i’m currently working in a very large country north of Australia, which is renowned for having a “Great Firewall”.
i should begin by acknowledging that this is a tremendous cultural experience, and i’m thoroughly overwhelmed by the sense of opportunity.
However, sure enough there is no access to
=> facebook or twitter,
=> google docs,
=> anything on blogspot.
(So Dale, if you were thinking of exporting your free ESL club to the good people of Szechuan.. think again. The international blog community only extends so far, ironically blocked by The Internationale.)
i can get my email (both fastmail and gmail), flickr, wikispaces, other google services such as the calendar.
It’s interesting to find out what will work, and what might not. And can we really be sure whether it’s intentionally blocked, or just an unhappy internet connection?
“This must be what it’s like to work in NSW!” i thought.
After hearing Robyn Jay bag the NSW education system so often – for its many blockages – this was the first comparison which sprang to mind. Many times, Robyn would prepare a session to show teachers the benefits of building your Personal Learning Network (PLN) with Web2 tools (or something similar), only to find the authorities had blocked those websites.
(And how reliant i have become on those social networking sites! i feel very isolated, cut off from my networks of friends and colleagues. Probably good to step away from the stream of information for a while.)
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