Today we celebrated Father’s Day a little early at Edventure in Columbia. What a fun day! It was a great day for families. We played steel drums, made music with gum balls, felted, watched robots play catch and frisbee toss, rode a virtual ferris wheel, learned morse code, shot an air rocket… It was a BLAST! Excuse the pun.
This was the second year for the Maker Faire. Keep an eye out for it next year… take your family!
The last two days have been a culmination of almost a year of planning. The team I work on hosted the 3rd annual Richland Two’s SC Midlands Summit with over 600 participants from 9 states and 31 school districts. What an amazing experience! The summit was filled with over 130 sessions and 3 amazing keynotes from Steve Dembo, Leslie Fisher, and Catlin Tucker.
Planning this Summit is a LOT of work but every year, after it is over, and I am so tired all I can do is smile. Why do I smile? Because every ounce of the work is worth it to see how excited teachers are about learning and integrating. These are the same teachers that one week ago were exhausted from a long school year. Being on the planning committee allows me to share my passion for technology and it warms my heart to see so many so excited.
I just wanted to say thank you to all of those who attended. You reminded me of the reason I do what I do every day.
I have conversed with people from France and Germany. It’s been pretty awesome. Silly, I know but I don’t speak French or German so this could have been a huge challenge.
Let me explain. I listed a number of craft supplies on eBay last week. Usually I mark the items North America only but I forgot. When I realized I thought, “Oh, no one outside the U.S. will buy any of this.” Boy, was I wrong. A number of items sold to people in Europe. I started receiving questions in German and French. I opened the messages and had one of those “oh, crap!” moments because I thought how am I going to do this? Then I thought for a second, “D’uh! Google Translate!” I have been able to communicate seamlessly with customers from France and Germany. In every email I typed both the english version and the translated version in hopes that if Google Translate did not translate correctly the english version was readily available.
Was this anything phenomenal? No, but it made me realize how easy technology can make communication around the world. Of course my first reaction was “I’m just a stupid American” since I am not multilingual but in this case, technology made me a little smarter.
Life is a Maker Faire 