Cooking in Greece

It's a sweltering 37 degrees plus here in Heraklion today, and it's Sunday, a day of rest. I have seen several bearded Greek Orthodox priests milling around in their black robes and pillbox hats, and wonder how they keep cool. The heat is bearable if you can find periodic shade, but we're all cooking here. I guess you could say that we are the Sunday roast... The conference closed yesterday and ended with a Greek night. The remaining ICICTE conference delegates (those whose heads weren't hammering a Cozy Powell solo) have just returned from a short trip out to visit the ruined palace of Knossos. It's a site that has seen earthquake after earthquake, but each time, the palace was rebuilt using the technology of the time. They simply built over what went previously. Then it fell to complete ruin and was buried and only excavated again around 1878. Now it's a visitors centre, and it's crawling with tourists.

It is so easy to focus on the ruins when you go to Knossos - that's what most people go there for. But I was reminded by a colleague that the palace was originally purposed so that people could look out and enjoy the stunning scenery that surrounds the site. So that's what I did - looked out. And it was beautiful. So often, when we repurpose new learning technologies and build them onto the old ones, we tend to look inwards at what they are and what they can do. Instead, we should be looking outwards, through them, so seeing how we can use new technologies to communicate with each other and share our ideas better. I'm flying out tomorrow, and will be glad to get back home, but it's been an interesting and rewarding experience here in Crete.