Open Source Award 2012

The 4th annual New Zealand Open Source Awards ceremony was held in Wellington on 7 November 2012. According to the New Zealand Open Source Awards website, the Open Source community nominates outstanding projects and people who make Open Source the vibrant and successful force it is in New Zealand businesses and communities.

So it was a great honour to hear that two nominations had been submitted for the Manaiakalani project. One was for the outstanding work done by Nevyn Hira since September 6th 2010 developing an Ubuntu image for the Manaiakalani children to use on their netbooks. The other was for the impact of the Open Source technology on teaching and learning. 

We were surprised and delighted to hear that the Manaiakalani programme was a finalist for the category Open Source Use in Education - For the outstanding use of free and open source in education in New Zealand.

It was a fitting acknowledgement that Nevyn was able to attend the ceremony and accept this award for his work. Followers of his blog will see that Nevyn is continually developing the image to make it more responsive to the needs of the teachers and children.

Video footage of the entire presentation for this category is available here.

Open Source Awards from KPE TV on Vimeo.

APPA Fellow 2012

On the 7th of December 2012 it was my pleasure to attend the Auckland Primary Principals' annual luncheon and to witness Russell Burt being presented with this award, "Fellow of the APPA". It came as a great surprise as his colleagues from the Manaiakalani Cluster of schools submitted a nomination on his behalf to acknowledge his contribution to Manaiakalani since its inception in 2006.

The submission began: 

"Russell has lead the Tamaki cluster of schools since 2004 from the ICTPD cluster contract – leading to an EHSAS cluster contract and which now takes the form of the Manaiakalani Cluster project – eLearning/Digital Media pedagogies being brought to a community which had minimal computer access.

Manaiakalani has developed into an initiative that is leading the country, bringing 1:1 computer devices and free wireless internet to the Decile 1 communities of Panmure and Glen Innes. The project has developed an exemplary set of pedagogies which has brought a consistency of teacher practice in eLearning/Digital Media to a whole community...."

The video attached includes a full reading of the submission statement by his peers...

APPA from KPE TV on Vimeo.