Friday - A Coach Tour of the Island

We booked a bus tour, billed Magical Ibiza, where we were going to learn all about the island. We certainly learned a lot – mostly about hippies – taught by possibly the last of them!
The hippies seem to have been very important to the development of Ibiza, time seems to have been measured before and after the hippies. There are many hippy markets where local arts and crafts are sold, music is played and many locals gather to sell their produce.

As we drove around the island we saw people harvesting almonds, to achieve the harvest they drag out closely woven nets under the trees and hit the branches with sticks so that the nuts fall off into the nets. Carob beans were all ready and hanging in brown pods ready to be harvested after the almonds. Prickly pears had been picked in some places but not others.

We had a couple of breaks from the bus to take photographs of the salt flats and to visit a church.

The Church of Sant Josep De Sa Talaia

The area was very rich in the 18th Century and a beautiful church with gold plating on the altar and paintings on the pulpit, and huge highly ornate statues was built. It was badly damaged in the civil war but much of it has been restored now and it is, once again, quite beautiful.


The ceiling decoration is coloured blue, as many building entrances, windmills etc are., this is to prevent the little people of local folklore, familiars as they are known, from entering the houses and creating mischief.




The Salt Flats

“The island's salt flats measure six million square metres and were deemed worthy of conservation by the Spanish government in 1995. In 2001, the Balearic government confirmed the area's national park status. It contains 26 salt pools and the salt harvested there is considered to be one of the finest varieties in the world. The main buyers for the "white gold" are Norway, the Faroe Islands (Denmark), Iceland and Great Britain. At the beginning of the last century, the salt company even had branches as far away as Canada and Calcutta. Ibiza's salt is mainly used to preserve cod and as table salt. Ships stop off at the sa Canal jetty all year round to take on a load of salt. About 4,000 tonnes of salt are on hand to be collected at any given time.”

Quoted from: http://www.ibizaa-z.com/print2.php?name=Ibiza%27s%20Salt%20Flats where there is a load more information. There are more photos on the Flickr page.



Cava de Can Marca in Puerto St Miguel


The bus tour ended at the Cava de Can Marca in Puerto St Miguel. The cave is over 100,000 years old. Down about 300 steps – has stalactites – but also an artificial waterfall, coloured lights and piped music – pity!

It was far too hot to be on a bus for most of the day. Unfortunately we had done a full tour of the island picking up passengers – by the time the tour started we had more or less had enough by 5pm we were just so glad to get off and take a very long drink to the swimming pool!

Ibiza Festival 8th August 2009

Saturday

The day was free until evening, we went down on to the beach very early and went for long swims around the rocks and towards the next cove. We just relaxed until about 3pm when we decided we needed to eat. After eating we got ready to go out to the festival.



Ibiza Town is the capital of the island and Saturday 8th August saw the festival of its patron Saint. We attended the event arriving at the harbour as it was getting dark. Around the harbour and port were shops, jewellery stalls, musical events, street theatre etc., it was all very lively and interesting. We headed towards the old town or Dalt Vila. We climbed right up to the top walking up through the city walls called the Murallas de Ibiza and navigating the narrow, windy, cobbled streets. It was fascinating to see the tiny houses, shrines built into the streets, designer shops with room for half a dozen items, the market stalls as well as the dozens of cafes, restaurants, and bars making a very vibrant atmosphere. It was a slight shock to see KFC there – a bit sad really!

The city walls were built in the 16th Century as a defence against attacks by the Turkish smugglers. They are well preserved, and have been classed as a world Heritage Site. There are many tiny, hidden entrances that only local people would know and could use in case of attack but the main entrance is called the Portal de Ses Taules.


Looking out over the whole island at the top of the city is the Castle and Cathedral de Santa Maria with impressive gothic architecture it was built sometime between the 14th-16th century. The castle wall still has four cannons trained out over the port. It is all illuminated at night it very pretty to see.

After the cathedral visit and taking many dozens of spectacularly poor photographs of the wonderful views we returned to the port to watch the firework display. There must have been thousands of people including many young children and babies there – it was a very festive atmosphere, not something we are really used to here in the UK.

Real information about Ibiza is hard to find on the web, maybe there is far more in Spanish, but here are a few write-ups that give useful information.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/spain/menorca/718886/Ibiza-Feeling-groovy.html

http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/holidays-in-ibiza-534083.html

http://ibiza.costasur.com/en/misterioso-ibiza.html

A Court Experience

I have had the very mixed blessing of being involved in a court case for the last three weeks. Justice is something we all take for granted in this country but how it has been achieved has always been somewhat of a mystery to me having never before been involved in any way, shape or form.

The constant referrals to the law books and ensuing discussions have been a real eye opener. The effort involved in making sure that the defendant has a fair trial and is not damaged by prejudice, contamination, collusion, evidence that is biased in some way, or does not actually help either for the prosecution or the defense to the lay person seems totally over the top but is clearly very necessary.

