Friday, November 11, 2005

paint the world in technology

ok, so i was supposed to get off work at noon today. but there was a little painting project going on at one of my schools and i just couldn't resist joining in. this particular school is under construction resulting in part of our campus being cordoned off by particle board barriers. the 2 magnificent art teachers decided to paint murals along the walls of the construction to prevent students from tagging them with their own artwork. various teachers and volunteers were painting all day today but there is just so much to do that they really weren't making any headway. and it was a beautiful day in sunny south carolina, so instead of leaving at noon i decided to stay and help.

while painting i was engaged in conversation with one of my coworkers and she was talking about her husband who works in 4 richland two high schools as a german teacher. he uses distance education to teach his classes. the classrooms are all hooked up with computer systems that are networked to a distant location and then the teacher teaches the students through a system of video conferencing. now i know this is nothing relatively new, they did it in college. but i just thought it was so amazing that they're doing this on the high school level. and i started thinking, why don't people do this in developing countries to help rural schools get teachers?

now let me say that i know someone must be doing this already. and i'm sure it's not as simple as i'm making it. but "they" say that technology is what is going to bring the 3rd world out of poverty.

so i'm just saying...i'm going to look into this...

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