Last week I had the privilege of attending an International Baccalaureate workshop conference in Beijing on teaching Higher Level Mathematics (Category 3). Upon my return to school I have been asked, a number of times, “How was Beijing?”. I have two responses to this, both of which I will go into further detail in during this post.
The first is Beijing, the city. The second is, the course.
As a city (Warning! sweeping statement is coming!) Beijing was not impressive. Granted that my opinions were heavily influenced by the appalling levels of pollution throughout my stay. But that surely is a fair reason to like a city or not! If you can’t breath healthy air then there is not much point in enjoying the non-essentials of life that a city can offer is there?
So how bad was the pollution? Well this website gives readings of pollution levels in Beijing. To give you some background here are the classifications of pollution levels;
| Good | 0-50 |
| Moderate | 51-100 |
| Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 101-150 |
| Unhealthy | 151-200 |
| Very Unhealthy | 201-300 |
| Hazardous | >300 |
As a guide, Singapore has a level that is almost always around 30. i.e Singapore is considered good. But then that doesn’t really mean anything – Singapore is a normal city and is actually quite clean. However, when considering that the lowest level of pollution during my stay in Beijing was 45 and that was after it had just rained, well maybe that gives some context.
OK, hopefully that is some context. Now wait for this…. prior to the rain on Sunday lunchtime that reduced it to that level of 45, it was above 420! That’s right, 201-300 is Very Unhealthy and above 300 is Hazardous yet it was 420 while I was there! It really was as shocking as it sounds.
I couldn’t workout why Beijing Airport had such an awful smell upon my arrival on Thursday morning. It wasn’t until later on I realised that this was the pollution. Later on when I ventured out from the hotel it only took about 15 minutes of breathing the poor terrible quality air until I got a sore throat and a metallic feel in my mouth. Yup, it’s as horrible as it sounds.
I ventured out to Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City on Thursday afternoon and although they were quite impressive – their over-awing size and the fact they were located in the middle of a busy city – the fact they were surrounded by smog that looked like a foggy UK winter morning took away from their potential.
A final word on the pollution: the smog was so bad that I was able to point the camera directly at the sun at midday and take a picture of it. The sun wasn’t bright, it just glowed – looking like a typical picture of the planet mercury.
The other point I’d like to make about not enjoying Beijing was the silly internet restrictions. I knew before I travelled that I would probably not be able to access facebook and twitter. It was still very frustrating though and there were numerous other sites, including this blog, that couldn’t be accessed. It was all the more frustrating when trying to share resources when at the Maths course and not being able to see websites that would be of great use.
Although I am sure governments from across the world do so on a much smaller scale, it is disappointing to know that a government is telling over 1 billion citizens “don’t look at that, nope don’t look at that either, or that….”. It really goes against my purpose as a teacher; to encourage students to enhance their skills for life and be creative thinkers in a continually adapting world. How can you do so in the modern world where technology, social media and communication tools play such an integral role, if your government prevents you from using a wide variety of websites?
Now, talking of technology brings me on to discussing the main purpose of my visit to Beijing, the IB HL Mathematics workshop. I don’t want to send the majority of you readers to sleep talking about the ins and outs of the course so here are just a few points. The course was excellent. The other participants were all great (although one did get thrown out on the first morning, but that’s a story for another day…), the workshop leader and other leaders there were very experienced and extreemly helpful. It was a very insightful few days.
Probably the one aspect of the workshop that really kept occurring and gave me lots to think about and take away was the use of technology in the HL Maths classroom. To give you a bit of context, there is a video clip below which lead to many of our discussions we had (although fairly long it is worth a look if you are interested in the use of technology in schools):
So what technology can we use in the classroom even for a budget strapped school such as the one I work in? I saw some great use of a programme called Geogebra which will now be making regular appearances in my classroom. Then of course there is Autograph. But beyond that the use of wiki’s and even file sharing systems such as dropbox should help with sharing resources and communication with students.
I am aware that this post caters for two different audiences but hopefully that means I will get some responses! It may also mean I never get a visa for China again but….
Have you been to Beijing? What was your experience of the city? Are you a Maths teacher? What technology do you use in your classroom? How can both students and teachers be encouraged to embrace technology?
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