{"id":6,"date":"2007-09-14T13:21:16","date_gmt":"2007-09-14T13:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcglaysia.wordpress.com\/?p=6"},"modified":"2007-09-14T13:21:16","modified_gmt":"2007-09-14T13:21:16","slug":"maglev-train-shanghai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/travel\/maglev-train-shanghai\/","title":{"rendered":"Maglev Train Shanghai"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we arrived in Shanghai for the Learning 2.0 conference we chose to take the Magnetic Levitation Train<\/a> into town.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t actually get you very far into town, only into Pudong but that suited us well enough as we were staying close to the conference which was held at Concordia Interernational School in Pudong.\u00a0 The picture above is a poor one admittedly, but it is difficult to take a steady picture when travelling at 430 km\/h.<\/p>\n

It made me think, briefly mind you, about China\u2019s leap into this century and the way that it is trying out new technologies.\u00a0 We lived in Shanghai for seven years and the changes we witnessed were dramatic.\u00a0 New is a veritable religion there.\u00a0 The Maglev train was very new and a very exciting development when it began being built.\u00a0 But as I rode on it for the first time just this weekend, It struck me that it still doesn\u2019t really go anywhere.\u00a0 It makes a 40 minute taxi-ride into a five minute train ride but when we got out we still had to take a cab to our hotel.\u00a0 It stops short of taking you into the heart of the city and has never been expanded or added to.\u00a0 Its a bit like they said, \u201cHey let\u2019s build a bullet train\u201d and once they had done it they moved on to something else.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is just that, a sample bullet train.\u00a0 A tourist attraction.\u00a0 A cool way to welcome visitors to China and then let them off at a station at which they have to choose a real destination.\u00a0 That was fun, but what are you really here for?\u00a0 Maybe the government learned what it needed to and moved on.\u00a0 Maybe they will build one to Beijing next or to points west.<\/p>\n

It made me think of technology teaching too.\u00a0 Often we go for what is cool and what is cutting edge.\u00a0 But does it stand the test of time.\u00a0 I tried teaching fifth graders to use a wiki last year.\u00a0 They thought it was cool and I had high hopes for it to offer them a publishing medium with instant editing and feedback potential.\u00a0 But it didn\u2019t catch on.\u00a0 The classroom teachers did not see the benefit or the relevance.\u00a0 We never got back to it.\u00a0 It sits there still, with all the enthusiastic comments made by students on the first day.\u00a0 I often check to see if it has been spammed or hacked but it seems not even a desirable target.<\/p>\n

Now I am trying blogs and podcasting.\u00a0 That seems to be catching the teachers\u2019 attention a little better.\u00a0 Not blogs so much.\u00a0 They are not quite getting the \u201clog\u201d or journal aspect.\u00a0 But many teachers are seeing the benefit of the podcast.\u00a0 Students too are listening to themselves reading and speaking and wanting to improve and do it better.\u00a0 It is frustrating at times because I want to move on and show the next thing, but this one thing, hearing their own voices, is grabbing their attention in less of a \u201cwow that\u2019s cool\u201d kind of way and more of a \u201cdo I really sound that way?\u00a0 I think I can do better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we arrived in Shanghai for the Learning 2.0 conference we chose to take the Magnetic Levitation Train into town.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t actually get you very far into town, only into Pudong but that suited us well enough as we were staying close to the conference which was held at Concordia Interernational School in Pudong.\u00a0 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Maglev Train Shanghai”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[51,66,77],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-maglev","tag-shanghai","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}