Home again

So, there went the summer/winter break.

I'm back in Bahrain, much has happened (including my 2nd little girl, born a week ago, and still in NZ) and I'm settling in for RVIS year 2.

Lots to do, including preparing to go to 21st Century Learning at Hong Kong in 2 weeks - very excited about that one. In fact, it's motivation for this post...if there's an edublogger meet up, this gives me an excuse to go...I can (weakly) claim to be a blogger of sorts. Wouldn't want to pass on a chance to meet some of my blogging heroes.

I've also nearly built up the courage to submit a workshop proposal (just one) for ASB Unplugged 2010. I should get that sent off tomorrow, and will be excited to learn whether it goes anywhere.

As usual, high hopes for sharing more, but becoming a writer has eluded me so far...we'll see what happens.

Conferences on the Horizon

I just sent this out to our staff....


Below are a couple of conferences coming up in the next year…I strongly
encourage you to consider them.

It’s important to know that these are not techie conferences! They are education conferences, with a focus on the teaching tools that we all have access to. The days of conference that are just for the tech guy are long gone. These are conferences for teachers.


21st Century Learning @ Hong Kong
September 2009
http://21c-learning.hk/
http://21clearninghk.ning.com/

“Join us in HK Sept 17-19 for a conference bringing together educators sharing visions of the use of ICT for learning of students everywhere”.
Yes, Hong Kong is a long way away, but this will be a great conference, with inspiration coming from the real high-flyers of 21st century learning.


ASB Unplugged 2010. Mumbai
February 2010
http://www.asbunplugged.org/drupal/ASB_Un-plugged/?q=node/18
http://asbunplugged.ning.com/

“ASB Un-Plugged 2010 is for those who wish to understand how students and educators have embraced innovation, change, and leadership in education for the 21st century. Hear educators and students sharing their best practices, strategies and techniques, ideas and applications that have proven to be successful in a one-to-one environment.”
The focus of this conference is 1:1 computing – the driving force behind our program. This conference has a reputation for being fantastic, and the list of speakers already confirmed is quite outstanding. And because it is not far away, there are really good opportunities for networking with other leaders in our region.


There has already been a lot of interest, and I'm really excited. If a large group of our faculty can get involved in event like these, the potential is enormous.

The trick is going to be deciding which to go to, and, for me, I'm leaning towards both. I'm toying with the idea of a couple of presentations at Bombay...with its 1:1 focus, I think I'm well placed to offer something a little different....working titles:

• 1:1 in K-5 Education
• 1:1 computing in a thin client environment

I've got until September to submit, so plenty of time to figure out whether I've got enough of value to share.

Seek and ye shall find

I just love some of the key word searches that bring people to this little blog.

This week's lucky winner:

"how do I get stuff up to the roof"

Glad I could help.

What Happened on Thursday

I like being an educator for many reasons. One of the ones I reel off all the time is that every day is different. And boy was Thursday different.


10am flight to Qatar. I thought it was pretty cool that I could get my return flight boarding pass when I checked in, as I was flying back the same day (turns out it was a good thing, because I cut it pretty fine with the trip back to the airport).


Delay on the flight was not so cool...I spent more time on the runway than I did in the air (Qatar is really close to Bahrain).


On the ground, and after nearly getting into a limo instead of a taxi (you never know in the Middle East, I just thought they had really sweet taxis), I was off to Qatar Academy.



After spending much time in the grounds, driving around in circles with a very friendly cabbie, I made it to QA. Very pleasant lunch with Julie, then a coffee with some of her colleagues (real coffee....at a Coffee Bean....in a school. Crazy.)



Then to Tedx. I got some attention (and a few rolled eyes and giggles) as the guy who'd come for Bahrain for this little thing. Was it worth it? Very much.



Fascinating coversations were had....It's summed up pretty well on the Tedex qa wiki.

I've mentioned Jabiz in this blog about as many times as I've written posts (his remixed talk is now on his blog)...I've now added Denny Roberts to my list of must read blogs, and I've got a book to buy this summer.

More amazing hospitality from Julie, and I was back on the plane before I knew it.

I came back to Bahrain buzzing, and feel like I've taken a little step towards coming out of the shell that is year one in a new school.

What Happened Wednesday

During my normal morning routine of blogs and Red Bull (don‘t hate me – I don’t like coffee), I’m bombarded with the standard “Twitter is great” posts. Still unconvinced, but figuring I should give it another look, I found a few minutes mid-morning, dug out my password, and logged in. Right at the top, Julie and Jabiz were talking about some workshop or other happening at Qatar Academy in June.

I put it away at the back of my mind, promising that I would look into it closer to the time.

An hour or so later, going over my calendar, it hit me. It is June. Now. Further investigation, and it turns out that the thing in Qatar is on the 4th. Which was tomorrow.

The days plan went out the window. Twittering, Googling, researching. The thing turns out to be TEDx QA. Organized by Julie and others as part of their 21st Century Learners group, it sounded really interesting. On to the Qatar Airlines site, I could do it in a day – 10 am out, 9pm back.

Tweets to Julie and Jabiz made it look like it might just happen.

After school, off to the Qatar office. Stuck in traffic for an hour and a half. Office closing. Panic, panic.

Finally get to the office, and then the kicker….the air mile deal stinks. It costs about 5 times what an air miles flight to Dubai with Emirates costs me. Thing is, my thought process is a bit like a bungee jump….once I’m past the point of no return, I find it pretty much impossible to pull out. So out came the credit card, and I was going to Qatar for the day.

Nice one Twitter.



But yes, I still linked to Jabiz and Julie's blogs above, not their Twitter accounts. I'm not completely sold yet :)

What Happened on Tuesday

My wife was going through our junk drawer, and found our Qatar Airlines frequent flyer cards. We got them in 2007, when we went to the US for Christmas.

“I might as well throw these out”, said she.

“No, you never know when we might want to go to Qatar”, said the hoarder.

Reporting the news

A couple of days ago, I started to blog a rant about inaccurate an biased reporting, but stopped. After all, though the misinformation in the article was rather bad....

More than 60 per cent of youngsters in the Gulf have been contacted by a paedophile through chat rooms or via e-mail, according to a regional study.

....it was only a "local newspaper", and relevant to a small audience. I did make the effort to contact the author (and received a dismissive response), but left it at that.

Then, today another article, this time from the BBC, with a much bigger potential audience. The slanting in this article is not nearly as over the top, but still...

Of the British parents questioned, 81% said they were confident that they knew what they children were looking at online.
By contrast, 31% of the UK children in the survey said their parents did not know what they were doing online.

OK, so the survey shows a a discrepancy of 12% between what parents and children think on this issue. It would have made much more sense for the reporter to use this figure, but of course that sounds a lot less dramatic than the figures the reporter has used.

I know I might be clutching at straws linking these two articles, but I really do get annoyed when I see reports labeled as news pushing certain agendas.

Maybe teachers need to start teaching a new definition of the word fact.