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...

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...

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!)

International visit!

On Friday November 17th we received a group of people involved in the development of IT in education. They were invited by VVOB (Vlaamse Vereniging voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking en Technische Bijstand) who develop education and environment projects. The group consisted of people from Belgium, Vietnam, Cambodia and Kenya.
Here is the program I worked out:

Welcome to Xaco (Xaveriuscollege – Borgerhout)
Schedule:
13.30-14.15: welcome-speech by the headmaster, Johan Verschueren, and school visit.
14.30-15.05: attending 3 lessons in smaller groups. Switching classrooms after 15 minutes.

• R02: Ilse Heughebaert : Informatics
• M07: Ann Onraedt : History
• M04: Dré De Laet : Aesthetics

15.05-15.30: Drinks at the Polyhall
15.30-16.00: Presentation of the ICT-project at Xaco (Polyhall)
16.00-16.30: questions, ideas, opinions,…
16.30: end