Beyond Digital

I got an iPod for my birthday from my wife and kids, ooops a mini iPod. I love it! Doesn’t everyone or do you just love them because of the cool ads, logo and one liners “Life is Random” Apple has flooded us with. My students have iPods. So many that now we actually have meetings with the issue of iPods on field trips. We have had meetings about appropriate use of them, when and where they should be used. In one of the classes I teach we have a lesson called iPodtiquette. This in an effort to highlight and have kids thinks about good ways of using this new medium and be aware of the perceptions iPods have when kids are talking, walking around school or interacting with adults.

On the first day getting my iPod mini, I spent hours setting up my library and song lists. I became consumed in selecting the songs, modes, feeling and lyrics which I wanted to be part of the lists. The process brought all kind of memories, and at the same time allowed me to downloard moods for an environment I thought the songs and music could create.

The next morning, upon moaning how tired I was, my wife asked me if I did not remember making mix tapes from LP’s albums. Of course who doesn’t… or to be honest I forgot in the depth of my memory… yes all those hours spent creating tapes to share with friends. Yes of course, hours and hours…the I just broke up with girlfriend tape, etc…. what about sorting albums ooops for another blog.

The next morning I am stuck in Tokyo morning commuter traffic at 7.30 with hundreds and thousands of people squished in one car. No worries I am iPod equippedI I have my headphones put on my headbanging song list and bingo: Atomic Punk by Van Halen blares…loud. Suddenly the music transforms the moment into a lovely mix of feelings, emotions, day dreams and rich thoughts. As songs pass through in my iPod my whole morning experience has a different color, feel and vibe. The crowd, the pushing, shoving all seem to blend in with the music and become a positive part of the experience.

Did I not have this before with my walkman, CD walkman…yes in snippets. But now I can create the mode, control the lists, mix, match, blend and the beauty of it….. for hours on end.

I don’t have to carry anything but this slick thin, slim rectangle, which with the soft touch of my index provides me with hours of fun.

To be honest it is just not the iPod but the whole concept of controlling your musical experience when you are mobile, the same goes with the iRiver or an MP3player. The fact that as you travel, commute, walk, run, and chill and then have a small device that allows you to create a mode. The process allows you to play with your feelings as the visual stimulation blends with the auditory, and this for hours on end, without much switching, changing or batteries running out.

Music to many, and I think especially any generation which lived with LP’s 45′s, CD or MP3, created many memories, emotions with music. Now you can again in many way (thinking of the tapes) but for longer; have a world caressed by your songs, as a way of escape, as a way to jiggle memories, feelings and emotions.

A thought, an impression as I continue with my iPod tonight again to create yet another song list, for a long plane ride to Europe.

John@ISETS

This post is a thought BUT also a supporting entry for Arash Sigarichi and Mojtaba Saminejad. It is unbelievable in my view how this blogging community is growing, developing a true identiy and of course what happens this: Two Iranians get imprisoned for blogging… then the week before I read a story about the CNN editor resigning.
Then I think of my international school ASIJ and how as a group educators we really have not allowed the whole blog issue come into our conversations about different ways for kids to express themselves. Explored it as a current medium of expression. The students blog of course but in isolation within their peer group. How as educators are we facilitating our rich knowledge of ideas and concepts to our students within the sphere of blogs. Where are the conversations about Arash Sigarichi and Mojtaba Saminejad ? Again a level of frustration arises in my mind. The disconnect that often, not always and depending on the context, is occuring from movements in the real world, contempory digital mediums and forms of experession. I am not saying replace all our forms of communication (word processing, speeches, oral presentations and multimedia presentations ppt actualy this is a whole other topic on its own…..but we have a responsability to share, harness, explore, discuss and facilitate this medium within the context of our school and with our students. Have you: teacher read your student blogs= why do they blog?

Imagine… kids start using their blogs as places for research, quote blogs as sources, get their daily fair of news from blogs….share their feelings, discover philosophies in blogs….create their point of reference from blogs……remember the world blogs…. at some point, at some level as international school educators we need to explore, discuss (if not only amongst ourselves at first as a starting point) how blogs and education can find a common ground for both ourselves and our students. We can always teach about our past, and at some point we need to be able to teach about the future…. hey there the future is actually NOW!

