On Breakfast this morning 25 January 2012

Sarah Putt from Computerworld Magazine discusses three major ways New Zealand can be positioned as a 'High Tech Nation in 2012'
http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/tech-talk-high-nation-video-4701101

1. DT becoming the fourth science within schools, reason, logic, programming skills.
2. DT careers focus to year 9 and 10 students.
3. Uni of canterbury improving the curriculum.

Catalyst IT to run Open Source Academy for school students, this is the second year Catalyst have taken students to work within their company to learn about Open Source Technologies as well as work with mentors to develop. The students take time off their holiday to goto Wellington and work for two weeks. A worthwhile opportunity.

Update on what the students worked on http://catalyst.net.nz/node/23404

Teachers took the opportunity to take time off during their holidays to attend Google CS4HS, a wonderful opportunity to hear what is happening at New Zealand's Universities, but also to hear what is happening within Google.

Over the last month there have been a couple of artices written by the New Zealand Computer Society about Digital Technologies, mainly around the Computer Science and Programming stand.

One of these was featured in the Presidents Newsletter - ICT in Schools, whats happening. The article looks at the changes that Digitial Technologies offers students, rather than just computing, how these changes came about. What Computer Science and Programming has to offer our students and a challenge for teachers.

Interesting that one of the areas of the NZACDITT group this week has been around the game Paper,-Scissors-Rock and the algorithm that could be used to play such a game.

Another nzcs article has been written Developing developers instead of creating users. This one looks at the changes that the new standards are now offering our students and what is being done to support teachers.

Now this one is a little bit different, it is students being able to showcase what they are learning with the new Digital Technologies Acheivement Standards, these ones are around the Knowledge and Skills within the Digital Media Strands

Student Prize - Luke Davia

"Creative Perfection", by Luke Davia

Luke (Year 11, Tawa College) developed an educational website teaching web design and coding with over 6MB of copyright-free, public domain, or Creative Commons content. A huge amount of work has gone into creating an incredibly valuable resource, with detailed attributions and permission for the curated content. One of our judges said they'd like to see this site hosted as a resource for Kiwi students and teachers. Nice work Luke! You win an Ipod Touch sponsored by Digital New Zealand

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41456994/Creative%20Perfection/index.html