The judge, treated with absolute respect by the court staff and other regular personnel but human enough to instantly dismiss the obvious faux pas worrying counsel when a witness sat in the stand. He had an amazing skill in cutting through the legal arguments and establishing the fair line, which everyone then adheres to is something to admire as is the cross questioning by the counsel on both sides to try to establish the truth of a matter.

So I am in awe of the system, the thoroughness etc. that it involves and the total commitment by everyone to make sure the trial is fair with all parties being supported as necessary. What I was totally amazed by was the apparent time wasting that the current system seems to be unable to avoid.

Once the trial to all intents and purposes was over and the jury was out the counsel and police involved in the case were waiting for a considerable amount of time for the verdict. On the morning after retirement there was a legal question from the jury where counsel and the judge needed to discuss the answer. In the court was a live link video conferencing system, probably just an in-house link at the moment, but it could have easily been used for all concerned parties to have that legal discussion over the airways and then counsel for the prosecution, who has another case waiting and on hold, could have been working on that one. Clearly this would take organization but from this experience I can see that there is time before court convinces at 10am, coffee break about 11.15, lunch break, 1 – 2 and afternoon break about 2.45 when such opportunities for discussion could easily be taken without people having to be sitting around for days waiting. The next trial has to have these fifteen or so minute breaks at the beginnings or endings of sessions anyway to discuss the same legal questions so it would make no appreciable difference to the running case but enable these highly qualified people to be moving forward instead of waiting. In this way overlap between trials would not involve so many people sitting around waiting endlessly in one court whilst another is waiting.

I would guess that the overlap in most cases is only going to be a day or two – as long as the jury is actually out which seems, most times, to be up to a day, occasionally a couple of days but quite rarely a prolonged event unless it is a huge complex trial.

There have been many other eye openers in this whole experience as well – the necessity for about 30 people to bring all of the evidence together to lock another person up for years and years is very upsetting. Even when you are 100% positive that the evidence is true it is a very hard thing to do. How on earth people can do this for their whole lives is beyond me.

In my next life I want to be a court usher! That seems to be the most interesting job in the whole place :0)

Phillip and Vicky's Wedding

Where on earth do I start with a family wedding? I guess as we are in the UK the weather! Friday it poured down all day, Sunday we are almost flooded out but Saturday was glorious. How lucky is that? The bride even got a little sunburned on her shoulders whilst the photographs were being taken!

The whole family managed, by some means, to be all present at the Registry Office. The group photograph was taken as we all arrived. In front are Phillip and Vicky. Left to right behind are Clemence & Andy (Andy is Phillip’s twin brother) Helen, Neil & Jay, Carol & Harold.

The wedding service there was lovely, so much better than it was when we got married, though that was a very long time ago. It was happy, warm and friendly with the words tailored to fit their situation. It was all a bit too much for their young son Woody who pretty much refused to be photographed all day :-) He has been talking none stop of the wedding for weeks but once he set eyes on us all together he went very shy and quiet and stayed like that most of the afternoon.

From the registry office we went to where Phillip and Vicky are living and as Phillip is a gamekeeper that is on a big country estate. The official photographs were taken around the lake there, it was a very beautiful spot with waterfalls a bridge and lovely scenery providing the setting. Once all of the group photographs were taken the two families minus the bride and groom went back up to the house for lunch whilst more shots were taken of the bride and groom. Apparently as they moved around the lake for different shots a pair of swans with five cygnets followed them and will appear in some of the photographs when we get them.

A few of the informal photographs are on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/24572238@N02/sets/72157621688712322/

Once the formality of the actual wedding was over it was party time. We ate and drank very well, chatted to Vicky’s family whom we have known for a long time but do not often see, chatted to their friends and the people they work with, chatted to our own family who are rarely altogether outside Christmas day and generally just had a very good time.

Clemence never knew what she let herself in for – poor lass :-) She offered to be the driver for the brothers Rainbow that did not get married as they did not all want to be tied to coming back in the taxi with us when we were ready to leave. I will not repeat what she told me about them this morning. Suffice to say we “found” all of Andrew’s clothes folded beautifully in an unused bedroom this morning and Clem “found” Andrew wandering naked at some point after he had woken up in the car and managed to find his way into the house. She guided him to their bed and threw a cover over him before abandoning him and sleeping in a spare bed! I am so glad it was not me waking with that headache to go to work at 10.30 this morning!

… and I am still struggling to get the port stain off Andy’s brand new white, posh shirt… it could not have been a cheapy could it? Sod’s law has a lot to answer for.

A wonderful, happy day was had by all. The one slight downer on the day was the twenty people who did not risk coming either because they or their children have or are recovering from swine flu, that seemed very sad for the bride and groom who were missing a lot of their friends and the friends that missed the wedding.

