November9
This is the last instalment of ‘Deidre on tour’ – and I don’t know where the last four days have gone!! I’m currently sitting in Auckland airport.
Friday is all a bit of a blur to me now – I think the jet lag had kicked in by then and I was operating in a different time zone to the one in which I was in!!
Friday started with us having to present our presentations again – for supposedly an hour. We were told that we would be presenting these to the teachers from the ‘School’s track – the innovative schools’ and if we had a Brazilian doll on our stand, we would have judges coming around too. The Brazilian doll meant you were in the final lot of teachers who were being considered for the awards – and I had one on my stand!!
We had no idea how many judges were coming around – and mine started off VERY badly with the Phillipino judge being my first one and half way through my ‘chat’ with her – she said ‘That’s enough’ and walked off!!! I didn’t take that as a positive!! What I wasn’t counting on were the remaining 11 judges who all ‘chatted’ at different times – and so what was to have been an hour – was well and truly over 2 because not only did you have the teachers from the schools coming around, you also had the teachers who weren’t in the running coming around and enquiring about the project too! At one stage one of the judges came up to me and said ‘I have been trying to chat with you for over an hour, but others keep on beating me to it’ – so as you could imagine the intensity was quite high.
Later in the morning we met back with our group in regards to the Collaboration project and spent the afternoon sharing these with others, and looking over a range of projects that involved some new Microsoft ‘free’ software (I like free software, as it means that you can promote it with schools and teachers, without them having to consider if it is ‘worth’ buying. They can get it, look at it, use it and THEN consider the benefits that it might bring to teaching and learning in their classrooms.)The programmes we looked at included ‘SongSmith’ (you write the lyrics, pick the backing track and then sing it – and wahlah – you end up with a soundtrack!!), Autocollage, which collages photos – good for having students categorise or as a ‘stimulus’ for discussion in the classroom, along with Deep Zoom Composer which is another image manipulation programme.
The final keynote (at 5pm) was from Jean ?? . By this stage I wasn’t just in another time zone, I think I was on another planet – but the adrenalin and the company of the stimulating others was enough to keep me going. His keynote was fascinating – he is apparently one of the most influential men in the world in regard to global affairs. Did you know that currently the world is using 125% of the reserves we have? It is estimated that by 2020 we will be using 200% of our reserves – that doesn’t paint a good picture for 2050 does it? He believes that it only requires about 10 trillion US$ to solve this problem and to begin to break the habits and cycles that are present and contributing to the problems. He believes that this should be more than possible considering the US$17 trillion that was used to save the US banks last year – where are our priorities?
We had less than an hour then to get ourselves ‘glammed’ up for the gala dinner. As I was to be checked out and gone by 7am Saturday I decided it would be a good idea to have myself all packed before then – so it was a bit of a rushed job but I got there.
Yet again the Aussies were fantastic – for the final evening they kindly changed their title from the ‘Australian team + the kiwi’ to the ‘ANZAC team’. We were bussed to the National Art Gallery where there was the most fantastic marquee set up. We were greeted by Brazilian women in their large dresses – dressing us with beads and silk ribbons, before being entertained by drummers, dancers – and oddly enough wind instrument players. There was a huge police presence about, as well as many of the young children from around sitting up high on the fences above us, looking down to the venue and the action. From within the marquee we were then entertained by the Bahia Symphony Orchestra (a gift to the conference by the President of Bahia State).
The awards were announced and while I wasn’t one of the winners – I was in great company. ‘Aussie Mark’ won the Collaboration award, and Mandee the girl from the UK who I had spent Tuesday exploring the city with, won the Community award. Both were well and truly worthy of their awards and I look forward to keeping in some form of contact with them – to watch further developments that they may be involved in.
The Gala dinner certainly had the ‘Brazilian feel’ to it – plenty of ‘wild’ dancing to crazy music and lots of fun. We were taken back to the hotel about 1am, however people were on that much of a high it would have been rude to have left the celebrations and the friends that I had made over the past four days (of whom many I feel like I have known for much longer!). We obviously had to celebrate Mark’s win, and did so in style!
