Sunday, September 29, 2013

South Africa Summit

This week I had the opportunity to learn from an incredibly enthusiastic group of educators in South Africa! The EdTechTeam offered a Google in Education Summit to an audience of educators who couldn't be more receptive. 


One of my favorite stories about the summit actually had to do with my son. I was lucky enough to be able to bring my eldest with me to Cape Town. It would be the first time going to Africa for both of us and we didn't know what to expect. Needless to say, we had an incredible experience and I know he'll remember it forever.

At one point, he wanted to rest in the rental car we had parked next to the building I was presenting in. (The jet lag was hard on him, but he keep up like a trooper.)  So I set him up with snacks, a book and his iPad. I would check on him every few minutes.  And at one point he sent me this email:



I was quite a proud dad, he had figured out how to connect to the wifi, shoot me an email and let me know he needed the keys to roll the window down. So I headed right out (I was next door to the car) opened the door and saw this:


It wouldn't surprise me at all if he'd never actually manually rolled a window down before.  I decided to take it as a metaphor of how many of our students come with some technical expertise, but still need our support and guidance. (No matter how clever with an iPad they are :)