Interpretation Tips for Tour Guides - Interpreting Culture, the Environment, History and Heritage

PDF: Interpreting Tips for Guides - The TORE Method
http://www.beabetterguide.com/interpr...

Interpretation tips for tour guides from Dr. Sam Ham, author of ‘Interpretation: Making a Difference on Purpose’ Explore the TORE method for interpreting culture, heritage and the natural world.

Cultural, Environmental and Historical Interpretation is something that many guides do on a day to day basis.

The curious thing is, not everyone has heard the term ‘interpretation' before!

Well, for starters, we are not talking about interpretation between languages or other types of translation services. Those are a skill unto themselves - but not what we are talking about today.

We mean the interpretation of culture, the environment and/or history, as done by a guide, educator or tour leader. In other words, think of interpretation as a communication strategy. It’s presenting your information in such a way that it resonates with your audience.

National Park Rangers, naturalists, outdoor educators and guides working in eco-tourism, are much more likely to have been exposed to the term ‘interpretation’, but even if you have never heard of ‘interpreting’ before - there is a lot to learn from the people teaching in this space.

In this video, we look at some interpretation tips for tour guides and share resources for helping you with your presentations on tour! PLUS, we’ve got a special guest in the video, Sarah Bassendale, one of the lead trainers from the Be a Better Guide Academy.

The field of 'thematic interpretation' is an approach originally advocated by Professor William Lewis (University of Vermont) and subsequently developed by Professor Sam H. Ham from the University of Idaho.

For this video, we reached out to Dr. Sam Ham in order to get the best advice we could on rocking our interpretive moments.

We share some interpretation tips for tour guides, but also explore one of Dr. Ham’s central teachings, the T.O.R.E. model of thematic interpretation. This method is outlined in his recent book, ‘Interpretation: Making a Difference on Purpose’ which you can find on Amazon right here.

We’ve also created a PDF Cheat Sheet of the TORE method, which you can use when working on your tours, interpretive moments or presentations. Feel free to grab a copy by clicking the link below.

http://www.beabetterguide.com/interpr...

Dr. Sam Ham's Book, 'Interpretation: Making a Difference on Purpose': https://goo.gl/0OXQkU