John @ISETS

SO, after a few months of doing the Going Native with the in class chat room, music and open ended environment ( see Going Native blog) and then reading Mark Prensky new blog on the Digital Natives . I feel it was the right move, and the students seem most comfortable with the dynamic. There is no doubt that at first the students kind of saw this as a candy store with no attendant. Why? Well as far as I know there are not many classroom situations were students are encouraged to engage in online chat and be able to listen to music while they work. The concept of multitasking I think is still percieved as not being able to focus on one task thus not being able to produce at the highest level. This multitasking is seen as a negative aspect of todays generation and percieved by many adults with bad light. As mentioned in my initial blog on this topic Going Native and doing a lot of reading by Mark Prensky it seemed that this was a worthwhile concept to actually try in class. The kids themselves in their class reflections for the course seemed to feel that this multitasking environment was the norm, and they felt they performed better and more effectively. Many parents who I talked to during parent conferences brought up this issue of their children being online doing multiple online tasks while doing homework. It was an issue for them, but some said they felt if their grades were not affected by this then let it be! Others saw this as a huge distraction to their concept of good homework behavior and had home restrictions and limits on kids accessing the internet.
I did mention in these conversations with the parents the environment we had created in the course, and how at first kids seemed a little out of control with the chat room but over a week they quickly self monitored themselves and at this stage use it then and now for mostly class related issues. I think as with anything with many adolescents, intially there is excitement and then the novelty fades. I had maybe a harder time as the facilitator allowing the chaos, and trying to understand that kids need a trial period, and trust actually in their self monitoring powers, a letting go, fear of loss of control …always a little hard for educators maybe

With the music (ipods, mp3 players etc…) kids have said they find that with their favorite tunes on, they felt it insipired their creativity and created a more dynamic environment for them. Interestinly enough a component of this was the issue of ipodtiquette. Appropriate behaviors in class with ipods. We talked about when I the teacher/facilitator was speaking ipods should be off and a way to show this was to take the headphones off. Another was sharing ipods, with each partner having one ear plug if you were working in a group. In the effort to avoid having a group working together and some members with ipods on and others not. We talked about key times for ipod use in class. For example when students are working independently on a project or process or in small groups but again honoring their partner by sharing the ipod or usign the computer CD drive and dual jack headphones. I find this whole process and topic again such a strong indication of how technology can change cultural expectations in the classroom.

Anyway I am continuing the Going Native philosophy with this the course, and feel it was the right choice. I have done little ot push this further apart in my class, and this is not something I feel I have an audience for amongst my collegues or supervisors in my present school setting at ASIJ…

more later

John@ISETS

“The Illiterate of the 21rst century will not be those who can not read, or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”

Alvin Toffler



Hardware vs. Mindware!!!



Mindware is the concept of Information Technology Communication learning moving away from the focus on hardware, desktop infrastructure to a fully mobile wireless interface…, bringing the tool and open flexibility of the internet/wireless technology into the learning space…. moving the focus away from the actual learning of the tools functions and focusing on strategies and processes for the learning, unlearning and relearning (as quoted by Alvin Toffler) of information communication technology in the context of the information age. Developing a philosophy of learning, unlearning and relearning with technologies not yet invented for jobs not yet created.

Many international schools have continued to go with a desktop interface and often require kids to physically go to a specific location to interact with ICT tools often disconnected to the actually learning space they spend most of their day…. much of the learning with ICT tends to be process based. The mindware switch is more of an opened ended style with a contructivist model.

The reality is we are moving to a broadband wireless world, and already one can see with the profusion of cell phones, PDA’s and a variety of small mobile computing tools that the walls between home, work, travel and entertainment are very quickly blending into one interface accessible 24 hours a day and anywhere. There will come a time when not having a connection to the internet in the different moments of your day will become a disadvantage in communicating, interacting and working successfully.

As educators we need to be able to simulate such an environment in our own physical learning space, and with this move our learning outcomes and objectives to a concept were we know kids will be to be able to learn then unlearn and relearn knowledge to interact a world of wireless connectivity with a multitasking set of skills experienced all in one day.

This will require a shift in the way schools create learning environments…. A focus on the Mindware of the Digital Age, which actually is over and as some are already calling it the Information Age!!



John at ISETS

Something I have noticed in many international schools with the issue of IT resources, is how various departments, divisions and schools with in school ( ie: Elementary Campus, Middle School Campus and High School Campus) all tend to petition for their own equipment/hardware/ software and then keep it secluded to their specific projects. Or due to a lack of time to talk, share and debrief what each person is doing, one is unaware of what others are doing.