It was then a short sleep before I headed to check out and catch my plane in Salvador airport – however when I got to the departure lounge there wasn’t a plane to be seen! The language barrier was much more than I had ever expected. While Portuguese is the mother tongue of the Brazilians, Spanish is their second language and very few know English. We found this quite prevalent even in our hotel, with there only being one or two of the hotel staff that you could ask questions of. Thank goodness for the events company as they were able to deal with any issues that did arise. Anyway the difficulty with the delay at the airport, was that the notices seemed to be coming over in two different languages – but not English!!! Luckily one of the keynotes was on the flight too, and he was a fluent Spanish speaker and so I was able to ask him of the notices coming over. Luckily – as there were another 8 people from the conference on the same flight and I never heard one of them speak a word of English!! On getting on the plane I then had my stomach sink as it seemed that about 12 of us had our seats double booked. Who was going to fight for the seat?? As it turned out the Canadians had arrived at the airport as they saw our flight heading to Sao Paulo, and with the language difficulties had decided that this was the flight that they needed to be on!! The frightening thing was that they had gone through two lots of security with their boarding pass and no one had noticed!! So after they got off the plane I had a seat and after a 2 hour delay we were on our way to Sao Paulo!! With the delay I worked out that I had to get myself to the departure lounge, with about 30 mins up my sleeve. I did this and then we had another 2 hour delay in Sao Paulo!
With all the delays I then didn’t have much time to fill in in Santiago, and had no trouble in sleeping the 14 hour flight away to Auckland. Is was nice to be back in NZ – even if it was 3am – and getting a bed at the hotel here was like heaven!!! The relatively short flights then to Chch and Oamaru were quick and enjoyable.
I found Brazil really expensive (and here I was thinking that I might pick up a few bargains!!) I had bought tee shirts in the markets for Roly, Sam and Allie (just 1 each) and these had cost me 85 Real (about NZ$75). I was keen to get Sam a Brazilian soccer jersey – however at 160 Real (about NZ$150) I decided that would be a bit extravagant!! Here I was thinking that I was going to be bringing back HUGE bags of cheap souvenirs and tees!! I did go away with 22.8kg of luggage (LAN Chile have a limit of 23kg!!!) and this included my kiwifruit soaps as my ‘gifts’ for fellow attendees. I seem to have acquired a bit from others as leaving Brazil my case weighed in at 28kg!! Luckily TAM (the Brazilian airline doesn’t worry about that – and at no stage have I been charged extra!!) I did repack by bag in NZ to get it under 25kg, so was pleased no one wanted to weigh my hand luggage!! I really don’t know where all the extra weight comes from – although each night you would come back to your room and find a Microsoft gift – sunblock, caps, tees etc, and of course there are the wide range of gifts acquired from other attendees – pencil holders the shape of Columbian sombreros, dynamo torches, pens, pen drives, pins, clips, beads . . . .!!!!!!
The experience has been great! I have met some fantastic people and had my mind opened up to many new life experiences. For example the Columbian women was at the conference as her innovation was that she had the village parents make handcrafts that were sold so that they could purchase 15 computers in their school! The teacher from Losotho, who used mobile phones, as they didn’t have power in their school, and the kids could bring the mobiles from home all charged up and use at school, right through to the likes of Mark and Mandee, who literally have world changing projects and innovative practices influencing the students they teach and the teachers that they work with. Michael Furdyk (who worked with the student forum in KL – the multimillionaire by 20, and now only 24 – has been named as one of the 20 most likely people to influence the 21st Century who was also at the conference) has approached Mandee in regards to how she can be a part of his ‘Taking It Global’ – the worldwide project which is connecting students worldwide.
It has truly been a privelege to be a part of this programme, and I feel that my personal as well as my professional life has been enriched as a result!