Learning On The Job

I love this idea from Jess McCulloch, who I got to meet at Learning 2.0. (Thanks Kim for tagging me!)

The idea is to share your commute to work with your network. I live about 800 meters from the back gate of the school. Almost every morning I walk the 12 – 15 minutes to school with my wife (PE teacher), my son (grade 1) and my daughter (Discovery/Pre-Kindergarten). Sometimes my other daughter doesn’t want to be left out and she joins us for part of the walk!

At first I thought this was just going to be for fun, but as I was thinking about it and then actually taking the photos it made me realize how use of images was really making me stop and take notice of things that I might otherwise take for granted. The act of trying to capture the essence of my ‘commute’ really made me think long and hard about what was important and what I wanted to share. I could definitely see creating a similar project for students. What a great way to bring students together from around the world!

I live on the third floor of a 20 story apartment block. If you know where to look, you can actually see my apartment in this photo!

There are plenty of places to stop and smell the flowers if you are looking for them.

Besides apartment blocks, there are some nice villas on the housing estate.

There are even some nice tree-lined sidewalks.

The choice of monuments around the place is… interesting.

Although it is a ‘modern internationl city‘, there is still plenty of old Hanoi to be seen.

The back gate of the school.

The Elementary School courtyard. This is usually teeming with kids running around and wreaking havoc!

One of the initiatives that has started at UNIS is a community garden. This one is right in the middle of the ES courtyard so that all the students can watch it grow and flourish.

The library (2nd floor) and canteen.

Finally. My door. Anything look familiar?

Yep. That’s me!

It’s a simple commute and one I usually take for granted. Not this morning though!

I’m looking forward to see the morning commutes of Adrienne, Jabiz, Keri-Lee, and Sean!

Our school is bordered on one side by plots of land used for farming and one of the common practices in Vietnam is to burn off the land in order to prepare it for use. And today, that farmer across the street did just that. The prevailing winds made for a bit of chaos as we left our assembly this morning.

Image Credits:
B5 Courtyard and A Bit of Fire by me, CC BY NC SA

Sometimes (just sometimes) I feel like this…

The rain has stopped and the skies are (kinda) blue!

Note: I hope that this will become a series of posts, inspired by Andrew Sullivan’s View from Your Window, that show how I’m feeling in my new, non-classroom role. It started here.

Last Week, Monday

ha long cave by shapeshift (CC BY NC SA)

Last Week, Friday

Tehran Sunset by Hamed Saber (CC BY)