New Zealand

Kia ora from New Zealand! How are things back in Australia? Are the websites on Canberra and our Prime Ministers on track to be finished? Time has flown this week and tomorrow (Thursday) Jutta and I fly to the USA. It’ll be a great shame to leave NZ because everyone here is so friendly and welcoming. There are so many beautiful sights to see and lots of interesting things to discover in the schools.

Peterhead School in Hastings is doing lots of video conferencing with a neighbouring school. The program allows a year 3 boy to join in a maths lesson with year 5 kids at the other school. It’s like he’s actually there. There’s also a year 5 student who helps the younger kids with their writing. They use a program called Skype to talk to one another and give each other ideas. Simon Evans is a teacher there who is very inspirational. Thanks for showing me around and looking after me Simon.

At Point England School in Auckland (hello Dorothy!), they’re doing great things too. Every child at the school has to complete a project using computers at least once every term and they do some excellent things. They also have a special recording studio where some children are able to record podcasts which are then posted on iTunes for the whole world to see. Each morning there’s a TV show that’s produced at the school that is shown to each of the classes. It’s a big school with a small school feel to it; everyone is really nice. The work done by Dorothy Burt and the rest of the staff has made an enormous difference to the kids at Pt England.

Over on the Coromandel Peninsula to the south-east of Auckland, there’s a small community called Opoutere that has a 4 teacher school. It’s only a little larger than Otford and incredibly similar in so many ways. The older kids there would love to start sending emails to the Otford kids so we’ll get that happening when I return. At Opoutere they use something called Knowledge Net, which allows everyone to have their own personal web space to present all sorts of interesting things. Vaughan van Rensburg, the principal, is a great guy and went out of his way to make me feel welcome. He and his students loved the podcast too. Now they want to do one about their school.

Each of the schools in NZ are using interactive whiteboards. They’re in most classrooms and are constantly in use. It’s been great to see the ways in which teachers and kids use them; they do a whole range of meaningful things that can’t be done easily any other way. One of their best features is that you can write on them and save the page for future use. This sort of technology seems like the way to go so we’d better put our thinking caps on and come up with ways to raise some money.

NZ is the sort of place every Australian should visit at some time. I’ll certainly return as soon as I can because there’s so much more to see and do. It’s been a great few days here but not nearly long enough. Thanks for a wonderful experience New Zealand.