If you're looking for more thoughts about traveling through China, you can find more about our trip here.
Saturday, November 24, 2018
Visiting Xingping, outside gorgeous Guilin
This is where I'll write up what we figured out about Xingping. It's an amazing place to visit, but pretty overwhelming and hard to plan! Like pretty much all of China... More details to come.
If you're looking for more thoughts about traveling through China, you can find more about our trip here.
If you're looking for more thoughts about traveling through China, you can find more about our trip here.
Taking the train in China
While we were in China this summer (2018), we took the high-speed bullet train a bunch of times, including both long-distance and short distances. It was pretty hard to find clear information online in English how to purchase tickets, pick up the tickets, and actually navigate the train system, but we figured it out pretty well!
We were traveling as a family of 3 - one adult and two kids, aged 8 and 11. We communicated anything complicated via Google Translate apps, and my 11-yr-old daughter's basic Mandarin learned at school.
Our train trips included:
Here are a few things I figured out...
We bought all our tickets on CTrip.com English. They have a purchase fee, but tickets were still ultra reasonable.
I only ever bought adult tickets, because I was worried about the various restrictions of the child-fare tickets. Again, the prices were so low that I figured I was paying a bit extra for the convenience.
They didn't always put us together. For the trainride to Nanjiang, my daughter was seated not just several rows away from us, but several cars away. But there are people walking and standing all over the train, so no one blinked at us hanging out in her car as we approached our arrival station.
After buying the tickets on CTrip, I had to go to the train station - any train station - to pick them up. Bring your passport! Without a Chinese ID card, you can't use the automatic ticket machines and have to go to a counter. I found it easiest to pick up several tickets at once. There are plenty of good basic guides online for picking up tickets. Be sure to look for the right ticket counter!
We always arrived WAY too early for the trains... Many websites recommend arriving 2 hours early. For one of our travel legs, 2 hours early got us to the train station a full hour before it even opened. 30 minutes was plenty early enough, but it's true that you need to account for traffic on the way to the station. (On the other hand, 2 hours wasn't early enough for the Shenzhen - Hong Kong Airport ferry! I'll write about that here. Totally awesome and super convenient, but holy logistical nightmare.)
Every railway employee we ever interacted with at any of the train stations was wonderful and patient. We did a lot of passing my phone back and forth to write messages that the app could translate, and they were all duly impressed with my daughter's efforts with her Mandarin.
I don't even remember all the questions I had before our trip... Please comment with questions so I can improve any support I can give! Traveling around China is incredibly easy once you actually get started, but planning is challenging.
If you're looking for more thoughts about traveling through China, you can find more about our trip here.
We were traveling as a family of 3 - one adult and two kids, aged 8 and 11. We communicated anything complicated via Google Translate apps, and my 11-yr-old daughter's basic Mandarin learned at school.
Our train trips included:
- Business-class from Shenhen North to Guilin North - 3 hours - but we got off at Yangshuo with no issues. (Yangshuo is one station before Guilin North, and was closer to our intended desination of Xingping.)
- I followed some advice I'd found online to not rush buying our tickets because "there are always lots of tickets available!" That wasn't correct... Only business-class tickets were available by the time I purchased a few days before we were ready to head to Yangshuo. They were a little over 100$USD each, which was still less than a domestic flight. Over $300 for our three tickets.
- For some reason, even though it was the same train ride, CTrip showed no tickets at all available to Yangshuo, but tickets available to Guilin - the next stop after Yangshuo. I was nervous there would be some issue with getting off early, but there wasn't.
- 2nd-class from Yangshuo to Guiyang East - 3 hours - less than $100 total!
Business class vs 2nd class.
2nd is still much roomier than a flight! The snacks in business class left much to be desired.
- 2nd-class roundtrip from Guiyang to Nanjiang Canyon and back - less than 1 hour - $32 TOTAL! Round trip, for 3 people! Over half of that was booking fee, so I could have cut the cost down if I bought directly at the railway station counter.