Last week a group of teachers at my school http://www.asij.ac.jp have through the guise of a critical friends groupdecided to create a IT integration support group. This came about from the group sharing their frustration and to be honest dislike of the process of critical friends as facilitated at our school. There was a feeling of disconnect with the process and lack of ownership. As we discussed this issue further gradually, as we tried to identify what we as a group were looking for, the idea of a collective IT support group materialised.

Basically we all felt often projects we wanted to do were being blocked because either there were no resources available in that division of the school, or resistance to share them. Sometimes a resistence and allowing innovation be facilitated within the context of the curriculum and percieved expectations of what was okay or not.

The theme that developed from this group was a desire to do more with video wiothin the classroom contect with kids. It was agreed for all members of this group, via a list serve to start brainstorming ideas together. With the ideas if a member of the group had a resource, time, facility, knowledge or skill they then would be willing to share this.

So what is the big deal! For me it is that too often one gets caught up in a variety of processes to get permission to do things, or petition for hardware requests and you get lost in the bureaucratic and personality blackhole which often is endemic in International Schools.

This way people have an opportunity to try things out of the box, and now there is a group willing to share, and support them….with the only goal and motivation of making sure the group members project idea actually happens…. and who benifits from this, the KEY player = our students…….

Josh R. , a collegue and friend, and I debriefed about this process the other afternoon, and discussed the importance of educators participating and having time to facilitate such a process.

A community of practice.….

John@ISETS

A light late summer rain dusting my shoulders, and Wouter and I chat over a few drinks…..there is something lovely about connecting to people, who honor and are willing to fall in your enthusiasm for a topic, and in tandem explore and share some ideas…. My conversation with Wouter spilled into a flurry of thoughts and ideas which only seemed comfortable residing in my blog……. Since this conversation I have been thinking and toying with an idea with the class Information Technology and Media Literacy Explorations I am teaching. This all seems ot have started in the last week with a series of online journal responses have hit a nerve….

Partly due to my own articles being published and while reading it them over, revisiting the issue that Mark Prensky covers so effectively: Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.

One of my students responds to the following questions:

What aspect of the class have you found challenging (give examples?)

The aspect of the class that I found challenging was to work independently and quietly on one project. The projects require concentration and being independent.

Why has this been challenging?

Working independently and being focused on one thing at one time has been a challenge because usually at home when I work, I have the internet and my computer, I have music on, I am doing instant messenger, or talking on my cell phone. Having to work alone, being focused on one thing, and concentrating was a challenge at first.

What strategies (give specific examples) have you used to overcome this challenge (s?)

Some ways I overcame the challenge was to try and be focused on one thing. Trying to be focused might help me really be focused and be concentrated and independent. I found out that if I focus on being independent and concentrated with my friends, television, instant messenger, music, etc.. Won’t bother me. I think that I have overcome the challenge not just at school, but at home too.

My reaction and thought to this was immediately is my teaching style, facilitation of this course and the environment I have created out of sink with the way my students actually feel they can learn in? There is no doubt as the world of broadband, cell phones, instant messaging, internet, MP3 and downloads becomes part of everyday life for my students, a gap develops with my world.

My thought is if when they are at home working on “homework” and produce surrounded with an environment of instant messaging, cell phones, music playing, jumping around multiple mediums and tasks in fragmented bursts but seemingly being able to accomplish their needed tasks……what kid of transition occurs for them when they are suddenly surrounded by a very linear, step by step process, in a multimedia poor environment found in many teaching styles and classrooms of schools today?

This has motivated me to try within the context of this class, facilitating a new environment incorporating a richer interactive atmosphere. One were I would be allowing students to listen to music when working alone with headphones. The other would be to use instant messenger more often as a regular supplement to verbal communication. Kids could access each others help with instant messenger requests. Continue to facilitate non linear process to my teaching style, creating a methodology of sharing knowledge in a workshop style. Solely have one on one interaction or small group work, with a strong jig saw puzzle framework to sharing knowledge……and stop full class lecturing!

So here I go, Do I, should I , do the kids want it? I should says the reality of the world schools seem to missing out on

John@ISETS

I am so pissssed off, and the hardest thing the person who pissed me off is someone who has done workshops focusing on good research skills…. and then I witness a whole facilitation leaving kids in complete information overload……and most importantly of all in information the kids can’t digest or have an idea what this means, you hear their liitle heads saying I have no idea what my questions is about……actually have no idea why I am asking a question, oh actually have no idea what a question is? Local medicine BLOG !

