freelance paradigm

I spend the first half of this weekend in Ankaran at a conference dedicated to teaching of extra talented students. I was there to present my own little 18 minute speach (I have set up those 18 minutes myself as if it was a TED conference ) about my experience at UMMI summer camps. Other speakers were professional teachers, psyhologists (etc). I must say that it was an interesting event. There were some very good points expressed in all of the presentations. For example; hightly talented kids often present a special discord towards the rest of the society and tend to alienate themselves. How to teach them social skills? And is it OK to do it at an expense of diminishing their gift(?) - which is my own unspoken question. Or is it better to try to find them a company of their own level?

I came to Ankaran a day before because we had the first meeting on the evening before the actual thing. Since I still had come early, I spent the afternoon relaxing with my new iPod which was filled with inspirational TED and iTunes U content.


I must admit I felt like a real professional - it was the first time for me that I was not just payed to give a Keynote presentation (if you have an Apple, you say must say and use Keynote instead of Powerpoint), but also offered to stay in a fancy hotel for the night. Needles to say, under these conditions, you must give a hell of a keynote talk. So I was rehearsing the whole evening prior to the event in my room.


I don't actually have any photos of me speaking... But this is a psyhologist dr. Mojca Juriševič who spoke after me about her research on highly talented kids. She was the last speaker of the conference and before that I was too nervous to take photos. In fact, I felt quite uninspired for photography for most of the time. But my presentation succeeded quite well, actually (not as well as I planned, though, but well enough to get invited to some future events).



So yes; I also have a MacBook now