Project Overview

Students from High Tech High, in San Diego, California created these fictional ship’s logs as part of an interdisciplinary historical and maritime project.

Part of the project included spending three days as a working crew on board a three-masted tall ship. During this intensive fieldwork, students helped navigate the ship using only celestial navigation and charts.

Students created fictional log book entries from actual historic tall ship voyages by taking on the role of an individual person and writing from the first person perspective. The logbook entries combine navigational diagrams, biological illustrations and historical writing. Cellular biology is represented through illustrations of microscopic images. Voyages ranged through different historical periods, each with different overall purposes. In each of their different subject-area classes, students had assignments to write about different topics.

Include are drafts of student work.

As a culminating experience for this investigation, students created an exhibit of their work that was displayed on the Star of India - a floating part of the Maritime Museum of San Diego. The exhibit included log book entries, student-designed working sextants, AutoCAD drawings of historic ships and a documentary that highlighted the students working on the project.