Acknowledging NZ education and celebrating small steps here

Since I have been away on this jaunt to the other side of the world, I have been acknowledging and celebrating just how far New Zealand education and elearning is ahead of the countries I have visited or worked in. I'm considering that some schools in NZ aren't at the cutting edge however they are making use of the resources and technology and using these to share their learning with their families and their community or to foster links with family and community. Our International School has started blogging this year, and are into it in a big way. Can you believe it I was running blogging workshops with teachers 5 and 6 years ago? We created blogs at the Picton Conference in 2006. Today I worked with my Year 6 students teaching them how to use the Flip Videos to record snippets / interviews and embed these into their blog. While this piece of video footage is not Hobbit quality, and the interviewing appalling, it was the quick fire demonstration for the students. I even found a teacher hand out I had written way back then..... and not a lot has changed. I must of course celebrate small steps. My students started blogging this time last year, before our school got into it in a big way. Now some of them are quite confident bloggers. Quite forward! They are starting to use the technology the school has in a meaningful way to reflect and showcase their learning. The students up here of course have access to the technology at home. So many have personal iPads, and computers, 3G phones, iPhone 4's etc. Mostly the stuff is used for gaming and SMSing. So NZ teachers go out and celebrate. Novapay may not be paying you but you are doing a good job.