Wellington's Old Coach Heritage Trail

I spent the morning of New Year's Eve hiking a portion of Wellington's Old Coach Heritage Trail. This trail runs a total of 12 kilometers but I hiked maybe a third of that, from the suburb of Johnsonville to the peak of Mount Kaukau, about two hours there and back. As the pictures attest, it was gorgeous here yesterday and this hike offered fantastic 360 degree views of the Wellington area. I discovered this hike by using the terrific app "Welly Walks" -- highly recommended if you're going to hike in Wellington. 

Panoramic view from a peak at the start of the hike. I parked in a residential neighborhood at the end of McClintock Street North.

You can see how Wellington's strong winds result in plant life growing at an angle.

After 45 minutes of mildly strenuous hiking, Wellington comes into view. 

This is the Kordia TV Transmitter, which is the primary source of television and radio coverage for Wellington. Reminded me a great deal of the Twin Peaks radio towers in San Francisco. 

Near the peak of Mt Kaukau. 

The panoramic view from Mt Kaukau. 

This cow was very skeptical of my intentions.  

"Welcome to the middle of Middle Earth!"

So says the sign at the Wellington airport, and I do feel welcomed. I've been on the ground here in New Zealand for about six hours. My first, somewhat surprising impression is that the Kiwis proudly embrace the attention that the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movies have fostered for this country. The Air New Zealand safety video, for example, is completely Hobbit themed and includes a cameo from Peter Jackson (and Gollum). There are billboards for the movies scattered about, and some of the planes have been painted to look like dragons. 

The other major impression, or perhaps confirmation of what I've already learned over the past year, is the incredible casual generosity of the Kiwis. Today I was picked up at the airport in the early morning by a woman who'd never met me (and yet has been an incredible help to me already); I'm staying in the stunning house of a woman I've met only once (see picture below); and I just picked up my car from a man who I'd only corresponded with over email until today. Each and every thank you I proffer is met with a simple "it's no bother" and then usually an additional offer of assistance of some sort. 

More to come in the days ahead but, at long last, I'm here. 

Education funding struggles in New Zealand...in 1874

In the course of preparing for my tour of New Zealand's South Island in January 2014, my interest naturally gravitated toward something called the Trout Hotel in Canvastown. Based on some cursory research, it appears Canvastown is a gold-mining town with a rich and colorful history. And, much like the gold rushes that took place in the Dakotas and California in the US, it appears New Zealand struggled with the rapid development of these towns to provide the proper infrastructure and social supports. Here's a quote from a 1874 report of Marlborough Council, the local county overseeing Canvastown, on the desperate need for funding to build a school:

Mr Douslin moved that His Honour the Superintendent be respectfully requested to place on the Estimates the sum of  120 pounds  for building a school house at Canvastown.They were anxious to have a school at Canvastown, but had not the means to erect one, but they thought that if they had a school they  (the settlers) would be able to raise 80 pounds a year for its support. There were many children  on the diggings and in the immediate neighbourhood of Canvastown. There were  at least 25 but there was no possibility of attending a school at Havelock and he (Douslin)hoped that the  Government would see its way to support this vote.  ... His Honour said he regretted that he was unable to agree to the motion. He was aware of the need for schools in many places but the council was fully committed that year. In future sessions they might be able to do more but at present they were obliged to consider those that were most needed. ... Mr Douslin said it was the intention to provide a small building at Canvastown where children at a distance from Canvastown  could reside. There were some children who had lived there for 8 years and had no means whatever  of getting education. ... The motion was defeated 9 votes to 7.

For all the problems we face today, it's worth remembering that "universal schooling" is a relatively new and radical idea. I wonder how many prospectors made their fortune in Canvastown, but I also wonder what happened to the children who were deprived of any formal education for at least eight years (if not longer).   

   

New Zealand's Network for Learning

One of the first things that intrigued me about New Zealand's digital-learning efforts is the creation of the Network For Learning (N4L). The N4L is a "crown owned company," which means it's privately run but 'owned' by the NZ government, creating a public-private partnership that's different from the type we find in the US. The goal of the N4L is to create a "managed network" that will "provide safe, predictable, and fast Internet with uncapped data, online content filtering, and network security services" to schools in New Zealand. Although membership in the N4L appears voluntary, the NZ government has committed more than $200 million to this effort. You can learn more about the Network For Learning here.  

