Vietnam

Yesterday evening I had a Skype conversation with Marc Gorremans, my Enis-mate, thanks to whom I was able to come to Vietnam. You can read all on the project on his page . I'd like to thank him a lot for the great opportunity!!!
I also want to thank Johan Verschueren, my school head ànd the board for giving me permission to be here!!
Going to Phuquoc now, an island in the South of Vietnam, near the border with Cambodia. If there's a connection, I'll continue my blog and start the Photoblog with picture of Mui Ne and Phuquoc!

Best wishes

I wish all visitors of my blog the very best fot the new year!!!
http://www.hoefkens.be/wishes/2007/wens07.htm

Vietnam Project: last day impressions

On the last day, I introduced a number of time saving Web 2.0 techniques including the use of RSS on a site like www.netvibes.com . Later, the teachers worked on their new lesson plans and presented them. And then... there were flowers and gifts and laughs and singing and kisses and hugs and goodbyes....

Here some impressions through the eyes of Jan, who took the pictures.

Thank you, team members, for this great opportunity!!

More group pictures later.... ;-)

Vietnam project: Day 3 + 4

On days 3 and 4 the workshop started to run smoothly with WordClassifier, a tool to analyse any English text on a comparison with a word frequency list. Teachers can easily detect the difficulty level of the text while running the text through this program.

Then they can use the words of a certain difficulty level to create exercises. I used Crossword Compiler to show how you can make interactive crosswords, using an online dictionary to fill in the clues. The local teachers were particularly interested in the use of the word and clue database of CC, so we spent some time experimenting with that.

In the afternoon we explored a simulation game, SimCity4. Although the school program is very strict, there are quite a lot of themes that relate to traffic, urbanisation, economy, social organisation,... and the language content of a game like SimCity4 is full of these themes... So the idea was: work in groups of three, One plays the game (tutorial), while the second notes the interesting words and the third constructs a webquest lesson plan. This however was too complicated since the playing of the game seemed more complicated than I thought... So together they explored the program, of continued to work on Crossword Compiler.

Power cut?

At a certain moment the message came in that a power cut would strike the area the next morning... Jan rushed to find a solution... : renting a power generator for the workshop room...
However at the last moment, the company seemed to want to profit from the situation and wanted more money... Rip-off and back against the wall...

Next day the generator was installed in the early morning, before the start of the workshop.

Guess what? There was no power cut... And in the beginning our power was deliberately cut to link the electricity system to the generator.... And then we had to carry on, using the generator and consuming the fuel...

And then... an unexpected gift! Nice calenders for the team members!!

The fourth day was filled with the making of Zarb exercises. Zarb is a plugin program for Word that offers a few dozen makro exercises. The result is not interactive, and must be printed out, but you have quite a number of different sorts of exercises. I gave the a few tips like: use a separate target test sheet on which you copy the exercises.

• Use another page to built an exercise.
• Once finished, copy it to the test sheet, and the answers to the teachers key sheet.
• Always try to combine more elements, like text, listening and/or viewing with the exercises so that they become more interesting.

And then... an old program which in no time had a great success: Zork... I used it in the 1980's and '90's as a sort of rescue program, a life buoy to save you when the Internet has gone down...

All of the attendants were eagerly trying to get into the house, the living room, to try and find the secret passage to the underworld of Zork. The old DOS-program has very funny ways of reacting to the English imperatives that need to be written... Smiles hit the room...

In the evening the core team were invited by Mr Tach to a nice floating restaurant where we had great delicacies like "drunken prawns"!!

On our way back we witnessed one of the effects of global warming: some of the streets in Saigon were flooded...

Vietnam project: Day 2 Warming up...

Yes, even in these tropical temperatures warming up is essential! ;-)
But first things first! Breakfast at the Majestic on the panoramic 5th floor is a great way to start the day, even at 6 in the morning!
The Grand Buffet is so impressive that I even think of getting up even earlier!!!

Here the panoramic view! Yes, it looks like a picture from before the war (world war 2, I mean... I had told myself... don't mention the war!!!), but it was taken this morning. You see the ferry boats cross the Saigon river...

Here I am being introduced by Mr. Thach, head of the institute. He expresses his gratefulness to the organisers of the workshop...

Intro by Jef on "Active Teaching and Learning" + Presentation of 5 lesson plans by the local teachers. The idea was to have them prepare a lesson plan involving some use of ICT before the start of the workshop. Then during the last day of the workshop, they can take the same lesson plans (themes) and implement the new techniques.

The teachers were introduced to the learning environment Blackboard, hosted by the EloV project in Flanders. I'd like to dedicate these pictures to Karel Van Rompaey and Mia Quartier, the real parents of the EloV project of which they have been bereaved! Many years of good work were not rewarded and wrongly taken away from you. Once more I express my gratitude of having been able to work with you, guys! I hope that the coming year will bring you prosperity and joy.
Here the local teachers are experiencing the use of the discussion board to build a tree story. They also used it as a brainstorm instrument on the theme: the future.

