integrating technology
grades K - 12 tofu
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integrating technology
grades K - 12 tofu
· Chinese
Visa Office
·
11th Annual Dalian International
Walking Festival
· Soggy day
· ‘Famous
French and English Bands’ at the Chateau du Vin Bordeaux
· Beatles
concerts
· And so
much more
Actually this is more than a
weekend memory of what-we-did as Thursday and Friday is just as much of this
extended weekend at least in my memory as Saturday and Sunday is. Of course
Thursday and Friday were work days. With my job as technology coordinator however
I am always on the job as I read technology and educational blogs and updates
whether I am at school or on the shopping bus, sitting on the loo or waiting in
a dentist’s office. Saturday whilst Narda was in the
dentist chair for more than an hour I took enough notes from what I had found
to be potentially useful stuff for possible integration or to-try at school
that I will be spending days engaging with it. There are so many
blogging-filming apps now that I am looking forward to what I can do with my
classes next year that are specializing in multimedia, and film specifically.
This is an exciting time to be developing a film program in a school. Helping
students to become always-journalist will be one of the most important lessons
for them. Journalism has not changed but the delivery and sharing has. When I
was doing my journalism degree at the start of the 1990s I concentrated on
radio-broadcasting, helping to start the community radio station E-FM
(Encounter FM) in Victor Harbor, South Australia. My part of the radio station
needless to say was news and children’s radio (CAR = Children’s Australian
Radio – my little contribution to Australian community radio) where my children managed to star on.
I am teaching broadcast
journalism along with filming. Merging
these with social sites and story development and sharing more than ‘we had
pizza last night’ will greatly assist students. I am having them blogging using
their phones as well as filming and bringing it into the classroom for editing.
Next year I will collaborate with the English department (write the story),
music department for backing tracks as well as my classes for filming and
editing.
The next big shift in
schools is from integrating technology to integrating film in every department.
Students are already doing this in their life outside of school putting clips
onto whatever site is their favorite at the moment. Students are self-branding
all the time and assisting as well as providing time and space to do this will
improve their self-image i.e. self-brand. We have been putting a lot of
emphasis on student portfolios lately but social sites are there real
portfolios and I feel that is the area we need to develop. Employers are looking
at social sites as part of their investigations of potential new hires and if
the social site has wonderfully crafted video-blogs and short films this
becomes a living-portfolio. This area has not been very well addressed and it
is an area I will be working on next year so students will have their
shared-online-lives crafted to look like mini-film-festival. ‘The Festival of
Me’ – it sounds so Leo and having five planets in Leo I feel qualified for such
a category of instruction or for at least me. In my middle school publication
class I have students making a magazine in InDesign titled ‘About Me’ where
they create a whole newsletter/e-zine about themselves. Their initial reaction
is that writing more than fifty words about themselves is impossible becomes
more engaging when they write about their favorite video game or movie and get
to insert photos (Creative Commons only of course) and interview each other and
write up a commercial and on and on.
We have been corresponding
with a school in India to do a collaborative on-line real-time film project and
we have the assistance of a film producer in Los Angeles who recently had her
film accepted into the Sundance film festival in Utah. Our class has been Skypping her and we have been discussing their individual
projects for this quarter as she ‘looks over our shoulders’. My neighbor,
Frank, and his wife are moving to Yangon, Myanmar to teach at an international
school next year. We have been putting together a plan to do a collaborative
film project which in my little world is quite exciting. I am thinking of his
and my students writing a script together – back and forth then having our
individual classes create and edit the script and have them playing side by
side as one film with two interpretations of the same story. His students are
mostly Myanmar citizens and mine are a collection from around the planet which
would make this a very global endeavor.
To emphasize my integration
of film in the student’s life where most of their daily short clips are posted
to social sites from their smartphones..
An
Australian filmmaker has won first prize at the Sundance London Film and Music
Festival with a short film shot entirely on a Nokia Lumia
920 smartphone. The film explores the influence of hip hop, which started in
the Bronx, on the indigenous communities in regional Australia and how it
helped youth reconnect with tribal elders and tell stories using this style of
music.
see it on youtube at http://youtu.be/W8Lewbdm8lg
Last Thursday it was Narda’s
elementary student concert, ‘All you need
is love’ that put us into a Beatles mood. She has been doing a lot of work
on this for the past months and I have been filming little segments as
commercials for our school’s video-news show, DAISlive. As Narda’s
biggest fan the past twelve years I would say this was up there with her best
work. Of course it is not the same as when she did a Beatles tribute at Albany
Academy in upstate New York a decade ago but that was with high school and
there was dance involved as Albany Academy for Girls has a strong dance
program. Being in a Beatles mood we are off to see the Beijing Beatles next weekend who are playing in Dalian. Carolyn, Narda’s
sister and her husband are visiting from Australia then so they can too see what China has to offer to the musical past. One of
the Beijing Beatles is from Australia
so they couldn’t be that bad. The name of the show is We
do like to be beside the seaside – tour to Dalian.
