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sept 06, 2000 Workshops at UNITEC.. (more)

sept 04, 2000 On campus at UNITEC... (more)

sept 03, 2000 Sites and Scenes in Auckland... (more)

august 30, 2000 Leaving .az for .nz ... (more)

august 24, 2000 Last Day in Flagstaff... (more)

august 22, 2000 Project update and Fay Canyon hike (more)

september 8, 2000
Today marks time as me being here one week as a Kiwi. I have yet to change my accent, so the osmosis factor is not kicking in. That is unless behind my back they are calling me a "freshie", for "fresh off the boat".

For the morning at UNITEC, I have a chance to visit the staff in the School of Education that is producing the online teacher development project, English Online. Aimed at primary and secondary teachers and students, this wonderful site features countless reviewed web resources, an ongoing activity called "Book Back Chat" where students discuss via email selected books, a "Writers Window" that features places for students to post original stories and poems, and a selection of lesson/unit activity plans that meet government mandated educational outcomes. Also worthwhile is the Internet tutorial they ahve writtem. A second site is in development for Social Studies- both of these projects are underwritted by the Ministry of Education with aims of creating a collection of educational "portals" for teachers across the country.

I do not get to see most of the staff of the Learning Technologies Department as they are in a "NUDIS" workshop (that is an acronym for a statistical analysis software, not a naked ritual!)

today's photos

- all photos   o o o o

o o UNITEC campus (starting slide 43)

At noon, I check in with other Director programmer geeks for the Multiuser Developer's Chat which convenes every Thursday at 5:00 PM (PST) which is noon Friday here. Here, we met in a web browser chat room to share projects and such. I have to work on my avatar, which for now is a cheap cut and paste file icon of Gromit (after "Wallace and Gromit")

After lunch, I visit with Vern who is in charge of a small farm of internet and file servers that support the Learning Technologies project. He shows my some of the ways they are using Blackboard here, including an interesting way to add a journal feature to their courses.

I get some good time in for programming my multiuser projects from NAU and planning for a presentation I am scheduled to do next Friday.

In the evening I meet up with Eli, a Director programmer who runs of multimedia firm, Native Design, in Auckland. We had exchanged emails a while back over a particular programming problem, so I was eager to meet up in person when I got here.

Despite a mixup on coordinating our meeting spot, Eli managed to track me down and then treat to an evening of beers at a pub and then a fine dinner at a chic restaurant called "Ramses". I enjoyed a rack of venison (we never understood why the chef held the first plate back, "it was not up to standards"?) We were joined by a few of his co-workers, an eclectic and fun, international group, from whom I learned "heaps" about New Zealand life. They were equally curious about what life in Phoenix is like. Eli's company has a lot of positive means for developing teamwork, and he is egaer to make successful multimedia developers out of people coming from non traditional backgrounds. And it is working well for this company.