The next part was on the cyberpoetry site Poëzome. I presented this older site, although it is in Dutch because it was made by students, for students, because it is an interesting way of showing that language, poetry in particular and IT can go together, more even, that IT can create new forms of language-experience, poetry-experience, and finally because it is a good introduction to the possiblities of webquests... I browsed through poëzome, translating, explaining,...

And the workshoppers looked...

...and listened...

In the evening, I prepared for the next day...

... ate my evening chocolate, waiting for me on the sheets, and read the bedtime story: a tale on Trang Quynh, a half real, half mythical character of Vietnamese popular literature, loved particularly by the working class people.

Vietnam project: Day 1: School visit.

During the first day we visited a school in HCMC. Here are some photo impressions of the event. We were received by the management of the school.

The idea was to attend an English lesson. Students were already waiting...

It's a revision lesson, since exams are approaching. Students work in groups and the teacher uses a combination of powerpoint, Hot Potatoes exercises and the whiteboard.

As you can see, students are very enthusiastic. It's evident that this lesson has been well planned, prepared and repeated. There are hardly any mistakes to be seen (or heard), but to me the idea is clear that these students have a lot of energy and are glad to be in school!
The technical frame helps this motivation even further. Some people think that IT prevents people from being social, but once more I see another proof of the contrary...

I expressed these impressions in a short speech that they expected after the lesson.
I start to love Vietnam already... People smile at you all the time, and the buddhist root seems to bring me luck...
Here a picture of Jef and I in front of the school.

In the evening, after yet another lovely dinner with Jan and Jef, I'm off to the Majectic hotel for the final preparations of the next day. (Like this serious picture? My arm was getting tired of holding the camera at a maximum distance, waiting for the timer-click)

T - 3 and counting

In three days, I will be flying to Saigon...
The preparation is in overdrive. I have prepared a Blackboard course on EloV. I have received 30 free accounts for 30 days... I'll try to find a solution to make the content available for the workshop attendants for a longer period... I'll probably give them a CD which I will prepare in HCMC.
I will go into detail when I'm over there. I'll probably have to change quite a lot on the spot... Important is to take as much material as I can, so I can improvise if necessary...
Tomorrow, late in the evening, I'll be checking my photo equipment. Charge the batteries, clean the lenses, check the memory... In the second half of my trip I will be concentrating on that... photography in Mui Ne and Phu Quoc. Although that's in 10 days, it seems like an eternity...
By the way: do you know what the weather is like over there?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?world=0157
Just check this out!!
During daytime, my energy goes to school business! Busy, quite busy with wireless audit! But I'm also upgrading the two computer classes with about 10 programs and upgrades. Geography pushes its ambition to 4 programs! Google Earth, OrbitGis, and two programs on "water in our environment". Hope the other subjects will follow...
Tomorrow I'll be programming another 14 computers, upgrade one from Win2000 to Win XP pro, secure a data projector and have a meeting on network-matters...
Had some very sympathetic reactions on my coming Saigon-trip today. My old friend EM embraced me and wished me good luck, three other colleagues tapped me on the shoulder. Some even wanted to know what I was going to do there! Of course there are the sceptic ones... I don't comment on them. Suppose they still have a long way to go. If they want some help: I'll be there. You know what a push from me can do... ;-)
Anyway: life is short and if you can add to the evolution of man - just a little bit - on your own level... just go for it! ;-)

T-10

T minus 10! In about ten days I leave for Vietnam. Preparation is taking 100% of my free time now... All practical things have been arranged. I have the tickets, passport and visa. Hotels have been booked. Transport arranged. All I need to do is prepare the final content of the workshops. It won't be easy. I had a short conversation with Hans Defour on Monday. He was there and encountered mainly linguistic problems. Since I will be having an audience of ESL teachers, I probably won't have the problem, except if they weren't fed any Beatles songs during their studies. Then they might have a slight problem understanding my Liverpool-ish accent... ;-)

