Free Lecture - 1st November- get your tickets now.

Come and hear Professor Peter O'Connor share a Pedagogy of Surprise.  

This will inspire all teachers who want to make a difference to students.  

A pedagogy of surprise embraces teaching as an improvised art form that celebrates uncertainty and risk. It recognises that teachers carry into classrooms not just their heads and their planning books, but their bodies and their senses. In a time of intense uncertainty about not only the future but also our present, teaching in and through surprise is a genuine response to the twenty first century. Not teaching to prepare for it, but teaching that is part and parcel of it. This address celebrates the joy, the possibility and the art form of teaching.

Link Here for more info

Day 31 - What have you learnt in the last 31 days?

What have you learnt in the last 31days?
We started this year's blog series "#31daysofblogging"on
October 1st as a way to connect Christchurch and other NZ educators during Connected Educator Month.

        ‏
October PD activities included; - NPDL Conference with Michael Fullan in Christchurch, CORE Education's annual conference uLearn16, the famous #notatulearn16 Twitter group led by the equally famous @AllanahK ,many educators around NZ joining the activities via Twitter, the live streaming of keynotes from uLearn, fabulous conversations from the Connected Educators lounge -again streamed live and available on YouTube.
And of course from our perspective, lots of blog posts from fantastic Christchurch/Canterbury Educators willing to share their school stories, their views and their practice. Thank you so much, you have been amazing.
There were also several blog posts from staff at two brand new secondary schools, Haeata and Rolleston College, who welcome new students from the beginning of 2017. This was a unique opportunity to read just how a brand new school starts to create its culture and connect staff. Lots of educators have worked their way through aspects of the Starter Kete with many teachers joining Twitter and becoming involved in the various Twitter chats that happen throughout the week.
Many thanks also to everyone who has read the blog, made comments, tweeted or re-tweeted throughout the month.Feel free to follow us @chchednet. Please keep reading our blog - we will be advertising upcoming events, as well as more blog posts by teachers sharing what they do - (but not for 31days in a row!!)

Ka kite ano,
Matt, Bridget,Ginny,Pauline and the rest of the Christchurch Connected Educators Network team.

Day 30 - Our journey towards change

“If you always do what you’ve always done,

you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

At the end of last year our senior management team took a good hard look at what was going on in our classrooms and decided to embark on a journey of change. It’s not that anything drastically bad was occurring, but we noticed that our students were not being given enough chances to make independent choices about their learning.

We wanted to change that.

We enlisted the help of Bek Galloway, an education consultant based out of Blenheim, who helped us form four key outcomes that we wanted to see happening within our learning spaces.

• A class culture where our students are regularly thinking, questioning & collaborating
• Teachers encouraging deeper thinking
• Ensure students are using their own questions
• Enable student voice, reflection & independence

To achieve these outcomes we all had to take a step back and challenge our ideas about teaching and what it looks like. What is best practice? What is the purpose of school? What skills do we want our students to leave our school with?

We are very much still in the early stages of this new approach to teaching, introducing bits and pieces at a time to ensure that it is done successfully. Our next step is moving away from timetabled curriculum designated periods and into flexible blocks of learning with multiple tasks and projects on the go across all areas of the curriculum at any time.

The idea of students designing their own learning tasks and plans has been a big mindset change for some of our staff but we are very fortunate that everyone is onboard and committed to the journey.

Any change always comes with a risk, But without risk there very rarely is a reward.

We know that our students will greatly benefit from our new approach to teaching and learning as they become deeper thinkers and lifelong learners. We look forward to the journey ahead!

Cam Gordon

Day 29 -Connections - Past, Present, Future

CONNECTING WITH THE PAST TO MAKE SENSE OF THE PRESENT AND READY YOURSELF FOR THE FUTURE

It is often said that we learn from the past, but how often do we take the opportunity to reflect on years gone by? With all this talk of connecting in education, do any of us take the time to connect with ourselves, our past, our present and our possible future, and the impact that life has had, and will have on our identity?

At a recent boarding school reunion, I reconnected with many friends and was able to reflect on the impact that boarding school had on my identity. One friend, Soo Bee explained to me how she had always felt that she didn’t belong anywhere. She no longer identified strongly with Malaysia her country of birth, and had always felt like an outsider in Melbourne her home for nearly thirty years. It was through returning to the boarding school that was her home in her formative years and connecting with her past, that she was able to make sense of her identity and through this gain a sense of belonging.

