I'm enroute to Berlin Germany for the Apple Distinguished Educator 2006 Institute! Although I am crammed like a sardine into my seat, I have wireless access. It's not free, however. I was surprised to learn that Lufthansa has wireless access on its planes, and if I were in business class, I'd be able to plug in my laptop. In economy class, I can't plug in, so I am dependent on my quickly draining laptop battery. It's really hard to actually getting any work done, too, as I have my 17 inch PowerBook tipped at sort of an angle so that it fits on my tray table. Since connecting, I've checked my email and chatted with another ADE flying from Oregon to Germany. How cool is that? He's going to try and skype someone to see how it works from the skies; I don't have a headset handy and I don't want to bother my fellow sardines with talking out loud.
Anyway, I am thrilled about this trip, although my material extincts have made me slightly neurotic at the thought of leaving my two kids and husband at home. I left detailed word processed instructions, set up babysitters complete with their pay in marked envelopes, created an AIM account for my family to chat with me, and also created an email address for my daughter. She's 7 and getting interested in email, so I thought this would a good opportunity to keep in touch with her and introduce her to this form of communication.
We will arrive in Berlin early Saturday morning, and I think we'll be off sightseeing right away. I hope I can avoid jet lag, so I plan on sleeping as much as possible soon. If you haven't heard about this project, about 70 Apple Distinguished Educators, Apple employees, and a few people from the George Lucas Educational Foundation are going abroad with EF Tours to write a global awareness curriculum. We will visit Berlin and Prague during this trip, and then I will continue on to Florence and Paris with two other ADEs. I am so excited!
Watch this space for more developments. Also, I have another blog where you might find some stuff about the institute and we've created a Flickr group for the trip. Larry Anderson is also blogging about the trip, and I'll post that link as soon as I hear more about it.
Hi Lucy,
I was on a Luftansa flight from Portland to Frankfurt last weekend. (family trip to Spain...) The wireless was pretty nice, of course it's the battery life on the laptop that is kind of the deal breaker. :-)
I was doing some chatting with some folks enroute. Also it's kind of strange to track your own flight via Google Earth while you are on the flight...
Sounds like a great experience. Am looking forward to learning more about the Institute...
Tim
Posted by: Tim C. Lauer | Saturday, July 22, 2006 at 01:57 AM