Tonight I downloaded the mindmapping freeware program FreeMind (I loved the name!) and made the scheme (which is hardly readable, but I'll present it in another way further on...).
I'll try to work as much off line as possible since many schools over there don't have the facilities of broadband internet connections for complete computer classes. So I intend to work on Simulation games ic SimCity, which has a rich treasure of vocabulary on different themes like economy, traffic, landscapes, social networks, functions, housing, urban infrastructure,... Combining the gaming experience of SimCity with mindmaps or webquests, wordlists and interactive crosswords might do the trick! Further on some tools will be presented like Zarb and reviewing in Word (just ordered the English version of Zarb www.zarb.de). About 5 years ago the former VVKSO-team for ICT in the English lesson, led by my dear friend Karel Van Rompaey studied a large amount of CDROMs for English Language Learning, and of all these programs, MacMillan's Reward series was the best. I'll be testing three levels with the HCMC colleagues!
To give creativity a boost, I will present the Poëzome site, which I will adjust a little, adding a few translations of the interactive poems.
Finally I'll introduce them to the Underworld of Zork, an pre-windows program from ancient times... 1981. Even the most basic dos-computer can handle that, and in those days this adventure game was a real success. Students even started a Zork-club to play the game at noon, and they drew hundreds of maps of the mazes in the underworld... Even the humour is great: if you get frustrated after hours of fruitless treasure hunting and in your final despair you type sh** or f**k, the program answers with a cool phrase: "Such language in a high-class establishment like this!"... Students love it, and so do teachers (to put it in a confirming addition to a positive remark!)
Anyway, I'll give you the html-version of the mindmap:

Workshop HCMC

• Techniques
  
  • Mindmapping
  • Groupwork / pairwork
  • Webquest
  • Discussing
  • Gaming
  • Simulating


• Content
  
• Presentation
• Cyber-poetry (creativity)
• International communication program (example)
• Hands-on
• Tools
• WordClassifier
• CrosswordCompiler
• Wordweb
• Review-function (Word)
• Zarb (Exercise-generator in Word)
• Adventure game
• Zork (The underworld of ...
• Simulation
  SimCity 4
• Services
• Internet searching
• CDROM / DVD
• ELO (Electronic Learning Environment)
• Online software
• Weblog


• Activities
  
  • Exploring the net for classroom material
  • Cooperating with colleagues
  • Preparing lesson plans, based on the webquest model
  • Exploring an ELO and publishing material on it
  • Try out and evaluate games to use in class
  • Use WordClassifier as a text or wordlist analyser
  • Use Zarb to create exercises in Word
  • Explore and evaluate a closed CD-ROM program for remediation

Investing in old technology...

A phone call from my mother invoked an uncomfortable feeling in me: she told me she and my dad had bought two VCR-recorders... I told her: "You want me to come and install them?" "No, the others aren't broken, yet!"
She is afraid that in a short while there won't be any VCRs in the shops any more, and that, if theirs breaks down, they won't be able to watch all the tapes they have...
I can understand the logic, yet it makes me feel uncomfortable, since the latest HD-DVD-recorders are very user-friendly, and you can digitise the whole lot of tapes... But that's a lot of work too... which you don't have if you have a social choir life as my mum has... ;-)
In short, for myself and for school I prefer investing in new equipment. No unnecessary luxury, but hardware that can resist the future for at least 5 years and that is right for the way it will be used. No second-hand computers for our school: if you work with old stuff you need three or for times the necessary manpower to keep it all going... And in the end it is more expensive, and very often out...
Fortunately people aren't supposed to be treated like computers, so I hope to be around as a computer-wizzz for a while... ;-) Anyway, they won't find a bin that is big enough to dump me...

ICT-day in Brussels

Today I'm attending two sessions at the ICT-day in Brussels. It's great to see so many people again whom I'd been seeing for years during workshops, Enis and other ICT-projects.
Car drive was not so good today... 15 km traffic jam.
First session is on WEB 2.0: the information-pushing technology (as I am using on my weblog here...). Interesting service sites presented were:
http://www.netvibes.com/ : for collecting the information you like on your browser starting page.
http://docs.google.com/ : for making, publishing, sharing text documents and spreadsheets
http://www.garagetv.be/ : the Telenet version of YouTube to broadcast your personal videos.
http://del.icio.us/ : Practical site where you can save and share your favourites.
http://esnips.com/ : all kinds of stuff you can upload and share...
Then more info on RSS, Atom, XML,... and online exercises...
Although I had some knowledge of these relatively new techniques, the session was interesting... In the IT-world you can always learn MORE!!!
Thanks to Frank Vandewyer.
In the afternoon I attended a presentation by Bart De Smet on the new Office 2007 version. In his own style (glass of water in hand - God preserve him from drowning...) he presented the matter very fluently and full of humour. He kept repeating "interesting features" until he became aware of his oratorial mistake, replacing it with "remarkable aspects", after which he started uttering "interesting features" again...
I'm not going into the details, but the day was not a waste of time, and I met Robert Conings (Provinciale Technische School, Maasmechelen) again, my colleague from the former ENIS-project who gave me a tip on a German ISP http://www.servage.net/ who offers all services, including 250GB on webspace...
I mailed them to ask if they also host Sharepoint services, which we use at school as a "Workweb" (WerkWeb). I'm awaiting an answer...
By the way: at noon, I helped Henk Bakker, presenting his software "Nedercom" which we have been using for three years at Xaveriuscollege. Also an interesting - sorry - awsome experience to see how education people react on commercial products... ;-)