Soo Bee’s journey enabled me to connect with my past and through this connection I came to understand how boarding school had influenced me and my identity. In brief boarding school was  a crash course on the key competencies. I had to manage myself, I had to learn to relate to others from diverse backgrounds, I had to participate and contribute, thinking was essential, as was understanding language, symbols and texts. I discovered that my identity was strongly linked to my time at boarding school and the independence that I gained through living away from home.

I spent two nights with old friends at my old boarding school. It had been a very long time since we had all gathered together to share laughter and fun. I took away with me a better understanding of my identity and a clear direction for my teaching. If I can embed the key competencies through my teaching, I will provide an environment where my students can connect with their own past and develop their own strong identity thus enabling them to achieve success in whatever future they choose for themselves.

Day 28 - What is the Nature of Deep Learning? A search for a definition.

A Cook’s Tour of Dead Greeks and Echo Chambers.

Ambiguity. Uncertainty. Patternicity.

This year, our cluster has been searching for the holy grail of definitives…. A clear and accurate definition ‘deep learning’. Finally! We all sighed. The joy of precision and accuracy was to be ours… But then the questions started. How will we know it when we observe it? Is it a process or a product, or both?  Could it ever be linear? We could quickly and easily, reach for a tautological answer: “It is learning that is deep”. Yet this was as unsatisfying as our continual banging on the inside of our own education echo chamber.

What then were the key elements that make up deep learning? Our incredible staff have pondered, discussed and argued. Terms were bandied about. Did it involve critical thinking? Did it involve transformation? Did it involve moving beyond mastery of knowledge? Did it involve conceptual knowledge? Was that term ‘mastery’, allowable, possible, even to mention within the sacred walls of the education echo chamber? At our fabulous school all terms are mentionable, unlike that uncomfortable feeling in the wider education community, where sometimes we are unable to call out or even whisper, silenced by the cacophony of demands from that community to keep the echo chamber door closed.

We also asked whether it included elements of collaboration, authenticity and real world contexts? Lashings of ideas were stirred into the pot.

Presentism abounded with terms that are current and popular within the education echo chamber. Could these terms assist in defining deep learning? What of student agency? Ubiquity? Leverage? Were these terms that could be massaged into assisting in the search for the holy grail of learning? Iterations of definitions were explored. Iterations were torn apart and chewed over. Iterations were added to and altered.

I personally pondered…. What of liminality? The space between understanding and knowing. The space between the mastered and the leveraged knowledge. The space between discovering and generalising, where our learners swim more deeply.  A space that is important within the concept of deep learning.I also pondered whether deep learning was even a concept, an idea, or a thing?

From there,  I turned to ancient philosophers to assist in my quest for certainty and found that they were unequivocally uncertain...;

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.”

Socrates

Also:

“To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.”

Socrates.

Alas, advice from that quarter shed no light on the actuality of deep learning.

SOLO is a  model put forward by Biggs and Collis (1982) and adapted for schools by Pam Hook (2011). This approach, edges closer to a clear definition, allows students, and teachers, to use SOLO as a model to self-assess the depth of knowledge outcomes for different tasks. With SOLO, the focus is on the complexity of the knowledge, the connections made between such knowledge outcomes and the whole, as well as the ability to leverage that knowledge or skill to extrapolate to new understandings.  

Although there may be danger in simplicity, SOLO taxonomy appears to provide an elegant and simple lens for observing at least the linear depth of learning (That is if you agree that ‘deep learning’ is deep rather than breadth focused and if you are of the looking for a ‘product’ rather than describing a process.).

This fantastic tool can be used both to investigate all aspects of a teaching task and student learning output, and search these for ‘depth’ of learning,  for depth of learning beyond the knowing of a skill or discrete piece of knowledge. Beyond making connections and down into constructing new knowings and generalising and evaluating.

A word of caution though,  even with powerful tools such as SOLO, we must be mindful of the richness and complexity of learning experiences in dynamic environments  and ensure we are investigating learning versus performance. Therein lies….

Ambiguity. Uncertainty. Patternicity.

