Yesterday we only had two meetings and both were after 3.00 p.m. at the hotel where we are staying. In the morning Kuldeep and I chose to work from the hotel as it did not make sense to travel to the office we have been provided only to have to come back to the hotel for meetings. We spent the morning writing up all the notes from our meetings - I am amazed how much we have learned and how many people we have met in such a short time.
Our first meeting was with a representative from the Ministry of Education optional education program - Palace of Youth. My understanding of the Palace of Youth is that during the days of the USSR all the palaces that belonged to the Tsar and other wealthy people were given to the children of Russia as a place where children's activities could be held. The Palace of Youth offers activities such as art, dancing, music, etc ... and also some IT studies. The education is currently free but this is changing. We may get to visit one of the Palace of Youth sites next week.
Following this we had a complete change of pace and met with Sacha a highly energetic young entrepreneur who has a start up company called Balalaika which is into gamification of loyalty programs using social media such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. This is his fifth start-up and has this one has only been going for 2 months. I love the way these entrepreneurs just keep going with their ideas until they find one which is really successful - a real demonstration of persistence and resilience.
By the time we finished our last meeting Kuldeep and I were desperate to leave the hotel - getting cabin fever. Most of the others had gone to the Ballet - taken by their clients ... so Kuldeep, Tanya and myself found a very nice mediterranean restaurant for dinner which was only about 10 minutes walk from the hotel. We didn't want to go too far as there was thunder rumbling and it looked like it was going to rain. It actually didn't come to anything!
Today we had three meetings. The first was with teachers from a school in Ekaterinburg. This school, which takes students from 7-18 is one of the top schools for teaching IT skills to students.
They asked me about IT studies in schools in New Zealand and of course I did not have a clue. I have promised to find out what I can and get back to the school - they are really keen to learn what happens in other countries
Questions:
If anyone knows the answers to the following questions could you please e-mail me at vivienne@nz1.ibm.com
- Do schools in New Zealand teach IT studies
- Is IT studies compulsory in school in New Zealand - at primary/secondary?
- If compulsory - how many hours and week and what topics do they teach
- If not compulsory do all schools allow students to select this as an optional subject - how many hours a week and what topics do they teach?
- Is IT Studies part of NCEA?
- Do schools get discounted hardware, software, internet access, etc.
The school was very nice - not that different from how I remember schools here in New Zealand. The gardens were spectacular and apparently it is the teachers and parents who look after the gardens.
It would seem that most of the kids in the school come from homes with a fairly high standard of living as we were told they all have computers in their homes.
After meeting with the school we walked to our next meeting with the Dean of the IT Department at Ural Federal University. As we were neither a student or faculty and we had not been properly cleared we were not able to enter the University so we had to meet with the Professor in a Cafe.
The walk to the cafe was very pretty ..... but it was so hot - around 35 degrees. By the time I got there I felt like a wreck but the good thing was the cafe was air conditioned while a lot of the offices are not. It was a very trendy looking cafe. What I find here is most cafes and restaurants are not big open rooms they are lots of small spaces.
After that meeting we took a trolley bus back to the hotel where we had our last meeting for the day which was with the Head of Strategic Development and the Head of Innovation Technologies for the Bank of Reconstruction and Development - one of the 30 largest banks in Russia and the biggest in the Ural region.
In the evening Vilma, Divya, Kuldeep, Michael, Tanya and I set off to find a vegetarian Indian restaurant we had heard about. Both Divya and Kuldeep a vegetarians and whilst they have been able to find food here they are hanging out for some Indian food. After an hour of walking around looking for Govindas we finally found it - but it was not really Indian and the food was sitting in bain-maries where it looked as if it had been all day. Given this we decided to head somewhere else and after another 3/4 hours walking we finally found a nice Italian place ...... where we ran into the others in our team. They had not joined us initially as they wanted to use the Sauna and then go out for dinner and we wanted to eat earlier - they actually got to dinner before we did!! By the time we got to dinner we had seen a lot more of Ekaterinburg and also felt we really deserved dinner!!
When we left the restaurant around 10.30 p.m. the sun was only just going down and it was still around 27 degrees
When I got home I had a quick look at the New Zealand papers and found that Wellington was experiencing its worse storm in over 30 years and heard that my sister and brother in law had lost fences, had damage to the house. I didn't sleep that well worrying about everyone but have checked on them this morning and all are OK - but a lot of damage in Wellington. They will check on my house tomorrow as weather is still too bad to go out.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/8824068/Wellington-wakes-to-wind-whipped-city
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