SEAMEO-UNESCO Education Congress
Posted by Stuart at 08:41 AM on June 01, 2004It looks like my site was hacked again. Not just my site, but all of the websites that are stored on the same machine at logjamming.com. It was hacked, then restored, now it’s hacked again. Sigh.
Oh well, I guess it’s ok, since I haven’t been able to force myself to write anything lately. Here’s a recap of what I have been up to for the past few days:
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I attended the SEAMEO-UNESCO Education Congress at the Queen Sirikit Convention Center in Bangkok. I had high hopes of hearing some interesting talks on technology and education. But the audience was mostly made up of elderly diplomatic/NGO types, so the content of the talks was hardly cutting edge. For example, Microsoft’s President of the Asia Region spent about 10 minutes of his talk explaining the evolution of the computer from mainframes to current Internet-based applications, just like I do in my introduction to computer class for college freshmen.
It was interesting, however, to hear people from all over this part of the world talk about the challenges and successes of education in their home countries. I heard a few good talks from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Even though the Thai Department of Education was a co-sponsor of the event, they were mostly absent except for the opening ceremonies with HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. From what I have seen of the completely inept Thai Department of Education, I am not surprised.
Speaking of the Princess, I was very excited to hear that she would be there. Unfortunately, though, I wasn’t early enough to get a seat in the hall where she was speaking. Instead, I had to watch her speech on a big-screen TV on the other side of the wall.
But that was good enough. I really enjoyed watching and listening to her speak. It is very obvious why she is so loved by the Thai people. She was very down to earth, modest, and even cracked a joke or two as she talked about some of the service she has done for the people of Thailand in the area of education. Very impressive.
Even if the conference was light on the technology, it still gave me some time to think about my own career interests. If I can find the time, I will do a write-up of all that over on my other site.