Melody McCombe

References:

Biggs, J.B., and Collis, K.F. (1982). Evaluating the Quality of Learning - the SOLO Taxonomy. New York: Academic Press. xii +  245 pp.

SOLO Taxonomy: A Guide for Schools. Hook.P. & Mills, J. Essential Resources.  2011

Day27 - Professional Development - Is There Another Way?

The Senior Leadership Team at St Francis of Assisi Catholic School has been aware for awhile that we needed to rethink the structure of Professional Development.

Having been  influenced by George Couros and his book “The Innovator’s Mindset” as well as Michael Fullan’s thoughts on Leadership and Professional Development, we have discussed the need to differentiate and personalise learning for staff, just as we would for our students.

We want to offer a variety of options - whole school, small group, flipped meetings, 1-1 depending on the topic and depending on the need, and above all we want to create a professional culture where sharing our practice is the norm.

Michael Fullan speaking on a panel at ULearn this year discussed the need for educators to share quality practice and how educators’ practice is improved when they are exposed to good practice more often.

One platform we knew could be used to develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN), in which our teachers could be exposed to others’ practice and share their own, was Twitter. This knowledge inspired a Term 4 goal, to get everyone active on Twitter and to have staff share this understanding of how Twitter could benefit their practice.

Using Twitter would be new learning for some, and Couros (2015) states that to truly integrate new learning we need to give staff time to explore, collaborate and reflect. With this in mind we prepared a session for staff where they would have to do just that.

After sharing the goal with staff and offering technical help for those who needed it to set up an a account we were ready for action in Week 2.

We decided on a staff challenge, Twitter Bingo. A series of tasks staff would tick off in order to get them active on Twitter, as educators. We also decided we would make it competitive, as we know from experience that a little healthy competition, with some perhaps not so healthy prizes, would motivate teachers to get onboard.

We introduced Twitter Bingo after a very short session on the nuts and bolts of Twitter. The engagement was even better than expected. After explaining the rules of the game the staff room was a hive of activity.

It was great to see staff exploring the app, collaborating and problem solving in a race against time to complete their Bingo card.  

Already we have had huge buy in from our staff and we are excited to see the sharing that is taking place.

We are looking forward to increased professional engagement from our staff.

Jo Earl @JoEarl2 & Whitney Hansen @whitn3yhans3n

References & Attributions

Innovator's Mindset - George Couros @gcouros

Michael Fullan @MichaelFullan1

We would like to say a special thank you too, to Alex Le Long @ariaporo22, for the amazing Twitter cheat sheet she created.

Flickr Images - https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=twitter

Day 26 - Moving from vision to action

This post explores the idea of bringing your vision to life through practical strategies and empowering others. It is written by Rob Clarke and originally appears on learningarchitects.com

Effective school leaders instinctively grasp the vital importance of a shared, coherent, and inspiring vision for their school. They also grasp, and are able to put into action, the various elements that enable that vision to translate into practice. 

When it is fully manifested, this vision forms the very heart and identity of that community, acting as the foundation for a curriculum and a culture that is responsive and ‘flexes’ to the specific needs and aspirations of everyone involved. This is equally true of the new schools I am involved in as well as those that have existed for a while.

But very often, a school’s vision remains just that – an idea or a set of aspirations that forever remain on the horizon. A significant proportion of schools never quite manage to turn them into reality, and this is not due to any lack of commitment or genuine desire to effect change. Could this be due to a lack of tangible strategies the leadership has to draw from perhaps? Or perhaps it is the mistaken belief that the vision will somehow magically take everyone in the right direction once it has been decided upon and shared.

The successful implementation of a vision does not happen by accident, and the good news is that taking a few simple steps can quickly point you in the right direction and start the process towards transformation.

This transformation begins with the school’s leadership and staff clarifying its vision and the goals that support the realisation of the vision, then taking action consistent with those goals. By then designing and implementing defined, measurable strategies and actions, the school has the ability to mobilise the whole school community towards achieving its fullest potential. Indeed one of the workshops we offer ‘Developing Your School Vision’ enables leaders and their teams to identify the goals and behaviours they choose which will take them closer to this vision.

David Taylor (2014) describes some of the practical steps in effecting change management, from initiating a formal plan, discussing and revising ideas, to establishing how progress will be measured, anticipating problems and ensuring all the necessary resources and supports are in place along the way. Crucially, he also notes the critical role of communication throughout this process, which he sees as the key predictor of success in effecting change.

