Sunday, April 20, 2008
It was raining when we awoke on Sunday morning. We had packed out large luggage last evening, locked it, put it out in the hallway and it was taken to the train station for us.
We ate a late breakfast and got on the bus for the ride to the train station. The train left at 12 noon. I sat next to Yingjie Liu, a Ph.D. student in technology at UConn., who was on the trip to help do a formal evaluation of the program. I answered several questions for her and I explained how I thought it would be difficult to have a student exchange between my school and the Jinan Middle School due to differences in socioeconomic nature of the two school communities. She suggested that one possible way to connect students in two schools with substantial differences on socio-economic levels would be through technology. She suggested using something called “sloodle”, a combination of “moodle” and something she described as “second life”. This suggestion I found intriguing. I look forward to exploring this possibility.
It took only three hours to get back to Beijing…where it was raining even harder! The number of people leaving the train station was staggering…and the bus was several blocks away. We all got soaked walking to the bus. We checked into our “old” hotel. I decided to go back to the silk market for some last minute shopping. Two other principals agreed to go along, and we had a great time bargaining and buying last minute things. We celebrated our evening shopping trip with dinner at McDonalds. For 20 yuan, or $3.00, we each had a double cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke…and it tasted just like home. We returned to the hotel and all of us got together in one of the suites to celebrate the last evening in China.
It was raining when we awoke on Sunday morning. We had packed out large luggage last evening, locked it, put it out in the hallway and it was taken to the train station for us.
We ate a late breakfast and got on the bus for the ride to the train station. The train left at 12 noon. I sat next to Yingjie Liu, a Ph.D. student in technology at UConn., who was on the trip to help do a formal evaluation of the program. I answered several questions for her and I explained how I thought it would be difficult to have a student exchange between my school and the Jinan Middle School due to differences in socioeconomic nature of the two school communities. She suggested that one possible way to connect students in two schools with substantial differences on socio-economic levels would be through technology. She suggested using something called “sloodle”, a combination of “moodle” and something she described as “second life”. This suggestion I found intriguing. I look forward to exploring this possibility.
It took only three hours to get back to Beijing…where it was raining even harder! The number of people leaving the train station was staggering…and the bus was several blocks away. We all got soaked walking to the bus. We checked into our “old” hotel. I decided to go back to the silk market for some last minute shopping. Two other principals agreed to go along, and we had a great time bargaining and buying last minute things. We celebrated our evening shopping trip with dinner at McDonalds. For 20 yuan, or $3.00, we each had a double cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke…and it tasted just like home. We returned to the hotel and all of us got together in one of the suites to celebrate the last evening in China.
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