Day 2
After the success of the first day it was good to be back in the ICT room, which was working nicely now. The WiFi was also working smoothly, which is always a bonus.
The weather was lovely once again: sunny and it was a delight to walk across the floodplain with the fortress perched on the hill, and into the University campus. This is based on a huge greenhouse, and there are plenty of wonderful views in all directions...
After setting up, I was able to catch the second half of a presentation on geo-media from Josef Strobl.
Josef is the head of the GIS centre there, which is a European centre of excellence in this area.
He has done more than most to publicise the importance of GIS and geo-media, and was particular interested in the importance of locational data that is produced by our device use.
It was an honour to meet Josef and hear what he had to say. Plenty of ideas generated for everyone in the room.
After Josef's session, it was coffee and some halva that had been brought by Karl.
Then we had some overdue presentations from the course delegates. This was due to have been done the previous day, but the technology hadn't been working as we'd wanted it, so now we heard from the other people on the course. This is always a useful time, as we hear some ideas from other countries and practitioners.
We heard about some fascinating stories of schools in rural Finland, and by the sea in the Algarve. There was plenty of work going on outdoors too, with geocaches and GPS.
One of the resources that I enjoyed hearing about was Hanna's use of a Finnish site called Liikkeelle.
This had an activity where students tracked their movements through the day, and produced a presentation on how they moved between different places and how they felt there.
Although the template was in Finnish, it was obvious how the activity worked, and I went to the site, and downloaded the template and adapted it to English. The instructions are on a Finnish PDF, which I will try to translate for a later post. We also heard again about the Finnish portal Paikkaoppi.
I talked about the importance of the gradual accumulation of minimal gains, something I'd picked up from Dave Brailsford of Team Sky. Each of these small ideas could potentially contribute to an improvement in the way that we worked.
We broke for lunch, and I had some food from the University canteen, which was still busy despite it not being term time.
I then talked about Geographical Enquiry and gave colleagues time to explore some of the sites that I had guided them too. In the afternoon, the temperatures were rising fast, and we did some further exploration, as well as having coffee on the roof...
Here's the view in a Dermandar panorama...
Then it was into the centre of the city. We had a bit of a tour into some of the places that I had visited the previous days when I had arrived early: the Mirabell Gardens and beyond...
We also crossed the padlock bridge, which has plenty of 'love padlocks' on it... another idea that has spread around the world.
We then went for a meal at the Sternbrau which is one of the oldest restaurants in the city. There are some remarkable wooden panels and ancient pictures, and had rather good beer and Simo had a rather large pork knuckle, which turned into one of those 'you had to be there' moments...
Does this all sound rather good to you ?
Remember that you have a chance to join me for the 2nd running of this course.
It's in February 2013. Details HERE.
After the success of the first day it was good to be back in the ICT room, which was working nicely now. The WiFi was also working smoothly, which is always a bonus.
The weather was lovely once again: sunny and it was a delight to walk across the floodplain with the fortress perched on the hill, and into the University campus. This is based on a huge greenhouse, and there are plenty of wonderful views in all directions...
Josef is the head of the GIS centre there, which is a European centre of excellence in this area.
He has done more than most to publicise the importance of GIS and geo-media, and was particular interested in the importance of locational data that is produced by our device use.
It was an honour to meet Josef and hear what he had to say. Plenty of ideas generated for everyone in the room.
After Josef's session, it was coffee and some halva that had been brought by Karl.
Then we had some overdue presentations from the course delegates. This was due to have been done the previous day, but the technology hadn't been working as we'd wanted it, so now we heard from the other people on the course. This is always a useful time, as we hear some ideas from other countries and practitioners.
We heard about some fascinating stories of schools in rural Finland, and by the sea in the Algarve. There was plenty of work going on outdoors too, with geocaches and GPS.
One of the resources that I enjoyed hearing about was Hanna's use of a Finnish site called Liikkeelle.
This had an activity where students tracked their movements through the day, and produced a presentation on how they moved between different places and how they felt there.
Although the template was in Finnish, it was obvious how the activity worked, and I went to the site, and downloaded the template and adapted it to English. The instructions are on a Finnish PDF, which I will try to translate for a later post. We also heard again about the Finnish portal Paikkaoppi.
I talked about the importance of the gradual accumulation of minimal gains, something I'd picked up from Dave Brailsford of Team Sky. Each of these small ideas could potentially contribute to an improvement in the way that we worked.
We broke for lunch, and I had some food from the University canteen, which was still busy despite it not being term time.
I then talked about Geographical Enquiry and gave colleagues time to explore some of the sites that I had guided them too. In the afternoon, the temperatures were rising fast, and we did some further exploration, as well as having coffee on the roof...
Here's the view in a Dermandar panorama...
Click for biggery
Then it was into the centre of the city. We had a bit of a tour into some of the places that I had visited the previous days when I had arrived early: the Mirabell Gardens and beyond...
We also crossed the padlock bridge, which has plenty of 'love padlocks' on it... another idea that has spread around the world.
We then went for a meal at the Sternbrau which is one of the oldest restaurants in the city. There are some remarkable wooden panels and ancient pictures, and had rather good beer and Simo had a rather large pork knuckle, which turned into one of those 'you had to be there' moments...
Does this all sound rather good to you ?
Remember that you have a chance to join me for the 2nd running of this course.
It's in February 2013. Details HERE.
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