“As leaders, if we do not communicate clearly to inspire the correct [I prefer the words ‘consistent and/or ‘aligned’ rather than the term ‘correct’...] actions and behaviors, our visions and all related initiatives will fail.” (Taylor, 2014)

Vision and action are interdependent and intertwined throughout this process of improvement and innovation: without strategic action, the vision will never be realised, and without a coherent shared vision that your team has committed to, no one will be inspired to action. When these elements are present, there is limitless potential for positive transformation. Tony Robbins summarises this nicely with his views on the importance of execution in this short video which you can see on learningarchitects.com here...

As the driving force behind the vision, the school leadership and staff must provide the focus for the actions which build towards the vision, discussing it and supporting it from a place of enthusiastic and authentic commitment. They must manifest the new vision, demonstrating that it is tangible, right now, even if it has not yet been achieved to its fullest extent.

One very practical approach is to take the vision and treat it as a lens through which schools can evaluate various activities (for example: such as staff professional learning meetings, board meetings or new initiatives) to ascertain ‘how has this brought us closer to our vision for student learning?’ This is one of the many practical strategies that can ‘give your vision legs’.

This sort of leadership does not need to demand “buy-in”; it naturally calls forth genuine, wholehearted responses and calls to action, and consequently empowers everyone in the wider community to become a fully engaged changemaker in their own right too. It is on this firm foundation that progress can be made towards making this shared vision a reality that you can see, touch, hear and feel in your school.

It is written by Rob Clarke. Rob is the founder of learningarchitects.com

Day25 - Empowering Girls - A reflection...

There have been more and more conversations recently about the need for young people to be risk takers, problem solvers, critical thinkers, collaborators and creators in order to thrive in the workplace they will enter. In my experience, it is the idea of taking risks, the fear of not getting it right and the need to know all the answers before “leaning in” (Sheryl Sandberg - COO Facebook) that inhibits girls. It has become a bit of a mission of mine to empower girls, which luckily is the vision at St Margaret’s College!

I was incredibly fortunate to be in on the ground when The Centre for Innovation was created at St Margaret’s College. It is common knowledge there is a very real shortage of women in the tech industry. I can attest to this having entered the tech world myself - but that’s for another post. Initially this was a key driver behind establishing The Centre for Innovation. However, what I see as being the real strengths of providing girls with opportunities to tinker, create and innovate is the resilience and self confidence that is developed throughout the process.

I made it my mission this year to incorporate new ways of learning into my teaching and learning programmes and I was blown away by the capabilities of the young women I worked with. It was important when thinking about incorporating innovation into English and Social Science that the learning was authentic and it wasn’t simply a bit of “play time” at the end of a unit - not that I’m against play!  Earlier this year the world celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday (400 years) which put The Bard in the spotlight. We had the Pop Up Globe Theatre here in Auckland and a number of the students in my class were lucky enough to get along, so I decided to introduce my Year 8 class to Shakespeare - I’m a bit of a fan! Their initial responses were very interesting…

• “Isn’t Shakespeare only studied in the Senior School?”
• “Aren’t we too young…”
• “It’s really hard, we don’t have to read the play do we?”
• “Why are we learning about something so old?”

So I approached things from a different angle and took that last statement, adapted it slightly, and we embarked on an inquiry into - “Why is Shakespeare still relevant and why should we study his works?” I ditched the plan and started again looking at everything through a different lense.  

The unit culminated in the students using their understanding of Shakespeare’s language, plays (Twelfth Night) and his influence on popular culture to bring Shakespeare alive for their generation. The brief was for the girls to incorporate new technologies to create something relevant and original for their peers.

I am all for giving students choice and see a high level of engagement when they drive their own learning. However, I also see students try to take the easy way out. I had girls instantly ask if they could simply act out a key scene of “Twelfth Night” and create an iMovie. I asked if this would challenge them. The short answer was no. The brief then extended to choosing a project that would challenge and excite them.

The results were outstanding and included:

• A 3D printed range of Shakespeare merchandise - including the “quote hanger” and a 3D printed bobblehead of Shakespeare.

• Gamifying the plot of “Twelfth Night”.

• The use of Scratch to create a trailer for the film “She’s The Man”.