Our visit to the Chinese visa issuing place was much
different than the one to Sydney. We had one of those Chinese moments where
everything takes longer and goes slow compared to what us Westerns want but
after a couple of hours, chatting about stuff like the price of wine in
Australia and how many children we had and lots of smiles and interpretations
we got our passports with our official work-visa to July 31st 2014.
Being past 65 this is a big deal for me as in most provinces the work-visa
limit is 60. I believe from our conversation at the visa office that Chinese
retirement is 60 then I think they get a pension which puts away the thought
that china does not look after their people.
What we are finding is that a lot of stuff we have
been told in the Western media is quite different than the China we see on a
day-to-day basis. People; whether authorities or folks in the street are really
quite friendly. They stop and stare like we are from another galaxy but with
five planets in Leo it does not bother me. They are generally a very curious
lot and want to know about Westerns. We
are curious too; and of course I am very curious about their fascination with
all things French as I will show in a moment.
Saturday was the
big 11th Annual Dalian
International Walking Festival. We signed up
before realizing we had a dentist appointment at 11 AM. We figured we would
walk for an hour then catch a cab into town. As things would have it, in a town
that does not see much rain fall, all day Saturday it rained. I put on my
waterproof ‘Tommy Hilfiger’ trendy coat (even old people like to look stylish) and
we took the school van in a dozen or so other ‘walkers’ from school.
There were a lot of people, like
many thousands, all with their umbrellas up headed out on the 5 – 30 kilometer
walk going along the Coastal Road, “Bin Hai
Road”. We had intended to do just the first five. Actually we
did the first few blocks then disappeared up a side street and caught a cab to
the dentist.
At the start of the race is Dalian
Castle Hotel,
a 6-star hotel (300 rooms) due to open December 1, 2013. It overlooks Xinghai Bay, 星海广场 and of course a million or so walkers in May, rain or shine. 
Of course it is the statue in front that I find even more
interesting than a walled castle being constructed in the midst of a city;
Definitely my kind of hotel if I
could afford a six-star hotel, I did not even know they had such a
ranking.
After the dentist we took
the light rail (轻轨, qing gui) to Kaifaqu. Normally we
take the shopping bus and get our groceries but we missed the bus. Harbor Deli
is one of our stops as it is near the Kaifaqu qing gui station which is the Five Colour
City stop and they have Western crap; cheese, cereal and that which we cannot
otherwise find. Of course the rain was ever present as we took a bus (for one
RMB = 15 cents US) instead of walking to the green-door – not the name of the
place but we have no idea what the sign says – and loaded ourselves down for
the week.
We figured we would take a cab home but
after a couple of cabbies said no and another said two-hundred RMB (30 bucks)
we realized the only way home for us was to call Jack – our regular driver who
came and collected us and took us for 70 RMB – about 1/3 the cost of a taxi. Of
course it was not Jack himself but one of his mates – we call them all Jack. If
this was Australia we would just add an o to the end as Australian’s do and
call him Jacko but we don’t and we won’t.
We were so exhausted by the time Jack
came as will as wet we were ready to go to sleep on the sidewalk. This is one
of the most difficult things with living at Campus Village; the transportation
is almost too difficult. This is the
second time we spent an exhausting Saturday and got ourselves stuck. If there
is a lesson we are not learning it except that we should stop shopping anywhere
but our local Long Shan Village.
villas in
this style. We toured the place last year and when we asked why they had not
sold any we were told because they were too expensive, like a million dollars
plus. The Haichang Group have
been purchasing lots of chateauxs in France – see The
Chinese Chateaux In Bordeaux for the down-and-dirty. Of
course we are hoping this will mean cheap French wine locally. 
Today’s YouTube video for our little
visit is at http://youtu.be/bCJ1bQiuuzw not sure about the ‘famous English and French
bands but they sounded OK – a group that gigs in Dalian. We didn’t get pictures
taken with an aristocratic madam or mademoiselle because they were actually our
students dressed up. I took a bit of video with one of my film students in and
she said ‘you are not putting that on DAISlive are
you?’ and to her relief I said no – but then I said I was putting this on
YouTube and she was not pleased but I ended up not putting the section with
students onto the clip. The teachers there, we of course are not purchasing a
home for a million bucks, but we did enjoy the food and the wine and the
snooping around the display homes.
All and all it has been an ok few days
except for the soaking and exhaustion of dragging food home for this week. Of course next Tuesday will be another whole
experience of trying to sort out Narda’s position
with the good ole USA – right now they won’t let her in.
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