A group of second graders came to my lab to work on class research projects. The students had been asked to generate questions which would interest them to guide their research. They were planning to use the school library books and internet resources to find the answers. Here are some of their questions.

How much gasoline do planes at Narita Airport (Tokyo Japan) use per day?

Why do people in London think they are special?

Who invented the onion?

A student walks into the library and asks the librarian for information for her research project. “What information are you looking for?” asks the librarian “I need information about plants.” The librarian responds, “What topic are you looking to focus on?” The student says “Plants.”

Today many schools have made research projects part of their curriculum. There is a push to start having kids work on research projects at an earlier age, in an effort to expose them to the skills of information literacy. There is a growing belief that we as educators need to better prepare our students to be able to work with information as critical thinkers. This belief comes from the fact that we are surrounded by a hailstorm of information in a multitude of mediums on every topic imaginable — be it on television, the internet, print, the local library, or an electronic signboard on a street corner. I fully support this notion, and agree that today information literacy is an important, even vital, component of any curriculum. Too often, however, we set off on these projects forgetting who are students are and what, realistically, they can do.

Can a primary school student honestly develop good essential questions for a research project? In my opinion asking children at these grade levels to generate questions often sets them up for failure. Is asking the question what we want to start with when working with this age group? Based on my experience working with elementary school students as a technology integration specialist, I have come to believe that setting up the students for a successful research experience is the key to future learning and understanding of the research process. I believe that in order for primary students to be successful in research, they should not be generating questions without parameters. Nor should they be going to the internet on their own to find answers.

So what should they do? If you want kids to develop research questions, instead of leaving them carte blanche to choose a topic and generate questions alone, provide the direction and clear guidance.

First of all, what grade-appropriate resources does your school have to offer on the topic? Does the library have material that your students can read? Is there information available on the internet that is accessible for your students’ age group?

One suggestion is to create a set of learning links or curriculum links, by gathering and bookmarking a set of previewed websites specific to the topic you want students to study. This can be posted on your class website or school site. Make sure the text and content is something your students can read. A good example is the site Enchanted Learning .

Once you’ve determined available resources, list a selection of suggested topics for students based on them. Allow the kids to pick a topic within the list you have pre-selected.

It is often possible to model a set of questions students can use for research. An example would be say for an insect project: have the kids pick an insect and you with the kids use a set of standard questions, which they all use for their respective insects. i.e.: What does my insect eat? What is there life cycle? What do they look like? What color are they? This linked to specific resources you know they will find the information. The real focus for younger students should not be generating questions but being able to locate and understand the information. The key is getting them into the process of doing this. Simple is better.

Identifying keywords that will help students locate information is essential. Primary students can learn what keywords are, how to recognize them, and how to use them to retrieve information from a text.

As students locate information, have them record key points in their own words. A good strategy to use is the research grid, which I have seen used very successfully by primary years teachers. The research grid guides the students in their research by giving keywords and organizing information into a grid. Once the grid is completed, students can use their notes to write full sentences to be added to a simple multimedia presentation, mini research paper, slide show or oral presentation.

Too often in our rush to work with the whole research process we forget that young children have only limited ability to access and synthesize the onslaught of information available on the internet or in our libraries. Students in higher grades can realistically learn to generate good research questions and locate and begin to evaluate information from a wider variety of sources. There is nothing wrong with introducing primary students to the research process in small doses. By experiencing the research process in clear, simple steps with guidance, the primary student is gaining a strong set of skills, with a feeling of success which they can build on as they come across this process over and over again.

Don’t have them ask the question please.

John @ ISETS

It is funny how an article, a thought, at times can just shake you….. in the last month I have been fully immersed in Mark Presnky’s blog and the result with a combination of things that I keep on noticing more has been this entry…..

A group of six grade students are outside with their teacher launching small bottle rockets with pressurized water and air pumps. As the teacher makes the final adjustment to the launching gear, a student takes out his cell phone. The first rocket is launched and the student with the cell phone quickly snaps a picture. The teacher looks at the student and asks, “Why do you have your cell phone out?” “Oh I am taking a picture to e-mail it to my friend; we want to post it on our website.”

It is late at night, a 9th grade student is busily immersed in front of her screen, writing a chemistry report, as she surfs the internet for resources, opening another browser window, she re-reads the assignment on a class website to make sure she is on task. At the same time Instant Messaging with a friend for help. Then her cell phone rings, another friend wants her to download her favorite this song. The student pops open her e-mail and the link to the song is there which she opens and downloads the file, then with her media player listens to it while still working on her assignment.

