Wow is all I have to say about my trip into Burma!
I know I haven’t posted anything since my return but I did want to post a little update out of how things went.
I arrived in Bangkok and had to spend a few days there while we waited for our travel visas into Burma, while I was there I was told that I would be the guest speaker at a 3 day Children’s Ministry Conference. Needless to say this was small shock to me as I have never done anything like this before in my life. But God willing it all went without any problems.
The conference took place in the mountains at a place called Pyin OO Lwin where 100 children where registered to attend the conference. As the days when on there where more and more children who showed up at the conference so they could participate with the others.
It amazed me, the amount of energy that these children had!! I attempted to keep up with them, but when you sit behind a desk for 7 hours a day…. it is difficult to be up dancing and singing for 6 hours!!
If you would like to see more pictures and some video please follow this link http://thailandburma.shift8.ca where you can see some of the additional things that we did while we where there.
Well I have about 3 weeks left before I venture off to another far away place. I will be packing my bags and making the journey over to Thailand and Burma for a few weeks.
I was asked to join a friend of mine, Mike Kerychuk from Reaching Kids Internationally, to come and work for a few days with youth who are attending a bible college. As well we will be visiting families that have moved into an abandoned dog shelter (the conditions of the shelter where so bad that the government has closed down) and working with Mike to see if there anything we can do for these families.
I will be working on a few different projects while I am away on this trip.
The first will be the actual project with working with the students in Burma and Thailand.
The second is with a local group of grade 5 students and seeing if I can comminicate with them while I am overseas as well as I’ll be working with them on using technology.
(For more on this project please see this site http://thailandburma.shift8.ca/)
Lastly I will be looking at how a sub $500 netbook can be used in the field for missionary work for missionaries with very limited budgets.
Also while I am away I will be trying to keep Bryna Jones – Public Relations Coordinator for Streams of Hope updated on what I will be doing while I am away.
You will be able to follow her posts here at http://streamsofhope.wordpress.com/.
Ok this may sound weird but I was just trying some new software on my mac mini that will turn it into a media center and I installed the TED viewer and just happened to stumble across this video.
I am ever so impressed with this and would love to try one out to see how well it works ( and yes I will go to a swamp or something and actually drink the water from it, video tape the entire thing and post it here )
This device could simply erase the problem with non drinkable water around the world.
I am planning a trip to Thailand and Burma at the end of September and I would love to be able to bring a few of these with me on my mission trip (one for me to use and few extra to leave with the children that I will be meeting). I haven’t budgeted for something like this for this trip and if anyone is so moved to help either by sending a monetary gift or purchase directly and have delivered, I would be extremely grateful.
If donations don’t come through in time, there is another trip that is being planned in February/March time frame (one that I will not be going on but I could get a few people to take these with them) As well I do have a contact that lives in Thailand that makes regular trips into Burma and the surrounding area that I could send these to him and he could distribute.
Original Story Posted: http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/26/sugar-labs-sugar-on-a-stick-os-available-for-any-and-all/
I have been following this program for a few years now when it was first developed for the One Laptop Per Child and now I am more excited now that it is exiting its beta release and now is ready for real classroom use.
What is Sugar?
The award-winning Sugar Learning Platform promotes collaborative learning through Sugar Activities that encourage critical thinking, the heart of a quality education. Designed from the ground up especially for children, Sugar offers an alternative to traditional “office-desktop” software.
It may just be the geek in me but I love this type of technology. Just look past the “evolution” aspect and think how amazing God is and how we can learn so much from him. When I watched this video I thought of how this technology could be used for exploration in unsafe places for humans as well as possible rescue operations.
