Tech Best-Guesses

It has been a long time since I have written to this blog and much of it has to do with transitions and my life. Alas, time flies when you are having fun (or so they say), but time also flies when one is too busy to rest and take care of oneself as well. The latter is my case in the last few months of the school year (April and May) when I dropped off the grid and was working day to day to make it through. I am still standing and now have a new job with different responsibilities. Each day is a new adventure and that is good for my mental health. Ultimately, and deep down I have that sense of commitment and focus that I feel have lacked during the past academic year, probably much to having myself spread too thin and not getting to be as effective as I was with a single focus. Thus I am back to blogging.... AND I am getting sick and tired of my wife being better at blogging and showing off children for me!! Oh... and if you want to see what I am talking about click here!

Worse yet... my MOTHER has a blog with tons of readers! You can check this out here!

I thought of changing the name of this blog to “Sentiments on a turning stomach”, in that I have decided to write this note in a van as I ride between the Pudong and Puxi campuses. A little carsickness never killed anyone. Well, I hope not, so I will choke back the road chuck and and write on. It makes the ride go so much faster too.

Today, as is most days was a bit of rush, as it always is with a good meeting with my technology education colleagues and our IT director around the development of our technology plan. Mr. Jeff Utecht and Mr. Don Miron sat down with Mr. Orion Weber and me to talk about the direction of our school’s technology work and about where we might be going with a proposed one to one computing program. The discussion was lively, open and honest. It was challenging and frustrating too in that we are in a position right now to say no more often than to say yes… NOT my favorite place to be, but a role that someone must play.

Common sense would tell you a three year tech plan is really just a one year tech plan with a plan to review your “tech best-guesses” annually. If you do a little searching on the web you will find that there are many tech plans posted on the web and if they are more than one year old they really miss the mark. How do we move from being in a mode of planning and move to implementation in a landscape that is always changing?

Speaking of changing scenery…

Thanks to Karl Fisch for pointing out to us Shanghai residents that our city is one of the fastest developing landscapes (cityscapes… megalopolises??) in the world.

The most dynamic metropolis in the world’s most populous country numbs me with extremes: It’s a single city with more skyscrapers than the entire U.S. West Coast. In Shanghai, a new building of 30 stories or more has been completed every 12 days for the last six years. (At 1,375 feet, the Jin Mao Tower is soon to be dwarfed by the chisel-shaped, 101-story World Financial Centre, which should be the world’s tallest building when it’s completed in 2008.) From the United Airlines Hemispheres Magazine, October 2007 issue, p. 68.

With that many skyscrapers and cranes- I see 6 cranes out my van window right now- the changes we are feeling and seeing are much like the changes in technology we are seeing in the world.

Unofficial word from the US consulate (this is third hand information… so take it for what it’s worth) is that Shanghai is now around 22 million people.

Photo Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifemagic/446410824/, http://farm1.static.flickr.com/55/137523747_5e7b054727.jpg?v=0