• The use of Minecraft to collaboratively create the setting of “Twelfth Night”. This was brought together and analysed using iMovie.

• A group wrote the lyrics to a rap based on the plot and themes of “Twelfth Night”. They created a music video using iMovie and Garageband.

• The use of papertronics to create a gift card range incorporating Shakespeare’s language and themes.

• 3D printed fridge magnets of Shakespeare’s famous quotes.

There were times that girls found their task “too hard” and wanted to give up or change direction. But they didn’t give up, they dug deep, persevered and experienced success. There was one group that reminded me of the young boy in the film “Most Likely To Succeed” who worked tirelessly to complete his section of the class project. This group worked around the clock, overcoming challenges and they were extremely proud of their finished project. There was such a strong sense of achievement that the class organised a celebration of learning afternoon. They invited the senior leadership team and other classes to see their learning. Sadly they ran out of time to get their parents along, however, the learning was shared with parents via the students’ LINC-ED learning portfolios.

This unit of work with this Year 8 class was one of the highlights of my professional career.  Why?

Being flexible

At times it can be harder work to deviate from the plan but taking the teachable moments, shaping them and enabling students to share in the direction of the learning is powerful.

Collaboration

We can never know it all and I had the good fortune of working with a team of exceptional teachers at St Margaret’s. I would like to acknowledge Linda Chong (Head of The Centre for Innovation) and Sarah Coursey (Library and e-Learning Centre Manager) for supporting this learning.

Facilitator rather than fountain

It can feel uncomfortable when we, as teachers, don’t hold the knowledge. There was a great deal of problem solving and learning alongside the students for me throughout this unit.

Embrace new learning and become a learner

I find it is becoming too easy for teachers to opt out of the digital world because they feel the students can pick it up and often know more than them. Whilst it’s great to be an enabler of tech, it’s important to continue to keep learning.

I was extremely proud of the creativity, perseverance and self management skills exhibited by these exceptional young women. I am looking forward to seeing the pathways that they choose and hope they take squiggly ones (Claudia Batten - The Squiggly Line). I would love to see some of them become passionate entrepreneurs, innovators and tech leaders!

Aimie Sibson - Former English Teacher and Digital Learning Facilitator St Margaret’s College,  Co-founder LINC-ED

Day 24 -Why do we have to change?

This post was written by Rob Ferguson, one of the foundation teaching staff at Rolleston College/Horoeka Haemata. His blog can be found here.

I've started a new job! It's a unique opportunity. It's at a brand new school, so new in fact it's still wrapped in plastic as I type. This means we have term 4 to reflect on the past and what the future could and will look like with out the pressure of students.

At Rolleston College we are going to be doing things quite differently from the ways of the past. Dr Julia Atkin in so many of her presentations about change says you should first of all ask the question 'Why?'. In the two weeks leading up to starting my new position there were a couple of links to articles that turned up on social media that are part of the answer that question for me.

The first was written by Nigal Latta for the Star Sunday Times outlining his thoughts on the direction the New Zealand economy needs to evolve. For me his second last sentence says it all "it's that they find little niches in the world market and fill them." I'm no economic expert, but to me, it seems the best way for a small country in the South Pacific to compete on the world stage.

The second 'Nigal Latta only tells half the story on the economy' was by Geoff Simmons for the Morgan Foundation. In it he talks about how more than half of our national wealth is in housing and the affect this has on our businesses ability to step into overseas markets.

To effect change that can address the issues outlined in these two articles, we need to look to our youth. No pressure on teachers, but if we do things differently in education, then maybe in the near distant future things will start to change more in the New Zealand economy.

The interesting thing, is the inspiration and exemplars are out there. At the same time I was reading the above articles these two came out. One on Jamie Beaton and his Crimson Consulting company raising of capital in New York. Tech based companies are an obvious direction but not the only one. This article on Celia Robinson, group  co-CEO of Myfoodbag gets you thinking how big could it get?

Dan Pink in his book 'A whole new mind' talks about the world entering the 'Conceptual Age' and suggests that to survive and thrive in this age you need to ask 3 simple questions. Can a computer do what you do faster? Can someone in the world do what you do cheaper? Are you producing something in demand in the age of abundance? If you answer yes to the first 2 and no to the last, things will be tough.

