...