- This trip was a great decision, despite my making mistakes left and right. I'll post more about this crazy side-trip here.
- For the trip to Nanjiang, I did it right... Guiyang North (the older station but much closer to the city) to Nanjiang Station.
- For the trip back to Guiyang, I messed up and bought the ticket departing from Kaiyang station, which is the next station past Nanjiang away from Guiyang... Luckily, the lovely and infinitely-patient folks at the tiny Nanjiang station let us in no problem, so we just caught the train a station late.
- 2nd-class Guiyang North back to Shenzhen North - 6 hours! Just under $200 for all three of us, incl $15 booking fee.
Here are a few things I figured out...
We bought all our tickets on CTrip.com English. They have a purchase fee, but tickets were still ultra reasonable.
I only ever bought adult tickets, because I was worried about the various restrictions of the child-fare tickets. Again, the prices were so low that I figured I was paying a bit extra for the convenience.
They didn't always put us together. For the trainride to Nanjiang, my daughter was seated not just several rows away from us, but several cars away. But there are people walking and standing all over the train, so no one blinked at us hanging out in her car as we approached our arrival station.
After buying the tickets on CTrip, I had to go to the train station - any train station - to pick them up. Bring your passport! Without a Chinese ID card, you can't use the automatic ticket machines and have to go to a counter. I found it easiest to pick up several tickets at once. There are plenty of good basic guides online for picking up tickets. Be sure to look for the right ticket counter!
We always arrived WAY too early for the trains... Many websites recommend arriving 2 hours early. For one of our travel legs, 2 hours early got us to the train station a full hour before it even opened. 30 minutes was plenty early enough, but it's true that you need to account for traffic on the way to the station. (On the other hand, 2 hours wasn't early enough for the Shenzhen - Hong Kong Airport ferry! I'll write about that here. Totally awesome and super convenient, but holy logistical nightmare.)
Every railway employee we ever interacted with at any of the train stations was wonderful and patient. We did a lot of passing my phone back and forth to write messages that the app could translate, and they were all duly impressed with my daughter's efforts with her Mandarin.
WAY too early to the train station.
Another view of Business Class vs 2nd Class.
Seriously, the Business Class seats are just unnecessary. 😂
We love China Railway!
I don't even remember all the questions I had before our trip... Please comment with questions so I can improve any support I can give! Traveling around China is incredibly easy once you actually get started, but planning is challenging.
If you're looking for more thoughts about traveling through China, you can find more about our trip here.
A departure from the norm...
My kids and I went to south-central China this summer for about 4 weeks, and visited a bunch of places that were quite challenging to research ahead of time. So I decided that I'd put together a guide/reflection to support others who might want to visit some of those places. Even though this is officially my science teaching blog, it's also my only blog, so this is where that guide is going!
- Hong Kong
- border crossing into Shenzhen
- Shenzhen
- Splendid China Folk Villages
- bullet train to Yangshuo station
- Xingping, near Guilin
- biking and hiking
- bullet train to Guiyang
- Guiyang
- Qianling Shan park
- Oriental Science Fiction Valley
- 东方科幻谷
- Dongfang Kehuan Guzhuti Park
- side trip, overnight in Nanjiang Canyon, via train to Nanjiang station
- side trip, overnight in Qingyan Ancient Town, via bus
- bullet train back to Shenzhen
- ferry from Shenzhen to Hong Kong International Airport
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Get out the vote... for SXSWedu 2017!
Enlearn is an organization developing truly awesome adaptive educational technology, including some of my favorite math games! I've been bugging them to apply to SXSWedu for a couple years, so let's get them in this year!
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/60420
Lisa Castaneda and Foundry10 are doing some incredible work with VR, student-driven learning, gaming, and other amazing areas in education. This is another group new to the SXSWedu community, and they can bring a ton to conversations across the conference. Let's get 'em in!
