If you are interested in teaching yourself about Greenland rolling Christopher Crowhurst is the guy you need to talk to (or at least shift through his fantastic kayak rolling website, qajaqrolls.com.

A while back Christopher released the Rolling with Sticks Guide Book which is a really innovative and simple book that breaks down each individual Greenland kayak roll. The stick guys do a great job highlighting the key steps for each roll.

The brilliant idea with the book is that it’s printed and bound on waterproof paper so you can take it with you on the water

Now Christopher has moved to the next step and produced an instructional DVD called Rolling with Sticks which looks pretty good.

Rolling with Sticks DVD preview from Christopher Crowhurst on Vimeo.

As the preview demonstrates, each video is clearly demonstrated showing it in multiple angles both above and below the water.

You can purchase just the book for $29.95, DVD for $19.99 or as a package deal for $39.95.

More info and image credits: qajaqrolls.com

If you are like me there is a very good chance that you struggle to explain to your students the basics of how tides work.

To help solve the mystery, the gang from Minute Physics produced a very cool video that explains the basics so simply that that my 10 year-old could understand.

Also, if you have also got an extra minute why don’t you learn why some rocks on the shoreline are round while other rocks are flat and perfect for skipping across the water.

Who knew that gravity affected our lives so much? I didn’t.

Flickr Photo Credit: Low Tide Turnagain Arm / Travis / CC BY-NC 2.0

David Wooldridge from Ridge Wilderness Adventures in Maple Ridge, British Columbia assembled a really well done instructional video specifically for Big Canoe paddling.

Over the past couple of weeks I have seen a large uptick in the number of Big Canoe videos released. By large uptick, I really mean I went from seeing zero big canoe videos to 3 in the past month.

As you might know, Paddle Canada rolled out their Big Canoe instructional program this year and what’s happening is the newly certified instructors are developing teaching resources for everybody else to use.

Creative Commons Licence on Flickr by tlindenbaum.

Buoys, posts or other markers on the water are great for teaching. You can use them for students to circle around doing figure eights, zig zag or another activity/game you can think of.

The problem is that buoys often are placed in locations that are not ideal for teaching paddling. For some reason God always seems to place them near boat channels, shallow rocks or just to close to shore making it impossible to turn around.

Because I’m always on the lookout for new teaching gadgets and aids, I was very excited to discover (courtesy of my friend, Bonnie Perry) the Lindy Marker Buoys.

You got to check them out. They are essentially lightweight plastic dumbbells with 60 feet of thin line wrapped around the waist. Attached to the end of the line is a small lead weight.

The great thing with the design is that when you throw it in the water and the buoy will spin as the weight unwinds. When the anchor hits bottom it will stop spinning due to a very cool counter weight built inside keeping the buoy in place even in a medium wind.

With a set of three you can pass them out to pairs of students or create a triangle or line for zigging or zagging. When the activity is over get the students to wind them up to store in your day hatch until you need them again.

I’m serious, they are fantastic tools.

You can pick-up them individually or in sets of three. For example, Dicks Sporting Goods has them for $7.99 each while Bass Pro as a set of three for $19.

Image credit: mantraplake.webs.com

Sometimes students taking an intermediate paddling class grumble that they wished they had learned the new skills during an beginner paddling class.

Of course you can’t learn everything in one day and some skills can’t be taught to absolute beginners and must be taught tomorrow.

Wayne Horodowich has written an interesting article over on paddling.net on these limitations and why an instructor needs to push some skills to an intermediate level class.

Another factor to consider about learning is, "you don't know what you don't know." If you don't even know the possibility exists you may never perform certain actions. That is why formal education is so important. As you learn more possibilities your base of knowledge expands. As the base gets bigger you can build more upon it. As a side note, if an instructor can build creative thinking skills and experimentation into their curriculum I believe students will discover more options on their own.

How does all off the above relate to a kayaking class? Obviously, as we learn our basic skills we are limited by what we have learned with respect to the points I was making above. At the end of your basic kayaking class your base of kayaking knowledge is what you have learned in your class unless you have had additional exposure to the sport. You are unaware of all you do not know about kayaking.

Read the full article here.