A brief scribble from my end of the
desk in our office in our apartment @ Campus Village, Dalian American
International School, No. 2 Dianchi
Road Golden
Pebble Beach National Resort, Jinshitan in the Dalian
Development Area (DDA; Chinese: 大连开发区) in the Jinzhou District, Dalian, Liaoning province, China.
I thought I would have so much time today to write blogs, work on some 15 videos I have too many clips for, maybe even do some laundry instead of leaving it for the laundry woman to do; however, I am exhausted and it is not even eleven am. Luck that I even got here last night then until 1.30 AM I decided to twitter and google plus and facebook; though I am finding facebook really quite boring these days – too little worthwhile content and after a few years of hearing what people are unhappy about, who they are or should be or not sleeping with or how much they have drunk or what they are having for tea, do we really care? I was up all bushy eyed or is that bushy tailed? At 6 AM after a solid four and half hour sleep I was excited to get into all that was presented at the learning2 conference in Shanghai. Of course I had probably less sleep the past few days keeping up with so much at the conference and now that it is almost eleven AM I am ready to sleep. I figured home alone for two days; Narda is in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, a smallest town of eight million. She went with five other women – they hired two drivers for four days – and drove the six hours up. I didn’t spend any money in Shanghai at all thanks to our school, but Narda, what a worry. She said on the first day, couple of days ago, that she had done a bit of shopping. I figure those women will be coming back with a u-haul. Our shipment from the States was to be here last week but now of course it will be sometime in October so we are stuck with what we brought and the u-haul of stuff Narda has probably bought.
I will write a lot about my technology gleanings whilst at http://www.learning2.asia/ on my educational blog http://neuage.us/edu/blog.html later this day.
but basically... Spent the time at
the conference because I have wandered around Shanghai several other times and
I had a bit of a mandate from the head of our school to gather and gather I
did. As far as technology conferences go there were a few things that were
interesting and one actually new. The new was that anyone could have a
un-conference meeting by signing on a board. There were several interesting
ones. I found the keynote speakers did not have anything new to say and even at
times not only me but others said ‘what?’ It was the overused ‘my four year old
or six year old or whatever their child was on about using technology. There
was a lot to the point of way too much of family in the presentations. We all
have families most of us have children and grandchildren and yes of course they
are using flip cameras and using the web and doing creative stuff from the
earliest ages, so what? I have taught kindy and first
grade and assisted 2nd graders in NYC with their hip hop youtube videos. Come on presenters let us get away from
hearing about your ‘special’ family and your ‘special’ life. We come to see
nuts and bolts and integration from a cosmic level these days. Good golly this
is not new rocket science. Cave people discovered with fire they could cook,
read a novel, and create a weapon, stay warm and so much more to the point of
their version of technology integration was much more organic than ours.
Throughout history we have been integrating. I have seen this, talk about how my 7 year old
can do this or my six year old buys LSD on ebay and
on and on at conferences in New York City (CUNY Annual IT Conference) and at
those groovy IT conferences at Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills and heaps of other places. Are IT
parents so needy they have to tell us about little Matilda and how she can
waltz and blog at the same time? We learned about websites, none of which were
new to me at least. Conferences are known as a place of heightened egos and
claims of possessors of great knowledge but in today’s world the practical ‘this
is how we are using something’ in the classroom is the important thing. I did
learn from the InDesign class and the Moodle class and a few like that. The
presentations in the main hall were just self-serving, ‘this is me, these are
my children’ – forget it mate. Have at least one Raymond Kurzweil presenter to take us to a new place. The Kurzweil
Educational Systems begun in 1996 shaped so much and his ‘The Singularity Is Near’ and daily blogs so
surpass anything I saw at this pony show.
I think for me the most useful moment of the conference was taking a taxi to the airport at the end. Our main purpose was to learn about implantation of a one-to-one laptop program; see what others are doing, what platform, what was the process. I shared a ride with the middle school principal from the American International School of Guangzhou who had just started their one-to-one laptop program. In half an hour I gathered more than I did in three days at the conference.
Saying all that I am glad that I went and I believe the connections that I and the rest of our school team (six of us) made will be very valuable in our integration of technology. Because it is only at these conferences that we meet others doing the same thing; if I avoid the keynote speakers unless it is a Kurzweil or someone who really has something to say, I will be fine.
So back to getting home. Blimey talk about luck. Forty years ago when I believed such nonsense I would have said my higher Self was taking over or I would have gone on about a full-moon in Pisces back when I traveled the conference circuit yakking on about astrology (hey that is how I ended up in Australia) at the end of the 1970s. Now I am interested in spiritual-machines and the cybeSelf and SecondLife. Back to getting home… so I was told the plane left at 10.35. At 7 PM I thought to grab a taxi and head out to Shanghai Pudong International Airport. Firstly a couple of women want to share a taxi – can’t go wrong with that. Secondly they are the ones who have just started a one-to-one laptop program at the American International School of Guangzhou so I collected and collated the info I came to the conference to get. I get to the airport and figure I have a few hours but I saw the domestic China Southern section and figured I get lost so easy I would never find it again so I go and get in line even knowing I have three hours before my alleged 10.35 flight. I get my ticket and an emergency row seat which I always ask for so I can stretch and wander on. It is 8.15 PM and I happened to look at my ticket which reads 8.15 boarding time. Rushing through security and panting down to as is always the way the gate is the furthest away I fall onto the plane which is already boarded and they close the door and the bloody thing starts moving. It even left fifteen minutes early. The last time we were leaving Shanghai for Dalian, a long five weeks ago, the plane was delayed three hours. So I get to Dalian at 10.15 instead of 10.45 (even though I was told I was leaving Shanghai at 10.35 – a mix up of course and the apologies for my near heart attach have been placed) and there is my driver waiting for me and I have a lovely ride home. He doesn’t speak English and I forgot what my two words in Chinese were. He even played classical music and drove rather slowly instead of the 140 kilometers an hour our other driver taking us to the airport did.
First time I have no photos or video – did some with my phone, but I have so many photos and videos of Shanghai I will give it a miss. Think I will go take an afternoon nap then work on my educational blog.
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