Day Two

The day started off well, waking up to the wake up call, and it quickly went down hill from there. I fell asleep again and so I woke up in a frenzy just barely making the bus. This time difference is really affecting me I guess.

Anyhow the rest of the day went well. The plenary session was on sustainability. The first break out session was on Special Needs Education. This has been the best session so far. There was a woman from SMARTLab and she showed us some of the incredible ways that her company is using technology to help people with special needs. People who were never able to speak or play music or write are able to with new technologies. One man was able to compose music and play in a band using his eye movements. http://smartlab.uel.ac.uk/2projects/interfaces.htm She also works with communities to develop games that are based on story and ideas from a child and then gets artists and other experts together to create virtual worlds where an avatar of the child can experience things that they would never otherwise be allowed to experience. She showed a clip of a little girl who finally got to swim in her own underground world by controlling her avatar in a game created for her. Very powerful and amazing to see technology being used in this way.

The next session I went to was on Technology and distance education. one of the speakers from Stanton university talked about how mobile phones are being used in remote areas of the world and how much more of an impact they have, especially in places like Africa. Another speaker from the University of South Africa shared how they are using distance learning to support her students. She also mentioned how one of the major benefits to having the World Cup in South Africa will be the forced need for cabling to be laid. In order to support the media and the world's attention, South Africa is going to need major Broadband. The only way to get it there is to bury it around the continent. This means (especially for coastal countries) that they will be able to tap into that network. It seems a shame that the only way that Africa will get the help it needs is through corporate demand.

There was no closing plenary session today as we had the gala tonight. I will tell you more about that in my next post. Just let me say that tobiko is very yummy.