And I agree! (Upgrade to clear the watermark)

Yahoo! News
Cycling in Chinese city is anything but leisurely
By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer William Foreman, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 31, 1:37 pm ET

GUANGZHOU, China – A friend sent me a YouTube link to a video called “Insane Cycling — New York City.” I clicked on it, hoping to glean a few tips for my own cycling on the anarchic streets of China.

I came away feeling like someone who expects to see “Mad Max” and is shown “Sesame Street” instead. New York seemed like a wonderful place to ride. Pedestrians used the crosswalks. Buses lumbered along like gentle whales. Taxis used their turn signals. The streets looked so clean. No one honked.

If that’s insanity, what can be said of cycling in Guangzhou, the muggy, traffic-clogged city once known as Canton? It’s my constant dilemma — hit the road or stick to the treadmill at the gym?

Cycling always wins. Not only is it more fun being outdoors but it’s a way of taking China’s pulse.

When the economy began stumbling last year, some of the earliest signs of trouble in this industrial southern city were on the roads. On my early morning rides, I noticed far fewer migrant workers pedaling to work in their yellow hard hats with shovels and toolboxes strapped to their rusty, squeaky black bikes. Many had been laid off and returned to the countryside.

Although officials were denying reports of a wave of factory closures, I was finishing my rides much faster because I didn’t have to weave through the pedaling multitudes. Assembly lines were shutting down and millions of migrant workers were going back to the countryside.

Those throngs are an iconic image for China, but it’s becoming outdated. Led by a swelling middle class, people in Guangzhou and other cities are ditching bikes for clean, new subway trains.

And cars.

Two years ago, Guangzhou proudly announced that the number of cars on its roads had reached 1 million. The metropolis of 10 million people has several auto factories, and aspires to be China’s Detroit. Last year, 180,000 new vehicles hit the city’s roads, the government said. That’s nearly 500 a day.

Cyclists feel themselves being pushed aside. A bike lane near my home is marked with a thick white line, a sign and a bike symbol painted on the pavement. But the line has been chopped up for parking spaces. It’s now a bike lane only when motorists aren’t using it.

Anyway, lanes may as well not exist — drivers seem to think their cars are protected by a force field. And it’s not just drivers who are a menace, but pedestrians and even other cyclists. I recently slammed into a migrant worker who blindly pedaled into an intersection. Neither of us was seriously injured, but I badly bruised my hip and wrist as I hit the road and bounced for a few feet.

While leisure bikes are catching on among Chinese yuppies and college students, few take to the busy streets. Those who do wear helmets, as do I, but we’re a tiny subculture. The commuting laborers don’t wear helmets.

Many of the people behind the wheels of the shiny new cars just got their licenses, and their driving sometimes reminds me of my own in high school.

Some drivers are courteous to cyclists, perhaps remembering that they were among them not long ago. But others, especially the nouveaux riches in their Audis and BMWs, show an obvious contempt. They cut off cyclists and deny them the right of way. A honk is usually not a warning to be alert, but a “get out of my way” threat.

I encountered an extreme example during a training ride with a friend. It was 6:30 a.m. and we were hammering down an empty three-lane thoroughfare at 40 kph when a black Volkswagen Passat behind us opened up with its horn. As it raced beside us we exchanged obscenities until the driver — a beefy man in the kind of crew cut that’s popular with police, military and the mob — swerved in front and nearly knocked us down.

Few people seem annoyed by Guangzhou’s cacophony of car horns. Sometimes drivers seem to be beeping just as a way of saying hello to the weird spandex-clad foreigner.

Once, while I was barreling through a tunnel, a cement truck rumbled up on my back wheel and the driver started honking. The sound echoing off the tunnel’s walls was deafening.

Then I saw the driver and another guy in the cab laughing and yelling “Jia you!” It means “Add fuel!” — a Chinese sports cheer.

Being tailgated is especially unnerving because roads are so poor. If your skinny racing tires hit a brick or pothole, you can quickly find yourself under a car.

Guangzhou is hosting next year’s Asia Games, and a construction frenzy keeps the roads under a constant cover of dirt, gravel and debris. Water trucks cruise the streets before rush hour each morning, spraying water to control the dust. But they have no sweeping mechanism, so they leave a slippery layer of gritty mud that clogs expensive bike parts and can bring a cyclist down.

Each new pothole must be marked on the cyclist’s mental map. Recently after a hard rain, I thought I was speeding through a harmless puddle but it was a hole. It cracked my custom-made bike frame and broke the wheel.

Speed bumps are another hazard. The Chinese authorities love them. Their purpose seems designed not to slow speeders but to punish them. Rarely are they signposted, and they are usually unpainted and hard to see. Near my home, officials have opted for the cheap option — a thick pipe across the road, anchored by roughly cut spikes of rebar that can slice open a bike tire.

Perhaps the most hazardous obstacles are created by the midnight mystery dumpers. Their trucks bring construction waste — cement chunks, broken bricks, scraps of dry wall, splintered plywood — to unlit stretches of road and dump the loads where they can easily bring down any unwary biker.

Now that’s what I’d call Insane Cycling.

In this post, he brings to mind several important considerations. Past models for technology integration generally failed because teachers did not believe it was their job to teach technology.  Back in 1995 when the report “Teachers and Technology: Making the Connection” came out, it was discovered that most teachers did not feel prepared to use technology effectively. I wonder if it has changed in 14 years. I am now in Guangzhou and feeling some nastalgia … not necessarily a  good feeling.