I like what Dan has to say in his book and the two examples of success above answer his questions in the way they need to in the conceptual age. 

Day23 -Subject Communities, not Silos...

During the week, two of our tasks at Rolleston College/ Horoeka Haemata involved the unpacking of two Learning Areas from the New Zealand Curriculum: one given to us (not one we strongly identified with – unfamiliar text, you might say…); and the one we most strongly identified with. For me, this meant the first task was to try and unpack Health and Physical Education and to present what I thought to others, one of whom was actually an HPE specialist! For the second task, I worked with another Science specialist to unpack this Learning Area, and present the key elements (and “non-negotiables”) to all other staff.

One of our Senior Leaders talked about how we needed to be respectful when unpacking Learning Areas that were not our own. He addressed the term “Silos” that keeps being bandied around. He explained that he preferred to think of these more as Communities. This resonated with me. These Communities are populated by people. These people have adapted to be successful in these Communities. These people know what the key elements are for being successful in their respective Community. These strengths and predispositions need to be respected when we try to communicate which elements we see as being important in our new Community of Learning…

If we think of Silos instead, it is very easy to forget the human side of the Learning Areas. I know that I immediately think of each Silo being a different part of a machine, doing its own unique and important role, that contributes to the functioning of the machine we call Student Learning. To get those Silos (machine parts) to work together successfully takes a fair bit of coordination. It often takes students a long time to see the connections between the parts. I guess this analogy works for me as well, but it lacks the human element of Communities. I like the human element.

What about those tasks?

Unfamiliar Learning Area

He oranga ngākau, he pikinga waiora.

We were given a period of time to try and break the Learning Area down into 20 (or so) words/key points. From this, we had to break it down into only five!! When discussing multi-disciplinary learning with peers in the past, the common concern has been about the potential for “dilution” of content and key skills. This thought struck me again – only five words/key points?!

Once I started, it was surprising how easily this Learning Area unpacked. A couple of different ways to arrange the Learning Area quickly evolved for me:

Four Strands/Contexts

• Personal Health and Physical Development
• Movement Concepts and Motor Skill
• Relationships with Other People
• Healthy Communities and Environments

 Four Concepts

• Hauora
• Attitudes and values
• The socio-ecological perspective
• Health promotion

Ultimately, though, I felt that everything emanated from Hauora. Therefore, I felt I had my five words, so long as I showed their interdependence with arrows:

Then came the tough part. Share this with someone from the HPE Community. When I fleshed out my simple little diagram with some thoughts about context and content, this was received much better than I thought!!

Familiar Learning Area

Mā te whakaaro nui e hanga te whare;
mā te mātauranga e whakaū

The task for this seemed much easier. It was the same task but within “my” Community – Science. I worked with another member of the same Community. This should be easy, surely! Not so. Within our Community, each member seems to put different value on different elements of the Community. That is natural.

However, what prevented this becoming a barrier was how easily these could be fleshed out. We were speaking the same language. We were able to group, classify and categorise our own ideas into bigger pictures under the “Nature of Science” umbrella. Finding five words/key concepts was, ultimately, not too tough (being familiar with TKI helped a lot with this, too!!):

• Evidence-based
• Knowledge is Provisional
• Uses Models and Theories
• Influenced by Society

We then unpacked each strand (Material World, Physical World, Living World, and Planet Earth and Beyond) into a couple of key “non-negotiable” points. These were the elements we felt were non-negotiable and may not be “diluted” by involvement in multi-disciplinary learning. Student learning must include the key elements (content and/or skills) of Science we identified. Boiled down, we did really get it down to:

• Matter
• Energy
• Forces
• MRS GREN
• Ecosystems
• Inheritance
• Cycles

Throw in some critical thinking, and I think the key words and non-negotiables cover the nature of the Nature of Science. The excitement came from hearing how other Learning Areas were unpacked, and seeing how Science could complement each of those “Communities” without diluting either. 

In fact, I can imagine how each Community (Learning Area) will be enhanced, along with the overall learning of each student, by having natives from each Community involved in each multi-disciplinary module. The NZ Police may build “Safer Communities Together”, but we will build “Stronger [Learning] Communities Together”.




Matt Nicoll is one of the foundation teachers at Rolleston College/Horoeaka Haemata. His blog can be found here.