Tuesday 19 April 2011

Auckland conference

I'm loving my penthouse. Because I'm higher than anything else, I don't need to pull down the blinds ever, so if I wake during the night I look out on a brilliant display of lights. My favorite view is of the docks just below me, where they work all night. It's an almost surreal scene of movement and light.
The conference is very good - beautifully organised and with some excellent international speakers. There is a strong emphasis on literature, which is unusual these days. Most of the Australians are academics or consultants, but there are quite a lot of South Australian teachers for some reason. They are supposed to be implementing the Australian curriculum next year but there has been no professional development and clearly they haven't even read the documents closely. They have been implementing new state senior courses and are suffering from too much change, to the extent that they don't want to know about the Australian curriculum.
I give my presentation tomorrow morning. I finally worked out to put my notes up on the conference wiki yesterday. It's the only time the iPad has let me down. I can read the wiki on the iPad but it wouldn't let me upload my files, so I had to use one of the university computers - which we share with students - and upload the files from a USB stick.
I am increasingly addicted to the iPad. I have been taking notes directly into the Notebook during sessions, and I love the fact that I can instantly google anything interesting that is referred to or that I can bookmark on the spot recommended websites. And of course when a session is boring I have a wonderful range of reading material to choose from.
The quality of the videos on screen is amazing.
With the wireless keyboard paired to the iPad and Pages, I can do almost anything I would normally be doing in Word on a computer. The days of dragging a laptop through airports are gone.
I'm flying out of Auckland tomorrow night, so I'll be home for Easter.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:The penthouse at The Quadrant Hotel Auckland

1 comment:

  1. Love the blog, Helen, but somehow missed the first post until today.

    1. I can show you how to crop a photo on the ipad - it's easy and both versions of the image are saved. I use Photoshop express after earlier using a different image editor.
    2. Yes the keyboard transforms the iPad - it's a nuisance having to carry extra, but it doubles the value of the iPad.
    3. We were equally struck by the different roles of Maori and Oz aborigines.
    4. You're home already - see you soon. R&B

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