Making links with China

[Jess McCulloch]

Hello everyone,

As many of you know, I’m in China with 20 kids and  3 other staff for the next 5 or so weeks. In case you want to keep up to date with what we are doing – and so I can avoid long group emails – I’ll be blogging about it all at http://www.technochinese.com  - what the kids are up to, how we are going, how their projects are taking shape, how they are coping with being away from home for so long (6 weeks) etc. I’ll be blogging about my personal reflections and the project I’m doing (using mobile phones to take pics and send them back to a class in Australia with accompanying Chinese language recordings), as well as all the technology I’m using (you should see the list of stuff I brought with me!) at
http://www.technolote.com

We are staying at Nanjing Number 1 Middle School (In some rather nice boarding house rooms – the kids are very grateful they have Western style toilets!). Nanjing is just a few hours by train inland from Shanghai. We will be visiting Suzhou (between Nanjing and Shanghai) in the middle of the trip, and Beijing at the end.

I’m hoping to be writing almost everyday, but will just have to see how that pans out – and if there is reliable internet access. I’m also hoping to get the kids to do some blogging using their blog spaces on the ning network they have. That site is http://gariwerdprogram.ning.com – and it is set to private at the moment, but I’ll be changing all  of that once I’ve got a few other things sorted out.

I’m hoping to be blogging, podcasting, taking photos and videos and sharing them all as much as possible. Feel free to spread the word and for those of you who are teachers,  if we have access to skype it would be great to get some link ups with classes happening. We’ll be here in China until October 18th – with internet access until the 14th thereabouts. If you have classes – maybe we could do a ‘Request a Photo’ project or something like that – something simple and easy. The kids here are mostly from Year 10, so 15/16 years old. Time zone in China is GMT+8.

Stay out of trouble – we will try to :-)

Zaijian!
Jess
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[Stephen Collis]

All the best for the trip Jess! Let us know when you've made the ning site available - I'm keen to see more of ning in action. Steve Collis

­ maybe we could do a ORequest a Photo¹ project or something like that ­