International Peer Support

I had the good fortune to do a little travelling over our summer holiday spending time in Hong Kong, London, Portsmouth, Abergavenny in Wales, Londonderry, Ireland and Bangkok, Thailand. Until 2008 I had only ever been to Australia which you can hardly count as being overseas- a bit like visiting your cousins! It doesn’t really count.

My holiday snaps are here in a Flickr photo set slideshow if you would like to lurk a little.

While I was away I managed to meet with a few people who are in my Personal Learning Network.

My first meet up was with Paul Harrington in Wales. Paul and I first contacted each other through our mutual interest in podcasting and our two classes collaborated on a number of occasions over the years. As I expected when he met me at the Abergevenny Railway Station for the first time, we not strangers even though we had only just met. Image It was incredible to think how far we had both come on our journeys through cyberspace. Paul took me to Cefn Fforest School where Mini-Dylan and I surprised his students with a real visit. His excited students met me with real enthusiasm and I enjoyed their happy faces and beautiful accents. While in Wales we had a great conversation with Joe Dale from the Isle of Wight, another great podcaster and inspiration to me.

Unfortunately Doug Dickinson, ICT consultant, was called away at last minute to organise some stuff for BETT but Tricia Neal drove all the way from Leicester to Cardiff and back again so we could meet up. How cool is that!

On the way home I called in to spend some time at the International School of Bangkok staying with Chrissy Hellyer and meeting with Jeff Utecht and Kim Cofino.

These people have all influenced my learning network in some way and I was honoured and privileged to meet them all. The thing that struck me is openness of the people who help me on my journey. All of these people lead busy working lives but always give freely of their time and expertise to mentor and support fellow teachers like me.

I have never once come across anyone since I first started learning on line who has ever turned down a request for assistance or advice and I try to ‘pay it forward’ myself and do the same. These people help to form a wonderful support network for me as I venture into cyberspace. Thanks guys– for your hospitality and support.

Call To Prayer Recording
1.3MB 1 minute 24 seconds

Not happy with that last recording so I cleaned it up with Adobe Soundbooth and got rid of the white noise and a few of the extra clicks and clunks. Much nicer.

Call To Prayer Recording Cleaned Up

Staying in Bangkok was my first time living in a culture that is so very different from my own and it was fascinating and wonderful. Every morning at 5am you could hear the Muslim Adhan-call to prayer. It was beautiful and I was lucky enough to capture it on my iTalk microphone on my iPod. Our class podcasts will be starting up as we go back to work this week. I wanted to publish this recording to Edublogs to take advantage of some of the extra storage space now that I have paid for hosting in order to get rid of the ads!