Central Park
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were a big mixture of work and play. Melissa joined me on the Sunday and we worked for several hours on the paper and presentation.
But of course we had to play too. We walked through Central Park when it was so muggy I was red-faced, dripping in sweat and my clothes sticking to me when we arrived at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or ‘The Met’. We started in the Greek and Roman section and I immediately felt sorry that my daughter wasn’t with me. I enjoyed The Met much more than MoMA. The amount of art and artefacts on display became overwhelming, particularly in comparison to Australian museums and galleries, and we left after four hours (including lunch).
Bruno Mars
On Monday night we saw Pharrell Williams and Bruno Mars at Madison Square Garden. It was a lot of fun. A lady from Connecticut sat next to me. She and her 18yo daughter had come in by train. The daughter was going to college in California but was on Summer break auditioning for all sorts of shows in New York. They’re encouraged by a cousin who wrote a production that is about to appear off-Broadway, Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical. I was asked what I’d seen of New York already and included the 9/11 Memorial in my list. Another cousin had died in the 9/11 attack but they hadn’t been to the memorial yet to find his name. Sitting in Madison Square Garden waiting for a concert wasn’t the time or place to delve for a deeper story.
As for the whole purpose for being in New York, that has started. There is a wide range of international academics at this conference, like ICERI2013, but it is not as professionally organised. For instance, the WiFi is awfully slow.
I’m a big nerdy fan of Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis who come from Australia but now work in Chicago at the University of Illinois. They have fabulous ideas for modern pedagogy (see their website, New Learning) and I believe they are the people behind The Learner conference and its publications. They opened proceedings with some really good information that supports what we are doing at my school.
Other sessions we have been to have been less than dynamic and contain lots of, ‘well duh’ moments. For example, it has been discovered that university students who are late to class or often absent, don’t do so well when they are out on practical placement in schools. Hopefully when it’s our turn we don’t have the same effect on our audience.