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/63136
HackPDXXL ! Maggie Powers, Matt Mineau, and I are proposing a problem-solver session to consider how we might scale up the innovation and disruption in classroom, small-scale, and online learning to the massive-scale annual conference PD model... Pretty meta, really. :-)
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/62987
Ellen and Dan and improvisation... Will be a highly engaging, culture-transforming workshops! They've got two in the hopper, so let's make it really hard for the executive committee to choose between the two. :-)
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/65603
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/62842
The Real JamCam, in - I think - his SXSWedu debut! Virtual reality in the humanities classroom will be fascinating, and the workshop structure will be very practical... my faves.
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/65415
Charles Shryock and his team leading a design session on school workflow systems... We don't often get above the classroom level to school and district levels, and this session will be incredibly valuable for technology developers and other non-school-based education enthusiasts.
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/65614
Jessica Lura and her team, and critical thinking!
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/64976
Donna, Zeina, and Ian on computational thinking!
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/61916
Ashley, Amanda, and Cheryl
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/67647
Chris and Jill
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/67961
--------------------------
Sex Ed sessions, because sex ed should be central to any conversations about making learning more student-centered and promoting preparation for global citizenship and personal independence! I don't know these folks personally, but Cory Silverberg (first link) wrote two of my favorite sex ed resources for young learners!
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/63941
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/60825
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/68144
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Collections of photos of our space
the wall of joy
with tables out (and Nick working)
the soldering corner
wide view. woodworking room to the left, digital out of view to the right
The woodworking room. Still in process. main room visible through window on right
digital room with main room visible to left
digital room with greenscreen on right
Friday, February 12, 2016
A few quick pics from Adventure Days year 4
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| From raw cocoa beans to laser-engraved dark chocolate |
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| Middle Schooler-sourced words representing school, word cloud, laser cutter, spray paint |
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| Wood working |
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| Models: Cake and fondant model of school, laser cut architectural design, working ski lift |
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| Variety. costumery, dissection, mechanical clock, cake, photography and fashion |
Monday, June 29, 2015
5th Grade "Ancient Civilizations" incorporating #makered
There's a classic and very fun activity frequently used in teaching 5th graders about ancient civilizations. After learning about what makes a civilization, a class will invent their own civilization that has all of the required characteristics, but with their own silly twist. It's fun, creative, and really lets kids think about why all those characteristics are necessary to call a group a "civilization."
My 5th grade colleagues have taken this invent-a-civilization activity even further... After each of the three 5th grade classes invented their civilizations - in TOP secret! - each student designed an artifact that would have been found in that civilization. They used Tinkercad to create their designs, and we printed on our Ultimaker 2. Each class then buried their artifacts, and the other classes acted as archaeologists to dig up and interpret the artifacts!
The role play of "archaeologist" added a huge learning element that is particularly important to me as a science teacher - how do we interpret data? And is our interpretation always RIGHT? After the classes interpreted each others' artifacts, they compared notes... How accurately did the archaeologists understand the culture? What elements of the culture were they not able to interpret? *This* is realistic science, especially archaeology: We can't always get the full picture, and new information may change our entire outlook!
Here's an example of one student's design and interpretation. In the bottom picture, you can see the intrepid archaeologists studying the artifacts!
My 5th grade colleagues have taken this invent-a-civilization activity even further... After each of the three 5th grade classes invented their civilizations - in TOP secret! - each student designed an artifact that would have been found in that civilization. They used Tinkercad to create their designs, and we printed on our Ultimaker 2. Each class then buried their artifacts, and the other classes acted as archaeologists to dig up and interpret the artifacts!
The role play of "archaeologist" added a huge learning element that is particularly important to me as a science teacher - how do we interpret data? And is our interpretation always RIGHT? After the classes interpreted each others' artifacts, they compared notes... How accurately did the archaeologists understand the culture? What elements of the culture were they not able to interpret? *This* is realistic science, especially archaeology: We can't always get the full picture, and new information may change our entire outlook!
Here's an example of one student's design and interpretation. In the bottom picture, you can see the intrepid archaeologists studying the artifacts!
Here are just a few more pictures of the project underway, because I love pictures.
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