Finland's school system accomplishes some impressive feats: so what makes Finnish students so successful?
"Students get plenty of teacher interaction: Finland and New York City have the same number of teachers. But Finland has nearly half the number of students. Standardized testing is kept to a minimum: before a New York student reaches high school, he or she will have taken 10 standardized tests. Collectively, US students take 100 million standardized tests a year. Finland's only standardized test is taken when students are 16 years old. Kids have more time to be kids: an average us 5th grader has 50 minimum of homework per day. Finnish students rarely do homework until their teens. And while us elementary students average 27 minutes of recess students in Finland get about 75 minutes a day). Finland knows good teachers are essential: teachers in Finland are all required to have a Master's degree (which is fully subsidized by the state)."
(OnlineClasses.org, 21 January 2013)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
CityViewAR: remembering Christchurch before 4 September 2010
"CityViewAR is a mobile Augmented Reality application that allows people to see how the city was before the earthquakes and building demolitions. Using an Android mobile phone people can walk around the city and see life-sized virtual models of what the buildings looked like on site before they were demolished, and see pictures and written information. Hundreds of 3D models of key city buildings have been made available from architect Jason Mill of ZNO, while the Christchurch City Council and Historic Places Trust have provided photographs and building histories.
CityViewAR is based on the HIT Lab NZ Android AR platform which uses the GPS and compass sensors of mobile phones to enable virtual information to be overlaid on live video of the real world. Android AR makes it easy for Android developers to build their own outdoor AR applications. The software was previously used for showing individual buildings, but this is the first time that it has been used to show dozens of buildings at once, and the first time in world that mobile phone AR has been used for earthquake reconstruction."
(HIT Lab NZ, 2011)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Ralph Hotere, New Zealand Artist, Dies at 81
Ralph Hotere 1931-2013 "was one of New Zealand's leading abstract artists, well known for his enigmatic, black painted surfaces stripped with luminous lines of color. He was not a strict formalist or wary of content. When an aluminium smelter was proposed for the Aramoana wetland, he famously nailed protest works on local telephone poles, painted on corrugated iron. And although his message was never explicit, his black paintings emerged at the height of the Civil Rights movement and suggested themes of historical crisis: war, nuclear testing, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Apartheid. With an understated gravitas unusual in protest art, Hotere demanded that his work speak for itself.
Although Hotere did not want to be pigeonholed as a 'Māori artist,' his works were steeped in the spiritual world of his ancestors. He was one of the first generation of Māori artists in New Zealand who, with quiet perseverance, forged a path for subsequent generations of artists by establishing a distinctive visual vocabulary that would be influential to both Māori and Pakeha (European) artists alike."
(Andrew Clifford, 1 March 2013, ArtAsiaPacific Magazine)
Fig.1 Ralph Hotere with his Black Phoenix installation at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2000. Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Neat Places: eating out in an earthquake devistated city
"Neat Places is an essential guide to the distinctive restaurants, cafés, bars, shops and galleries in New Zealand. Well, Christchurch, Wellington and Oamaru for starters. Our aim is to unveil the treasured places and celebrate the spirit of this eclectic mix of towns (with more to come!). Whether you're a local or just visiting, you'll find something here that tickles your fancy."
(Marcia Butterfield)
Fig.1 "Neat Places" designed by Matt Powell [http://fauxpar.se/]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Addressing contemporary issues through traditional craft practices
"Binding handcrafted books for me is not merely a way of turning back the clock, but a way of addressing contemporary issues, both environmental and social as well as aesthetic."
(Michael O'Brien, Bookbinder)
"A Step Back In Time", short documentary about Oamaru's iconoclastic bookbinder Michael O'Brien. Director: Moss Bowering-Scott, Research: Libby Dallison, Executive Producers: Richard Bell and Steve Bloxham, New Zealand Broadcasting School, CPIT, Uploaded to YouTube on 16 August 2010.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
