Pre-After-Ed

Sahngyoon, John, and I have combined forces to add our POV to the After-Ed forum. Our Ten Things list concerns the application of blogs and wikis in Asian school - Korea, Japan, and China, respectively.

We've split up the 10 with 3 each, then we'll meet to flesh out our ideas and come up with a tenth.

My three: (Did you know...)

1. Blogs and wikis are routinely blocked in China, just mention T**wan, T*b*t, or Tian**man Squ*re and the whole blog or wiki network in in jeopardy of being blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Hence, Blogger, PBWiki, WordPress, etc. are practically useless from a publishing point of view, but the old "This site cannot be accessed" makes for a fine teachable moment.

2. In spite of censorship, international schools are often at the vanguard of educational technological integration. Hong Kong International School and her sister schoo, Concordia International School Shanghai, are using a home-grown course management and social networking system with campus-based servers, featuring a built-in blog engine and wikis on the way. With a keystroke, students and teachers launch and maintain blogs for personal forums, discussion forums, and digital portfolios.

3. English may be the dominant language of the World Wide Web, but other languages are growing in popularity, with Chinese sites growing at a tremendous clip.

4. The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 severed the main fiber-optic cable that connects East Asia to Europe and North America. Internet access slowed to a crawl as the remaining cables had to carry the normal traffic. The cables were repaired over the course of the spring and continue to improve. The Tsunami was a wake-up call that our footprint on the earth is fragile and digital divide can be broadened in a heartbeat.

Last Week/Next Week

We composed i-Images last week. The "i" stands for idea. My idea has to do with faith. I had an image in mind, the lone demonstrator stopping a row of tanks in Beijing, June 1989. As Suhasini, Monique and I talked about our ideas, Suhasini mentioned her idea to build an image around Faith Can Move Mountains, and from there we decided to prepare a series of images exploring implications of that phrase. They'll be posted at a later date.

In the week ahead, Sahngyoon and I will be putting together a broadcast for After Ed that has something to do with use of blogs in language arts in Asia. Watch for that to take shape. We need a third contributor.