Well, it seems that frequent updating of a travel blog is rather easier said than done. Each day gets busier and busier, but there is a little gap in proceedings and I will attempt to report on the events of the past three days in order.
Yesterday, as you saw from my blog, I was put to good use on the IT side of things. It always annoys me that most IT people are males and when I couldn't get onto the wireless Internet in the Conference Centre, they assured my that they had had no trouble the previous day. In the end I was able to persuade them that the problem was the gateway and my computer was asking for a DNS to be assigned. Of course their computers worked because they would have been configured with the appropriate gateway. In the end he had to admit I was right and while I went back to the guest house (where the connection is on an open gateway), they fixed it and rebooted their systems.
I had a lucky break re my own presentation. In the 'Instructions for Presenters' it had said that we were to present from our own laptops attached to the conference data projectors. However, on Tuesday, Stella had me involved in attaching her laptops to the data projectors so that participants just had to download their talks from USB keys to the desktop to present. Before leaving home I had emailed my talk to myself (in case something happened to my USB key or laptop in the airport scanners) and at Melbourne airport I had checked on one of their desktop machines in the 'Business Centre' that it would run. I discovered that the fraction problem that I had created in Equation Editor was completely invisible! This meant that the first slide said 'Consider the Problem', but there was nothing to consider. I decided that this wouldn't be a problem as I would be presenting from my own laptop, but I realised now that the same thing would happen if the computers didn't have Equation Editor configured. As it is not in the default settings for Office and has to be added separately, it would be unlikely to be on any computer. As a result, I recreated that slide, manually creating the fraction problem using 'draw' for the lines etc. I am so relieved that I was part of the setting-up process as I would have looked very stupid displaying my first slide on the first paper presentation of the conference, when I would have been at my most nervous.
The discussant for my paper is Rochel Gelman. Have a look at her profile on the web, she is incredibly well-known and is thought to pretty much be the guru for 'counting' knowledge and early arithmetic skills. She is also known to be fearsome! When I found out that she would be the discussant, my heart dropped as she has also published in fractions. Anyway, she arrived Tuesday afternoon with her husband Randy Gallistel, who is equally well-known in the area of the development of arithmetic skills, and they were brought down to the conference centre where I was talking with Stella. I was introduced, and then we all set off (with Nancy as well) to walk into Delphi for lunch. Rochel had had a knee reconstruction and was walking with a stick and quite slowly, so I walked with her and the others went on ahead a bit.
First of all, she wanted to know if I was any relation of Lloyd Humberstone!!! I don't know what administrative boards she is on in the New York area (she is at Rutgers) but she said that D's name frequently had come up as someone to lure over to the States and that 4 or 5 universities were discussing inviting him. She was therefore not surprised when I told her that he had been offered some time at Princeton. While I am at Princeton she wants me to make the 15 minute train ride to see her at Rudgers - which is a great compliment to me.
As the day progressed I had a lot to do with Rochel and found that we got on very comfortably with an appropriate amount of leg-pulling. Naturally she is a close acquaintance of both Bob and Brian, but definitely seemed to be interacting with me completely in my own right. We were discussing some of her ideas about the early teaching of fractions. As you know this is a bit of a pet topic for me too. We both agree on the problem with the current teaching methods, but neither of us is really sure about the solution. She has some interesting ideas about using measurement (rather than dividing up pizzas etc.) as it introduces children to the idea of there being a measurement between 3cm and 4cm for example.
During the afternoon there were a few crises related to the arrivals of the delegates. The first was that one of the invited speakers from Japan who was due to be on the first bus leaving the airport at 2.00pm had not shown up. After many phone calls it was ascertained that she had been on the flight but seemed to have dematerialised at Athens airport. Then the suitcase of one of the other passengers had not arrived and they were waiting for that. In fact, the Japanese lady had made her own way to Delphi and while we were desperately trying to track her down, she was in fact sleeping in her room in the Guest House!! It would have been good if she had let someone know. The case had taken its own route from London via Frankfurt and was delivered in fact before the bus left the airport 3 hours late.
Another crisis involved one of the delegates who had got on the bus leaving Athens university. A 'stranger' had been engaging everyone waiting for the bus in conversation and seemed very friendly and helpful. When the bus arrived this character 'helped' with loading the cases into the bus and in the process helped himself to one of the bags. He was merged into a big crowd before anyone realised what had happened. Luckily the suitcase only held clothes and no laptop or other significant objects. Eventually the buses all arrived, but there was much tension for the organisers. Many of the people who had flown many hours and then had to wait while the fruitless search for the missing Japanese lady was completed were understandably rather annoyed and frustrated.
On Tuesday evening I elected not to go out to dinner with the group as I wanted to get an early night in preparation for my talk at 10.00am on Wednesday.
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