Day 3- part 1 in NZ, Day 3 part 2 in USA

Woke to another wild and woolly day in Auckland. Visited 2 extremely impressive impressive primary schools in Summerland and Marina View. Both have fully integrated uses of laptops within the classrooms where children jsut use them as tools for their learning whenever they need them. Marina View also have an amazing TV studio where the students run all of it, form content to production, we all got to have a hands on role in the creation of a new show. Somehow I ended up on the master computer that was responsible for showing all the green screens and live feeds. It went reasonably well.

We flew out Wednesday night for San Francisco and arrived 4 hours before we flew out Wednesday in San Francisco. The international dateline has a lot to answer for in relation to how tired I feel now. Currently it is 9:00p.m. on Wed the 25th.

Off to Oracle, Google and Apple tomorrow and hopefully will be fully rested as I'm off to bed now.

Wet and windy Auckland

A quick summary of today as I'm about to head out for tea. Auckland turned on a treat for us with wind, rain, hail, thunder and lightning, all of which I'd almost forgotten existed!!

Started today with a trip to Nextspace to look at their new software innovations, in particular relating to 3D design, so very useful applications with Deep Exploration.

This was followed by a trip to Papatoetoe High School to view their networks, labs and interact with the students. In some respects we are ahead of what they are doing which for them is cutting edge, so we have pockets leading the way.

We finished the day by visiting Buckland Beach Intermediate school which blew my mind. 11/12 year olds running a TV and radio station as well as using animation, web 2.0 tools and e-portfolios to great effect to give the students a 'voice' within their learning. Heaps of sites to follow up on that they were using to great effect.

That's it as I need time for it all to sink in, will use the 13 hr flight to San Fran tomorrow for that to happen.

Insights for today:
"We need to understand the knowledge that people have that are inside our buildings"
"Technologies change, but people usually don't"

The eagle ...err magpie... has landed.

Just a short message to say that I've made it to Auckland safely after a 3 hr flight. The tour group has a diverse range of backgrounds and interests so after just a few short conversations with other members of the party I've learnt a few things already. Tonight after landing in the wet (I didn't worry about getting too wet, have missed that feeling of late!) we got the motel and headed out for dinner and an introduce yourself to the group which I had the pleasure of having my name chosen first. An early night for me tonight.

Tomorrow is an early start and visits to secondary schools.

Insight for today:
We are now catching up (via the Government funding to schools) to where we should have been 3 years ago. How do we speed this up so we don't end up further behind tomorrow?

Up, up and away!!!

Well, this is the first post before I head off on the ACCE 2008 study tour. To be honest with the busy end of the term I haven't really had too much time to contemplate the full ins and outs of the tour, but I'm sure hte time on the plane will help with that.

I head into it full off ideas that I think are possible now, but hope to gain greater insights into what is currently being done around the world with a view to Sandhurst schools being seen in time as innovative leaders in the use of ICT and teaching and learning.

The map below has a brief outline of the tour, but the main points are school visits (primary & secondary) in NZ, workshops and visits to Apple HQ, Googl HQ and Oracle in San Francisco and the ISTE conference for 5 days in San Antonio, with 17,500 other like minded educators.

View Larger Map

Well I'm off to get some sleep before flying out. I am excited, but also anxious about missing my girls, Nick and Lou, but through iChat, Skype, email, txt, phone and this blog I'll be as connected as possible while being 20,000+ km's away.

My aim is post each day, hopefully I wont be having too much fun to forget!!!