A group of students exchange text messages on their cell phones before the mid-term quiz in the school library. At the same time they’re surfing the Internet for last minute information and e-mailing the links to each other. One of the students is collating all the links, text messages and answers. From a library computer he posts them on his website, and then instant messages the link to the page he has just built to his friends.

Daily, as an educator of information communication, I come across similar anecdotes from my colleagues and witness such scenes myself with increasing frequency.

A world in which were hyperlinks, instant and/or text message, website can immediately connect our students to peers, information, music, multimedia, and facts. These students interact and communicate in a hyperlink world. Their world is non-linear: made up of a series of connections using a multitude of mediums to instantly communicate and act upon information. The norm for many is having multiple browser screens open, while instant messaging and talking on a cell phone with a couple files being downloaded as they listen to online music, and work on an application, all at the same time.

As I notice this and then walk around my own school and pop my head into some classrooms and see textbooks on desks and teachers lecturing off a white board facts and figures as the students jot down notes on school binders, I ask myself: “Is there a gradual disconnection occurring between the world of classroom and the students’ world out of school?”

The past experiences we draw on in our teaching are from a world in which a more linear form of thinking prevailed. So as new generations of these students grow up with this hyperlink world in their consciousness and end up in our classrooms, how does one accommodate them within this new paradigm and still facilitate the subjects we teach?

This type of student will not disappear tomorrow. They are here to stay and most likely will gradually feel alienated from the way they have access to information at school, so different from how they access information at home.

As educators we have a unique opportunity to provide a bridge between their experiences at home and at school.

I feel strongly that many of the methodologies we often adopt to cope with these changes are tool-centered (focused on having lots of hardware with bells and whistles) and very few are based on the pedagogy of multitasking, interacting in a hyperlink world, and working in multiple mediums, being media literate with instant information.

For our students this is the norm, this is the world they breathe and identify with. I see third graders field an instant message and/or e-mail while gaming and listening to music online.

There is no doubt that to many of us educators, this hyperlink world is something we interact with on the surface, and rely on more and more in our own lives. But for many of us, it is not second nature. We still like to print out our e-mails to read them; we will pass CD’s around or a DVD to colleagues. We most often prefer leaving a note in our friend’s mailbox or a message on their answering machine. There is nothing wrong with this, and to me just shows how in many ways our language of habits and working with information technology is radically different from what our students feel comfortable dealing with.

There is nothing wrong with this and it just shows to me how in many ways our usual ways of working with information technology is radically different from what are students are used to. The challenge, and where I think international schools need to start opening a more aggressive dialogue, is how do we as educators start developing concrete pedagogic methodologies to accommodate this new world our students identify with and at the same time, continue drawing on the knowledge and skills we as educators possess.

International Schools are in a unique situation where many students are from affluent backgrounds and have parents who jobs require them to be more and more reliant on these new forms of technology and modes of interaction.

At home, most often they have access to broadband internet if not modem internet. They also have a computer in their room, a cell phone, an MP3 player, and multiple identities to use with their instant message program and e-mail accounts, a personal website and a shelf full of downloaded movies and music.

The reality is we are in direct competition with this world of instant access to information, ready to be delivered in a multitude of sensory channels/methods. As an educator of information communication technology, I see this as an opportunity to reinvent ourselves: let us rethink how we deliver information in the classroom.

….. let us all, as international educators, start thinking beyond digital.

John @ ISETS

There is no way any of this would or has happended without JJ, Fred, The Fundi, Tim the Mad Professor and Fuad, Tourre, Fella and Sam” Slice” Ethopia….. lots of this, lots of that all has been a combination of chemistry and a moment people have been willings to stop….not think and go for it…because it feels right, for no bad or good reason….IMPULSE!.…. thank you, and I bow to you all….

Power cuts, a group of students in the dark, Political disaster ends up promoting staff professional growth in IT. One late afternoon a colleague and I were discussing working with Information Technology in International Schools. The discussion prompted me to reflect on my own experiences as an Elementary School Information Technology Specialist and Coordinator over the last 8 years in three different international schools. As an IT specialist I often have had little control over the unique forces at play, but somehow I find the energy and motivation to overcome these.

