http://china.littletonpublicschools.net is the home page for our visit to China.  So far, it we have three contacts that are arranging school visits and meetings in various cities across the country and we have received nothing but the most wonderful and supportive hospitality.  I have great confidence that our journey will be an outstanding experience.

To document the journey, we will make use of an array to Web 2.0 tools:

1. Time and Date which is feeding the current date and time in Beijing.  All of China is one time zone  http://www.timeanddate.com
2. Google Maps where a collection of markers have been established detailing the journey http://maps.google.com   Note the marker for the recent earth quake is not near any of the sites visited on the tour.
3. Wikispaces wiki which has the travel itinerary and travel assistance for the group http://www.wikispaces.com A wiki is a document on the web that lots of people can edit online.  Students will be encouraged to make notes along the way.
4. Google Blog feeder which takes designated blog entries from Dan Maas’ blog and feeds onto the main page http://www.google.com/reader
5. Ustream.tv broadcasts and archives streaming video http://www.ustream.tv
6. TeacherTube is an educational version of youtube and is place to upload recorded videos http://www.teachertube.com
7. Picasa web is a Google-owned service that presents a slide show of uploaded images http://picasaweb.google.com
8. Google calendar has a web-based calendar service for appointments http://www.google.com/calendar
9. Video conference calling using Skype www.skype.com

Each one of these tools is a free, online service that we can pass through our firewalls and filters.  I encourage other LPS staff who venture out there and would like to carry out a similar effort to make use of these tools.  Feel free to contact me or your building integration specialists for help...