Desktop or portables?

That was the question... the answer was: portables!
The digitisation-project of our school is developing. The wireless network should be active by the end of the Easter holidays, but I hope the electrician will start working on the cables... Yes, cables because there needs to be one cable between each access point and the controller. And there being some 35 access point all over the school this is quite a job.
Then there was the question of one desktop and one projector in each classroom...
Finally the verdict was: let's lend each teacher one portable. There are a number of advantages:

• Personal responsibility is better for the survival of the hardware.
• Teacher can prepare everything at home and be sure the software works when use it at school.
• For parallel lessons this is a good solution: the teacher is sure the computer in the next class will work: it's his/her portable!
• Teachers can use it for their school mail.
• The school is responsible for the licences of the software they have installed. From then onward the teacher is responsible for the other software.
• Security: teachers take the computers home during evenings, weekends and holidays. The risk of theft is divided.

There are also some disadvantages:

• IT-responsible can't control the state of the computer at all times.
• The local and server profiles might be a bit confusing for the user. I'm looking for a solution for that. Help is welcome.

Of course there is also the cost, but I will do some work scanning the market to get the best deal!

In all this means that the school will invest in some 75 portables in 2 years time...

Marianne Wartoft's freeware

I have tried out some freeware for English, developed by Marianne Wartoft. I think the software for phonetics, Sephonics, can be a good help for all students and teachers of English, but particularly for those who are learning English in some remote parts of the world where they have a very limited contact with native speakers. I have experienced in Vietnam that some teachers of English, though full of energy and good-will, had difficulties expressing themselves. I suppose that the Vietnamese language lacks a number of sounds that are used in the English language. If they're not regularly in contact with native speakers, the production of these sounds becomes problematic. Maybe this program can help a little...
Intonation is very important in the Vietnamese language: one evening we were invited in Saigon by Mr Tach for dinner, and the subject of Vietnamese language popped up. They were pronouncing three words, identical to me, but quite different to them because of the intonation, an aspect that I failed to perceive... very interesting!!
Marianne Wartoft has also Selingua to exercise vocabulary and verbs, but the exercises and games are presented mostly in another language (Swedish, German, French, Spanish, but - unfortunately - not Dutch (nor Vietnamese...).
For our Geography colleagues Seterra seems to have been a success for years....
Great to see that some people share their works without the need of financial profit! Thanks to Marianne for that!

Vietnam project: more last day impressions and group pictures

Here me together with Trung (Cheung), the IT-man of the project. Thanks to his technical support ànd the frequent translations ànd his bright schemes on the blackboard (the real one...) the workshop went very smoothly!!



I found my thrilllllll.... on Blueberry Hiiiiillllll

Little physical effort! Don't mind the earthquakes!

They don't seem to mind...

Great oriental feedback!!! I love this target group!!!

Hello Dolly.... + some Christmas songs together!

Then there were group pictures...

Close encounters of the oriental kind... ;-)

Here is THE team!! Jan, Jef and me...

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! ;-)

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... ;-)

Great to get to know them!

The visit of our international colleagues was a great experience to me. The group arrived a bit late because of traffic problems (we are used to that in the Antwerp area...), so the school tour was cut short. Before that, I was able to chat with people from the organisation VVOB and with Jan 't Sas, journalist at the education magazine "Klasse", who later on wrote an on line article of the event (Dutch). On the group's arrival I was very pleased to see Simone Goetschalckx again. We used to be study-mates at university in the 1970's. Now she is responsible for the VVOB projects in Vietnam and Cambodia. Also great was meeting Jan Geusens with who I have started to prepare the workshops I will give in HCMC (Saigon) later this year in December.
Headmaster Johan and I welcomed the visitors in our "polyhall". Johan explained the structure of our school organisation and the importance of ICT within that.

Then the group was split to attend three lessons in rotation.

The third form students were attending an informatics lesson by Ilse Heughebaert in our new computerclass R02. Many videos and pictures were taken by the Kenian, Cambodian and Vietnamese colleagues!

Our M04 classroom contains a projection system and 4 more computers used for group work or remedial exercises. Dré De Laet was teaching aesthetics to 6th form students there. Each visitor group was received with a warm welcome in English. The students were very enthousiastic of the visit as well!Finally the 1st form was having a history lesson (ICT-based) by Ann Onraedt, who amazed the visitors by the way she integrated IT in her lesson. They were also a bit puzzled because the students didn't speak English, but she explained that English starts from 2nd form onwards in our school system.

Later on there was coffee, but also Belgian beers, which were very welcome to most of the visitors! Jan 't Sas had some interviews, and I presented the school's situation and future plans for ICT.
The presentation can be downloaded.

Finally the core VVOB-team, including my good friend Marc Gorremans and his wife, finished this lovely day at the restaurant Park West where we had a great dinner and where I got to know the first person to love scorzonerae... (Jan!)