Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: Learning

  • Disconnecting Europe

    modem-145529_640Today showed me again why I both hate and love Spain, with a little Ireland thrown in. At the end of a vacation visiting friends in Barcelona, and family in Ireland, I returned to Barcelona for one night at a hotel near the airport to rest and prep for the return to Tokyo. I had ordered and used a portable wifi service in Ireland, and this is the story of my attempts to return the device.

    Travel Wifi sent the device to my hotel in Barcelona, after I had canceled that order and reset it to my hotel in Dublin, just before I picked up the lads, after my week in Barcelona visiting friends. They advertised that it was as easy as pie, get the device by FedEx, return it the same way.

    So I tell them of their mistake, and they say OK, just bring it to Ireland. I do, and use it all week. It is indispensable as Google Maps guide, replacing the Garmin, as well as allowing all of us to communicate from anyplace. Invaluable as it was, the hardest part was returning the damn thing.

    In the FedEx envelope, instruction say I am supposed to set a pick-up for the device at my last hotel. Problem is, Central Hotel to the Airport, or driving anywhere in downtown Dublin is a nightmare without Google Maps. So I keep the device to guide us to the airport. No FedEx office at the airport. I have 6 hours, and find an office near the airport, but it is really difficult to get to. I try to buy stamps and an envelope, but am stymied by the envelope. No advice on regular mailing. I still have 6 days on my contract, so I wait for Barcelona.

    The flight is delayed so I arrive after business hours. When I check in, nobody knows anything about FedEx at the hotel, so I go online. They ask me to drop it off at a center, or schedule a pickup. The FedEx website requires an account number for the pickup, and none is on the label. Travel Wifi is cryptic in their messages, and the only instructions look like they have been copied and pasted from the website. I figure I have a few hours after checking out at noon, and before my 10pm departure. A Drop-off is listed on the website about 2 km from the airport. The idea is to drop it off. This is the story.

    After arriving at the airport, I try to drop off my suitcase and check in at Qatar Airlines. No can do. So I go to the Consigna, Left Luggage, where I can leave my luggage to get to the FedEx. No schlepping. 10 euros.

    I discover that the left luggage company deals with FedEd, and the guy tells me if I leave a 10 euro deposit, they will make sure it gets to the FedEx people. But then the other guy calls Lisa The Boss, who says it is too much of a hassle, and that it is not possible. So I check the suitcase and set off for FedEx. Taxi has a minimum 20 euro fee from the airport. The bus that goes to the other terminal passes by FedEx in the cargo park, but does not stop. The driver, though is really helpful and points me to a local bus. Another 2.15 euros gets me on a bus with another extremely helpful driver. He drops be between stops near the FedEx. I can taste success.

    The FedEx has lots of trucks hanging around, and not much action. I arrive just before 2pm lunch. The door has a buzzer. Once, twice, thrice. It says if there is no response, call a number. With what? I write down the number after a half-hour hopeful wait, and wander over to the DHL and another shipping company.They tell me today is a holiday (duh, September 11 is Independence Day for Catalunya), and thus the lack of action. You really need a phone to get things done in Spain. I ask to borrow one from 3 workers at the next place over, and they all hem and haw. One says she can’t do that for the competition. I leave in disgust. FedEx takes holidays in Spain. Typical. And everyone is dog eat. Typical.

    So instead of spending another 2.15 and with time on my hands, I hoof it back to the airport, about 2km. Why not. Plan B is to get stamps and an envelope, available in the Tabacalera, but the lady assures me the slot is too small to accept my wifi device.

    So after spending about 6 hours spread over 2 airports, I realize that I should have just left the device at the hotel in Barcelona and gotten THEM to schedule the pickup. Instead, they will get it from Tokyo. The soaring and crashing that came from trying to return it both in Dublin and Barcelona were lessons in thinking and planning. At least my family got to the airport. Time to go check in. And no time to worry about it in Qatar.

  • Einstein on Education

    Here is a quote by Einstein, whose birthday is today.

    This school with its liberal spirit and teachers with a simple earnestness that did not rely on any external authority, made an unforgettable impression on me. In comparing it with six years schooling at an authoritarian German Gymnasium, I was made acutely aware how far superior an education that stresses independent action and personal responsibility is to one that relies on drill, external authority and ambition.

  • Some Rhizomatic Learning on P2PU

    rhizomatic

    Our first task for the the first week of the new MOOC by Dave Cormier is not so much reconcile cheating with learning but rethink learning so there is no place for cheating. A MOOC, especially a Connectivist MOOC, with rhizomatic roots is a good place to do that. Rhizomatic Learning is an attempt to assemble a community of people, some with knowledge of the focal topic, others with knowledge of other topics, to work together to fill each others’ chinks. More on the root system that allows single plants to weave themselves together into a single organism, and how Dave had taken that idea and applied it to online learning. I have to take care of a couple of my other blogs, one over at DMLL, about Digital Mobile Language Learning, and another for student work over at languagejapan.com.

    But I will be right back with another post. About Burma.

  • Burma Bound

    MyanmarSchool3A friend of the family has wrangled me into volunteering as a teacher trainer for a week next January in Myanmar. The group is small, and works through a travel agent and has connections to the Education Network, founded by the National League for Democracy (NLD), the political party founded by Aung San Suu Kyi.

    At first, I was a bit apprehensive. I had to raise funding to get there, and stay there, and also find someone else to match that. I was extremely fortunate to ask Frank Berberich, longtime friend, who has recently retired. He immediately signed on, saying he had been looking for something exactly like this.

    We are in the process of raising funds now, and getting visas. It looks like we will be training about 100 high school teachers in the Yangon (Rangoon) area. These teachers are part of a network of schools that teach the poorest and most disadvantaged children in Myanmar.

    MyanmarSchool2So here I am, an expert in using computers to teach adults languages, and I am going to try to train teachers on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Instead of polite Japanese school girls as students, we will have harried teachers, trying to add to their arsenal of teaching tools, so as to open up Myanmar to the world.

    As we approach deadlines and prepare for the training, Frank and I are getting more and more excited. We are going along with 6 others on the trip, and will meet them in Yangon shortly after the new year. I will keep you updated on events as they happen.

  • #ETMOOC, baby steps, students

    I have always figured I am about 3 years ahead of my students, at least in adoption of technology for learning. But with this MOOC thing, I have leapt way, way ahead. The way universities are set up, the education system so entrenched and ossified here in Japan, I fear for the 2020’s (and figure not much will happen until then).

    Japan’s Ministry of Education is promoting the idea of applying the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” cycle to learning. Never mind that this was developed to improve assembly lines for Toyota in the 1960’s by W. Edwards Deming who has reached mythical status over the years. Teachers tell me it can be used for anything. Sure it can. But should it?

    So how do we get from here to there? Baby steps? A gradual evolution? Or a revolution? Will digital citizens rise up and man the barricades, voting electronically to…do what? MOOCs of the Connectivist variety will require a lot of nurturing, and will get splashed with the backlash that is sure to come in the next few years of the emerging technologies hype cycle.

    My students are woefully unprepared for autonomous learning. They have been instructed and directed down to the minute in a very efficient system for developing instruction followers. I am guessing they will become the engine for whoever will lead them. I teach one day a week at the leader’s school. The ones who will go into the bureaucracy to push Japan forward in the next few years. They leave me hope. They are willing to experiment, but only so far. Tiny tiny groups are allowed to do things differently, such as take a gap year. Are these baby steps enough? Should I try to foment a revolution? They say the best leaders are adept at spotting a crowd going somewhere and getting in front of it. I don’t see much movement right now. Hopefully it is just me.