At I.S.T in Dar es Salaam Tanzania the one thing that continually paralyzed our three labs weekly if not daily was power cuts. In a lab full of children busy working on creative writing projects, the first hint would be a gradual fading of the fan, I would shout, “save your work”! Kids would save and instantly the click of their mouse, the power would shut down and the screens would go black. The waiting game would begin. I would go try the circuit breaker switch, and if the power didn’t return, the children would head back to their classroom with disappointment. These power cuts were part of daily life for the school and Tanzanians. Allegedly this was due to Power Station generators funds being used by corrupt officials for their personal use. Our school had a couple independent generators installed on both the Elementary School and High School campuses to circumvent this problem, but having to share two generators to run a school of 1,200 students and teachers, including staff housing with often limited access to oil, was a unique juggling game.

When the high school computer teacher and I first introduced e-mail to staff and the school, we had to run a single phone wire from the lab across a field to the main administration building. This was the single line to the outside world. We would have to make an appointment with the phone company to get an open line, and teachers would make appointments to be able to send e-mails, which where then routed through the University of Dar Es Salaam server, which was prone to power cuts itself. Somehow even with all the challenges there was always a level of excitement and positive energy involved. The smile and sheer joy on people’s faces when, after innumerable tries, they got an e-mail out and then a couple days or even a week later got a response, was so gratifying for all of us who tried to introduce some new technology to the school.

From the tropical coast of Dar Es Salaam and the savannahs of East Africa my family and I moved to China. Where I was the computer coordinator at the Western Academy of Beijing , a K-8 international school. There the power cuts vanished, and with great surprise we moved to a city with a solid infrastructure which was developing at an extremely fast pace. Here the challenges were of a different nature. Over the four years there our school e-mail address changed four times, and access to certain sites such as and other press sites would be blocked at random depending upon the political situation of the country and its relationship with other nations. Government legislation, censorship or localized decision making could within minutes have odd side effects on the efficiency of our connectivity, with little or no warning.

One of the many challenges faced as a Computer Coordinator was during the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade Yugoslavia. With in 24 hours of the event, violent riots against the US embassy and other Nato country embassies in Beijing took place.

Our school had to close down for a few days, leaving our school population at home. At the time it was uncertain how long the situation would last. After talking to my administration and Director of IT, we decided to post daily homework, updates, and online activities on our website. From my apartment in the Asian Games Village the small room where my computer and internet connection were set up, suddenly had a flurry of traffic: teachers dropping of disks with homework assignments, people peering over my shoulder dictating a homework rubric or sharing an idea. I would post these onto the web and supplement this with online activities and informational communications for the school community. The response from the parents was extremely positive, so much so, that by the second day our main competitor was posting homework for its student body.

A side effect was that suddenly many teachers who saw technology as something out of their reach experienced first hand the immediacy of the web. Due to this event there was a sudden growth in interest in and using the web as a teaching tool. Teachers started to explore the use of WebQuests, homework online and communicating with parents via their websites.

From the traffic chaos of Beijing my family and I moved to Tokyo to work at the American School in Japan . I took up a position as the Elementary School Information Technology Specialist. Japan naturally was a big change from both Africa and China; the latter both considered developing nations, albeit at very different levels. Here technology permeates daily life, from the 3rd generation cell phones with web browsing/e-mail capabilities, to hi-tech and digital automation in so many services and infrastructures. This gives the school excellent access to an extremely high tech infrastructure. Ironically being an international school in a foreign country, in Asia puts us in an odd Catch 22 situation with many software suppliers. One of the oddest and most frustrating situations is an endless loop we have been caught in with a large productive software developer regarding licensing of their products. We have been trying over a long period of time to get the proper licenses for the productive software. The Japanese reseller will only sell us licenses for the Japanese language version, which is of little use to us, being an English medium school. Their standard comment is: contact the headquarters in the United States. When we contact the company in the United States they say they cannot sell us licenses as we are not United States-based, and tell us to contact their Japan reseller.

International schools are in a unique position especially in respect to working, developing and integrating technology. As a person working in the field, I have often found an ability to implement new ideas without having to face much administrative or board level red tape. Generally as all these schools are private and well funded, it is easier to get money to fund projects and new hardware purchases. Along this I have the flexibility to move on creative ideas and programs. One of the disadvantages I have experienced is often a feeling of being isolated from professional development resources, the latest trends and access to meeting other peers outside of the school setting who are working with the same challenges and issues. The advent of e-mail and the web have been a huge step in alleviating this. In so many ways the international schools I have worked in have adopted aspects of the infrastructure, politics and culture of their host countries. I am continually challenged, and inspired to push my own capabilities to facilitate change and face unique twist to the day.

John@ISETS