
What a privilege it was to meet with educators from around the world at the AACE Educational Media Conference in Vienna, Austria, this June. I met with teachers from South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Austria, Australia, Great Britain, and many other countries. From what I heard at the conference, many countries are way ahead of the United States in terms of technology integration. My presentation discussed my doctoral research, illustrating that we as educators are still looking for a picture of the "whole beast" (a throwback to a John Godfrey Saxe poem titled "The Blind Men and the Elephant"), when it comes to forming any pedagogical conclusions about the ways in which technology has impacted today's learners. I presented my research conclusions, and proffered a new learning theory and instructional design model based on the changes in students' new schemata, due to their immersion in the digital age. You can download a PPT of my presentation and view my new instructional design model at http://tinyurl.com/3hh58u.
You can also view some online photos and videos from our European trip, starting at http://web.mac.com/mariesontag1/Europe_Trip/Photos.html, and then just follow the links to see what you are interested in. We visited Salzburg where we took "The Sound of Music" tour, then took a train to Warsaw where we visited with Stas', a student we had living with us for a year when he was 16 - he is now 29! We got to meet his fiancee', Basia, his older brother, and also his parents, for the first time. Stas' parents were so grateful to finally meet the couple who served as their son's "parents" and surrogate family for a year while he lived with our family and went to school here at Leigh High School. His parents don't speak very much English, but we managed to communicate using a Polish/English dictionary, and using the little bit of German that I know, since Stas' mother also knows German. We left as fast friends, and with a deep appreciation for the indomitable spirit of the Polish people. We also visited the ancient city of Krakow, Poland's first capital. I especially enjoyed our visit to the Collegium Maius, one of the oldest universities in Europe (after Prague), dating back to before the 1400's when Copernicus studied there! After four days in Poland, we took a train back to Vienna where we finished our touring and attended the conference. A highlight in Vienna was attending a Mozart concert at the Musikverein, one of the top three concert halls in the world. The music, the acoustics, and the beautiful hall were amazing!