Last year a survey was done among the faculty. Here are some of the results.
On owning a video camera, using it and having students work with video, faculty said:
83% own a video camera or a camera that takes video clips
44% don’t use a video camera
8% said they have their students create, edit and share video in their class

Regarding all those data projectors we purchased over the past two years, faculty said:
54% use a projector to show things to their students
21% have their students use the projector to show things to the class

When it comes to podcasts, faculty said:
58% periodically listen to podcasts
2% have their students create podcasts

Regarding social networking sites and collaborative features, like wikis, blogs and discussion folders, faculty said:
54% use social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace etc.
26% have their students participate in discussion folders in FirstClass
6% have their students use wikis or blogs

On crunching numbers in a spreadsheet, faculty said:
64% don’t know how to use a spreadsheet or rarely if ever use one
10% have taught their students or colleagues how to use one

If we remain status quo we will only be watching the world pass us by.

Here are some suggestions.

1. We need to think outside the box and not let logistics of how we do the schedule bog us down. We’re back in 1995 when the report “Teachers and Technology: Making the Connection” came out. This report discovered that most teachers did not feel prepared to use technology effectively. Do our survey’s imply the same thing?

2. Faculty need vision.
Perhaps with our lack of time, we cannot take time to discover a whole new world that is growing exponentially each day.  Perhaps what we could do is partner with a school to do some training for a day … our own learning summit. The rewards for PD time can be exponential. Again, in 1995, best practices were already saying 30% of a tech budget should go to the Professional Development of staff.

3. Faculty need to take ownership.
Who are the users? The faculty. They should be the force guiding the tech department with what they need. The ground swell needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down. If this is accomplished, then real change will happen.

4. The kids seem to be doing well dispite our inadequacies.
While reflecting on the ISTE student standard’s, I think most students get it. They know how to manipulate technology. They’re good at it. What they don’t always know is how to use it in a meaningful way for a presentation. Too often they are using a power point when another option may be far more effective.

Perhaps we need to take a step back and change our vocabulary. Don’t put them off with catch phrases and “excluding” words.  (blog, wiki, tweet, glog, vlog, apps…) Instead, remind the educators, it’s about adapting what they already value to a world that requires new ways to do them.

Maybe the song is somewhat right … We don’t need no education. Maybe the teacher’s do.

AISG is still following the 90’s model of stand alone MS and HS classes. However, it is in the formative stages of planning the implementation of a 1-2-1 laptop program. At the moment, there are over 70 kids in the MS/HS that have registered their own laptops in the school’s wireless system.

This year the school committed to upgrade the wireless system to handle hared-core wireless use. We have had a few glitches but overall it has gone well. The “plan” now has to move from tech classes to integrating the tech into the classes. A major roadblock seems to be the logistics of what do we do with students if we don’t have the tech classes to teach? How do we fill the time? Can we afford to hire more part or full time teachers.

The elementary school seems to be much further ahead than the MS/HS. As part of the PYP unit of study students will now complete an “ICT Passport”. It’s an information and communication technology booklet that students complete as they integrate information technology into the unit of study. As a students uses a photostory, researches a topic, develops a presentation using tech skills, they are are also logging what tech is being used. Pretty cool stuff.

But now … what about the MS/HS? How do we build on the program? How do we keep moving? A plan needs to be developed. If any of you out there have suggestions, I would appreciate hearing from you. Next year we hope to put a laptop on every teacher’s desk. More of my time will be dedicated to collaborating with teacher’s to integrate meaningful tech into the lesson plans. The idea is to give the teacher’s a year’s head start before the kids arrive and spend their time with something more than a $1000 pencil.

At commencement each year we honor impressive academic accomplishment—and we also recognize a student whose life has left an indelible mark on the community through service. This person, nominated by faculty and staff, has lived out Whitworth’s heart and mind mission in an especially inspiring way.

We had a very difficult task this year–So many of you have been involved in remarkable service, and our community and our world have been changed by your commitment. Finally, though we would have loved to have presented awards to several of you, we selected two recipients to receive this year’s Servant Leadership Award. I’ll ask each of you to stand where you are when I mention your name so that we may recognize you.

The first senior … I am pleased to announce that the first Servant Leadership Award goes to GLEN GUENTHER.

Our second award recipient also possesses natural leadership ability that inspires the confidence of others. As a Bonner Leader, he has been central in regional community development efforts; as a result of his tireless work, Spokane’s West Central neighborhood was able to leverage roughly $10,000 to be used for neighborhood improvements. In addition to his West Central work, he has served as President of Whitworth’s En Cristo club. Through this club, he addressed issues of food security, and provided housing advocacy for low income and homeless Spokane residents. However, his work doesn’t end here. During the fall, he served in Uganda and Rwanda in efforts to address hunger. This student is passionate about service, and inspiring others to become civically engaged. Like Glen, this student is already changing the world. I’m pleased to announce that the second recipient of this year’s servant leadership award is KYLE NAVIS.

Please join me in congratulating Kyle and Glen.

The film was shot in two parts only because the studio wasn’t big enough to accommodate the whole shoot. The film took six million dollars and three months to shoot.

Cog was a television advertisement for the Honda Accord, made with minimal CGI and no trick photography. It was created in 2003 by the London office of advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy.

The two-minute advert appears as a single, long camera dolly along a Heath Robinson-esque chain reaction arrangement of parts from the car. It is in fact two one-minute chain-reaction sequences, carefully set up on opposing walls of the studio and stitched together^[1], the join being at the moment where the muffler/exhaust box rolls across the floor (this can be seen by watching the floor pattern change). The advert took approximately 20 takes on each of five days of shooting to film, and only minimal CGI was used, for lighting highlights and slowing down the motion at one point. The cars featured, one disassembled for the pieces and the other on the trailer, were two of the six hand-built pre-mass production Accords.