Life in the Sau(ja)na

Blimey - that was a long flight. Actually it was two flights, one from London Heathrow to Colombo, Sri Lanka that was 11 hours long. We arrived at 2 am local time and then there was a five hour lay over before my second flight from Colombo to Kuala Lumpur, which took another 3 and a half hours. I'm knackered, I can tell you. But it was worth the travel to get here. This place is Paradise on Earth (picture taken ten minutes ago as the sun was setting). The place I'm staying is the Saujana Resort Hotel - but the 'ja' should be removed, it's so hot and humid here. I'm not complaining through, because the air conditioning is superb, the views are stunning, and even room service has just turned up to change my towels and I have only been here four hours! All around there are the obligatory palm trees and other exotic flora, and strange creatures you don't see in England are shouting down at you from the treetops.

I'm here for a four day conference run by IFIP, entitled: ICT and Learning for the Net Generation (LYICT Conference). IFIP is an influential group I have been a member of its working group 3.6 (distance education) since 1999. The conference is two days of open workshops followed by what they call a 'working conference', and boy, do they make us work! Sessions are scheduled from 0900 through to 1930 on the first day and there are four focus groups to choose from: 'New Learning Environments', 'Best Practice in ICT and Youth Empowerment', 'Changing Role of Learners and Teachers', and one that I am chairing which we have called 'Digital Divide and Cultural Understanding' (nobody mention Borat, please...)

I have already bumped into two of the three keynote speakers, Jan Wibe (now retired but formerly at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and currently chair of Technical Committee 3 - educational computing), and Ron Oliver (Edith Cowan University, Australia). I'm going to report their speeches and the rest of the event in this blog, so do come back and read some more...