Fruit salad
A fruit type presentation developed for botany class was used in ethnobotany fall 2025. The videos that had been used up until spring 2025 tended to be ignored by the students and were not well focused on the fruits encountered in the fruit salad activity. The students are of a generation that can tune out a YouTube video as background noise. And the fruits shown in the videos were of a temperate climate focus. The botany slide deck, however, included material that is relevant to agriculture majors in a botany course, material that is not part of a general education non-major non-lab science course. A slide deck more tightly focused on the activity was prepared for use.
The class was scheduled to end early to accomodate student evaluations of the course. With this in mind a handout of fruit types based on the one in the text and used on botany was prepared. The handout lacked a header label and doesn't line up the fruit types into a common column. This proved confusing. The handout was simplified to accommodate the needs of the ethnobotany course.
Ace Office did not have a lot of canned fruits on offer. Only the Essential products came from Ace Office. A One Mart had nothing. No canned fruits of any kind. A One had been the sole supplier of the three kilo cans of tropical fruit cocktail.
INS would prove to not only have the three kilo cans but also the nata de coco along with some other canned fruits.
Purchases were done on Tuesday evening, transported to the college Wednesday morning, and chilled in the refrigerator until Thursday afternoon.
Set up started at 14:51. Bowls were laid out by 15:03.
The cans were opened and the bowl loaded by 15:11. At this point the presence of flies in the room was noted. Two flies were dispatched, but the decision was made to hold off loading the bowls until the students arrived.
The large bowl was covered using three inverted paper bowls to hold up the paper towel. The fruit presentation was set to looped autoplay. Two seconds was too fast. Five seconds was better. But this required deleting Coconut. Coconut was pulled up in another tab and then played on manuel repeat after a few cycles of the presentation.
The cans were displayed up front
The presentation running on repeat with an asynchronous oral voiceover.
Then Coconut on repeated repeat.
As students entered I prepped a bowl and handed that to them. Could use more toothpicks for next fall. Toothpicks are still optimal.
Although the class has 27 students, recent attendance has been 17 to 21 students. 25 showed up for the last presentation.
There were 21 bowls distributed by 15:47. Loading was full bowls. This was a damn the torpedoes, if the supply runs out late comers get nothing approach. Prior terms saw leftover in the main bowl.
What remained after twenti-one bowls. Two more students would arrive, very late, and still get a bowl. Although at 23 bowls the supply was all but exhausted. 27 had never been possible, but only 23+1 showed up. One student arrived with a plus one. They were given a bowl on arrival, so technically 24 students were accommodated. A few scraps were left. This approach worked better than expected, and ultimately no one was left wanting.
The approach of serving upon arrival worked better than expected. Alex, Allen Ray, and Shirleven
This remains a very engaging activity. Geneva with her back to the camera, Jinisha, Kaena Kirra Grace, and Larisa
Macylin
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