Today@CWA
CWA in Second Life
Second Life is a phenomenon of the 2lst century - a virtual environment with over 6 million residents - and CWA is one of them.
Our R&D team has put up our sign and is busy exploring a space which is both intriguing and challenging. Four years old on 23rd June, every day sees new residents, events, and locations arriving, including companies such as Reuters, Adidas, and Toyota. There is also increasing interest in how Second Life can support learning and CWA is looking carefully at the opportunities and issues that SL might provide to enable the 2lst century learner. Watch this space for more information..
For further reading, check out this Wikipedia entry.
21st Century Learner: A glimpse of the future
CWA was very pleased to assist the New Zealand Ministry of Education to develop a DVD which communicates the story of the “connected learner” in New Zealand.
To produce this resource, our video producer and crew travelled to schools and locations around New Zealand to document what is happening classrooms, communities and business. On-screen contributors include students, teachers, advisors, members of the Te Papa education team, businesses and more.
The contents of the DVD can also be viewed online
The role of Creativity in Economy
Late last year CWA was privileged to catch up with leading Creative Economist, Stuart Cunningham. We recorded an interview with him while he was in New Zealand which is available for viewing, in bite-sized segments, on our beta Online TV Station - "The NZ Learning Channel".
Stuart is a Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for creating industries and innovation. The Centre is based in Brisbane at the Queensland University of Technology. The purpose of the Centre is to build a more dynamic and inclusive innovation system that incorporates the contributions from the human as well as from the natural sciences into innovation.
Happy new year!
While we did not see too much sun this Christmas break, the CWA team returns in force this week refreshed, energised, and ready for 2007.
We look forward to a year full of adventures, discoveries, innovation and delightful serendipity.
CWA in international markets
CWA director Kath Norton (centre) recently travelled to Malaysia as part of the company's work with the Innovation New Zealand Education (iNZed) consortium.
While there, she met with government and state officials, as well as visiting a range of schools, where the local teachers and students made her feel right at home.
CWA wins TUANZ award for Studyit site
Against stiff competition, CWA has scooped the TUANZ Education (Primary or Secondary) Award 2006 for its innovative Studyit site www.studyit.org.nz
The site, developed in collaboration with New Zealand students, provides a social networking environment through which young people studying the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) can interact with their peers online. Teacher/mentors are available in the environment to guide and facilitate with content knowledge where invited.
Studyit is a stunning example of the willingness of young people to help each other, using the immediacy of the web to share content knowledge and strategies with the common goal of achieving success with the qualification.
CWA New Media produces study guides for TVNZ
With our background in prime-time television, we know the power of television and its potential to be much more than a passive medium. As a mass media tool, we know broadcast TV could be employed in a whole range of new ways to enrich the learning lives of teachers and learners.
Our relationship with TVNZ enables CWA New Media to demonstrate some of this potential. For example we created and facilitated an online learning environment to support the high profile historical series, Frontier of Dreams when it screened last year. More recently, TVNZ commissioned CWA New Media to write and publish online study guides for two popular local television series – Let's Get Inventin and New Zealand At Homes
While only the first steps on the journey of connecting television to learning needs, it's a good start.
Digital Conversations
CWA New Media’s Digital Conversations video-conferencing programme goes from strength to strength with guests as diverse as Dr Eric Dorfman and Emma Best from Te Papa, and retired entomologist Jim Esson, dropping in for a chat with school students around New Zealand.
Our relationship with The Book Council’s Wordspace programme also offers a wealth of interesting guests to meet, including Lynda Chanwai-Earle and Briar Grace-Smith, and VM Jones and Elizabeth Knox.
The Digital Conversations lineup can be viewed here
Distinguished visitor
CWA New Media recently caught up with international visitor Etienne Wenger as he was passing through New Zealand.
Etienne describes himself as an independent thinker, researcher, consultant, author, and speaker, who is a social learning theorist at heart. We spent a relaxing Saturday of conversation in a sunny capital city, talking about our work in communities of practice development and exchanging ideas about future trends in social networking and collaboration.
Find out more about CWA New Media’s CEE (Collaborative Enterprise Environment) activities.
The Parliament Experience
CWA had the privilege of writing and producing a mini documentary about New Zealand’s parliament buildings which is viewed by visitors from around the world in Parliament’s visitors’ centre.
In researching the DVD, our video team went behind the scenes to uncover the hidden stories and history of our parliamentary buildings. We explored the early days of parliamentary life, when wooden buildings were the norm, and fires could take a tremendous toll. We located images and historic news footage of the damage the buildings suffered, and filmed the results of the painstaking work by master craftsman from around the world that saw them restored to their former glory.
The DVD is also available for purchase as a memento of a visit to the home of our government.