Half way through the day Helen and Vicky realised that they have a sister in each other where they have both only had brothers up until now and Liz, Vicky's mum, reminded me that we are both mother-in-laws. How wicked a mother-in-law can I managed to be:-) I would rather celebrate having a new daughter-in-law :-)

A session with Wlodek Barbosa

Thursday night I attended the Osnagroup session with Wlodek Barbosa. Usually I attend these sessions which are mostly English language learning based as the recording person rather than as an interested party, though of course they are often interesting, it is just that I am not an English teacher!

This particular session was interesting because it was about teaching with games in Second Life and I am particularly interested in that. Wlodek uses a system that he calls Phonetic Augmented Virtuality Objects or PAVed Objects to make his games. I actually recognised a few of the textures and scripts that Wlodek was using - there were bits there that I developed :-) This actually encourages me to keep on trying to develop new bits and makes me also realise that textures that I upload can help others.The games are all fun, easy to play and exlain and are well used over Wlodek's 42 session course, so they have had a fair test!

It is interesting that Wlodek concentrates on phonics to develop pronunciation, it relates strongly to how some many teach reading to small children here in the UK. Foreign language learning is so closely linked to initial language learning, if only adults could learn like children :-)

I did love the finder that Wlodek demonstrated, I can't see how I could use it at the moment but it is great fun.

For a reording of the event listen here:
http://blip.tv/file/2351582?filename=Osnacantab-PhoneticAugmentedVirtualityObjectsPAVedObjects489.mp3

The Oxfordshire Harnessing Technologies Conference

What a wonderful day but sadly I did not see nearly enough! The exhibition hall was busy with lots of interesting things to see, try out and investigate. Pupils there for the Logo challenge final, a school radio station, showing off video work, showing off the Learning Platform and other pupils –sorry if I have missed your project – wandered around all of the stands playing with the ipod touch, netbooks, DSs, beebots, robots, trying to get into Second Life and wishing their lives away until they can join, and as one stand owner tweeted – “There's many kids here and they are utterly mercenary about grabbing free stuff as they can fit in their tiny fists”… that’s what kids do :-)

Preparing for the conference - mostly kids and toys :-)

On the ICT stand we had computers in Second Life showing where and how we teach our e-safety course, we had a Twitter board – first time ever – not really approved but by the same token not stopped!

There were loads of breakout sessions in three rooms upstairs at the Williams’ F1 conferencing centre at Grove but again I missed most of them hearing only the three that I was responsible for managing.

The first was Dawn Hallybone from Redbridge talking about game based learning with lots of ideas how to use games to improve children’s writing, maths, geography and far, far more by using games.
This was an inspiring talk, I wish every teacher in the county could have heard it! See Dawn’s slides on Slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/HandheldLearning/dawn-hallybone-presentation

Next came Shirish Patel from the E learning Foundation talking about the Becta’s Home Access Initiative. The trial in Oldham and Suffolk is coming to an end and anyone who wants to be a part of the process needs to start asking their parents and investigating what their schools wants it to do for them, now! A timely presentation!

There seem to be three ways in which a school could help their community, simply by making the information about the grant known, they could maybe facilitate the claiming of the grant and buying of the equipment, at best they could aggregate the home access initiative, getting contributions from parents who do not have access to the funding, buying the computers on masse so that all pupils have one - some schools have done it for all in this manner.

See the Becta page for loads of information http://news.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=38386

The last presentation that I was responsible for managing was one about Espresso. Tom from Deddington School and Chris from Espresso demonstrated what it can offer, the range of resources available etc.
http://www.espresso.co.uk/ For more information contact Espreso directly or the county team.

The whole day seemed to be a very positive experience, teachers who I talked to and the tweets said that people enjoyed it and learned lots from it, several teachers meantioned brain overload - so hopefully after a day or two to think about it they will have rationalised all they they saw and heard :-) A good day!

A Visit to the Art Box

Tuesday evening saw the last e-safety session of this course and as usual we went visiting places in Second Life. In fact we did not visit places, we got stuck on the first place and look loads of photographs! The Art Box is a lovely new build by Frankie Rockett and a friend whose name I could nto find on the build - sorry! It is lots of fun. It is based on a holodeck and famous paintings. One chooses a picture and the holodeck builds the scene for the picture but allows visitors to replace the people in the real picture. There are pose balls placed so that people pose as they did in the real image and props to help set the scene. For the whole set of pictures take there see the flickr set – http://www.flickr.com/photos/24572238@N02/sets/72157621042473383/

To visit The Art Box you need to be a member of Second Life and follow this Slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Klaw/28/19/35

I just wish this could be available for pupils in school, just imagine the discussion about the artist, artist’s life, what the picture means, represents, how it is constructed etc! I am continually amazed at what Second Life could offer to the education of the young and they are not allowed in, it is so sad!