Hilary taking off again

Hilary and two friends took off tonight from Buffalo airport via Washington to Lisbon, Portugal. Let the fun begin (like last summer) with this time 5 weeks in Portugal, Spain, Hungary (big five day pop concert), Austria, Germany, Holland and then Ireland. Mary and I will meet Hilary in Amsterdam in early September and after a fun filled weekend in Holland, Mary and Hilary will venture into Ireland before flying back to Toronto.

Hilary plans to take off again in November to Thailand on her way to a year of work in "down under" Australia together with one of her nursing colleagues. Oh to be young and well trained...!

Have fun and stay safe, Hilary!!

Annual summer family vacation

We had a great week in a cottage near Fenelon Falls, where we rent a cottage every summer with Mary's brother, sister and our kids. Last year Hilary was in Europe and Mark in Calgary, but they were both with us this time. From left to right in the front: Chris and Matt (two friends from Mark), Hilary, Mark, Spencer (with broken leg this time) and Ralph. Second row from right to left: Susan, Fiona, Parker, Marcy and Wils. In the back: Joe, Mary and me.

Relaxing with Hilary who will leave tomorrow again for a few weeks Europe (and in November for a year to Australia), while Mark shows off at the solo water-ski....

Mary watches it all and shakes her head. But our kids are 50% her gene-pool!

I had some fun in our little laser sailing boat, but we concluded that we will put it up for sale again because we don't get enough use out of it. Might have been my last hurray with such action...

Visitors from Nigeria

We hosted a group of educators from Nigeria today. Did you know there is a city called "Jos" in Nigeria? I drove through that city in 1982..... (fun fact).

Dutch moment

Back in Canada and near a mall I noticed a small farmer's market where they were making a real Dutch treat: "poffertjes" (mini Dutch style pancakes). Yum....

Kahoot.it + workshop notes

During the past few days workshop facilitator Kevin got the group excited  by  doing some team quizzes using "kahoot.it". If you don't know it, have a look (it is open source and free to use).

You can have participants register as teams and then they have to answer questions and get points for the right answer and for how fast they send the answer. Really nice to get people going...

After every question you can show how the teams rank at that moment.
Here a few of the notes we made during the workshop on the themes of change management and project management.

At the end the participant got a certificate and we gave them follow-up tasks to stay active on the topic. We will follow up with them over the next few months with on-line surveys.

A good productive week at the MVTTC in Morogoro. Back in October for another workshop then to be hosted in Arusha for another group of college leaders.

Leading and Managing Change

After completing our first two days with trainers from the MVTTC teacher training institute, we had a bit of time to enjoy the surrounding mountains, before jumping into the three day workshop with 20 leaders from 4 of the 12 participating vocational institutions in this project.

Elsa from CICan started off the workshop with a welcome and an explanation of the larger ISTEP program in which we deliver our specific Seneca consultancy (educational management and leadership training). Afterwards Kevin started off with getting to know each other and our first part of the workshop: Leading and Managing Change.

Morogoro in Tanzania

From the Bogota airport back to Toronto and a week later via Zurich to Dar es Salaam...

In Tanzania for a consultancy project with the MVTTC (Training institute for teachers of the college system here) to work on new course materials for "Educational Management & Leadership".

My colleague Kevin works at Seneca"s Center for Teaching & Learning and works with his peers on the topic of preparing teachers who have aspirations to become managers at some stage in their career. I add value during the process with some case studies and role plays based on experiences.