This past summer, I joined the Explorers Club Teaching Fellowship as the only Canadian educator selected in 2026 on a scientific expedition to the Boiling River in the Peruvian Amazon, led by National Geographic Explorer Andrés Ruzo. The Boiling River is one of the most extraordinary natural phenomena on Earth. It’s a river that reaches near-boiling temperatures in the middle of the rainforest, a sacred site to the Shipibo-Conibo people, and a living laboratory that draws scientists, conservationists, and storytellers from around the world.
I went to document as an educational specialist. To observe and learn from scientists of different disciplines. And most importantly, to bring something back for my students that no textbook could.
What I came back with was a Keynote template, alongside a medical evacuation story I now teach with and a renewed conviction that the most powerful learning happens in uncertain places. A simple, structured electronic field notebook that keeps all observation and data in one place. It changed how I think about teaching observation. And I want every teacher in this community to have it.
What scientists actually do in the field
Before I left, I assumed I knew what field documentation looked like. I'd read about it, taught inquiry frameworks, designed PYP units around the scientific method. But watching Andrés and his team work beside the river was different. They weren't just collecting data. They were observing slowly, deliberately, with a discipline I hadn't expected. A temperature reading became a question. A photograph became an annotation. An observation became a revision of something they thought they already knew.
That practice has a name: field documentation. And it's exactly what we say we want students to do when we talk about inquiry. The question I brought home was: are we giving students the structure to actually do it?
What the template contains
The first thing students notice is that it does not look like a slide deck. Each entry is designed to feel like a page pulled from a real field notebook: textured paper backgrounds, washi tape strips holding down photographs and letter-press style label assets for the observation zones.
With the right scaffolding for our students, like discussing what "observation" means before the lesson like modelling one entry together, even the youngest learners produce documentation that may surprise them. That's the point. The notebook makes the invisible visible. It shows students what they know, what they noticed, and what they're still curious about, all in one place.
Download, adapt, remix, and share
The Keynote template is yours. Open it, rename the zones, change the prompts, add a language field or a data table. Make it relevant to your curriculum, your students, and your context.
I'd love to see how teachers in this community use it. Whether it is in a science unit, an outdoor education program, a cross-curricular inquiry, or a simple observation walk around the school, share your adaptations below, tag your posts with #FieldNotebook, and let's build something together.
Attach up to 5 files which will be available for other members to download.