It's interesting to compare New Zealand's national commitment to building broadband infrastructure with the effort in the US to reform eRate, the federally funded telecommunications-in-schools program. By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, to match NZ's investment in high-speed broadband we'd need to spend more than $8 billion US to upgrade our 100,000 public schools.* A number of organizations and advocacy groups including my employer, NewSchools Venture Fund, and others such as EducationSuperHighway are working together to ensure that the Federal Communications Commission (which oversees eRate) commits the necessary resources to upgrade our schools.

The creation of a managed network for schools makes a great deal of sense, as it provides economies of scale and outsources "IT" management, which is often a headache for schools. At the same time, I found this recent article on Ed Surge about the rise -- and looming fall? -- of interactive smartboards to be very insightful. "Adoption of transformational technology must be teacher-initiated," writes Jason Orgbaugh (a former teacher), a simple point often lost in massive digital device rollouts (see, e.g., Los Angeles Unified School District's struggling attempt to procure 700,000 iPads). 

So yes, build the network. But then let the educators decide what technologies to adopt, and how they want to transform their instructional practice.

*Back of envelope math: I'm told New Zealand has 2,500 public schools, if all of them joined the N4L that translates to approximately $84,400 per school (211,000,000 divided by 2,500). Multiply $84,400 by the 98,817 public schools in US and you get $8.34 billion. Of course there would be large economies of scale from going from 2,500 schools to nearly 100,000 so the actual cost should be billions less than this -- but a proper upgrade will require spending real money. 

Nelson Mandela's gift

As the world continues to mourn the death of Nelson Mandela, I want to share this personal anecdote involving him and another forefather of the new South Africa. 

Back in 1999 I worked for the South African Land Claims Court, a court set up to provide restitution to people who were dispossessed of their land under apartheid. I worked directly for the Chief Judge, Fikile Bam, who – as a member of the illegal ANC party – was imprisoned with Mandela on Robben Island (the South African Alcatraz). Judge Bam actually took me on a walking tour of Robben Island and led me around the lime quarries where he and Mandela were forced to work many long days in the hot sun. And on that walk, Bam told me a story. 

Every year at Christmas, the prisoners on Robben Island would get one piece of candy from the guards as their “present.” Judge Bam would be unable to resist eating his right away. But every year, Mandela would save and hide his piece for seven months. Why? So that he could give his piece to Judge Bam on their shared birthday (July 18). 

Whether in small acts of kindness or resisting great injustice, Nelson Mandela embodied the best of our essential humanity. 

Testing my new digital camera

I think that I shall never see, a digital picture as lovely as this tree

After spending way too much time on gadget research, I decided to purchase the Panasonic Lumix TS5 as my waterproof, shock-resistant point-and-shoot camera to document my travel in New Zealand. I took this photo at Fort Smallwood Park, Maryland, on a cold blustery day that felt much like I imagine Wellington to feel in winter. Posting this purely for purposes of seeing how this pictures look when uploaded to Blogger, so please bear with me -- I promise this blog will be far more interesting come January. 

Updated:

And here's a video of the same tree. Again, just testing functionality here, the blog will be less tree-centric soon enough. 

New Zealand's Digital Teaching Academy

Although I've yet to set foot in New Zealand, I've already heard a great deal about the Manaiakalani Trust, a public-private partnership in Auckland that supports digital-learning initiatives. As this article explains, along with Google and the Ministry of Education, the trust is supporting the creation of a "Digital Teaching Academy" that will provide a small cohort of 10 teachers with "wraparound [services] to support teachers who are new to this form of learning." I'll be very interested to learn more about the curriculum and training methods of this new academy, and discover what other wraparound services they intend to provide. The fact that the teachers will be serving in low-income schools in New Zealand makes this all the more compelling.

Hi there. This is my forthcoming blog regarding my experience living in New Zealand in 2014. I plan to primarily write about work-related matters related to New Zealand's education system (digital learning in particular), but there will be a hearty dose of personal observations as well. This will be especially true early on, as I will be traveling around South Island in January 2014 to fish, hike, camp and drink (not necessarily in that order). The look and format of the blog will be evolving in December 2013 as I figure out how to make it look pretty.

In the meantime, I'm also studying how to pronounce the Maori language properly.