futures Archives < Learning Architects

Creating an inclusive, equitable future

I’ve just spent two days at Addington Raceway as one of the sponsors of the Canterbury Primary Principals Association 2021 leadership conference. I always enjoy an opportunity to reconnect and share ideas with so many passionate educators from the Waitaha region and beyond in one place. Entitled ‘Sowing Seeds for the Future’, the conference themes were Equity and inclusion, Futures,…

Make learning engaging with the Electric Garden

Electric Garden is an innovative programme where learners engage with computer science concepts through gardening. We are inspired by their vision of digital enablement of all Kiwis now matter where they live, and proud to be their PLD provider.

The ethics of the future – Data Science Pioneers

I recently attended the premiere screening of the documentary movie Data Science Pioneers in Christchurch. This was a great chance to learn and reflect on what I believe will become the ethics of the future. The movie dispels the myth that artificial intelligence and robots will rise against humanity and conquer the world. If you are interested in the future roles our students may have (or create for themselves), the convergence of humans and technology, machine learning, AI and of course, the ethical dilemmas all this presents, then this movie will be worth watching. There will also be a discussion panel with the team from Digital Future Aotearoa after the movie.

5 apps for learning te reo Māori

As part of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori I came across a couple of great apps this week. To help me with my te reo learning, I have always relied on the Māori Dictionary to learn new Māori words. Today I came across a couple of great apps for strengthening te reo Māori which I just had to share. Kupu logoKupu is a new app designed by Spark which uses augmented reality. Kupu, which translates to mean “word” – works via machine learning provided by Google. Users simply take a picture, and Kupu uses image recognition to identify what is in the picture and provide te reo Māori translations for what is seen. Kupu is an example of Augmented Reality (AR) which is a form of technology that layers the digital world over the physical world. There are a lot of different apps which perform various tasks using AR, such as finding a local cafe, mapping apps, or even a new one I use called Snoww which enables users to locate friends they follow (I use this to know where my daughter is on the mountain!).

How music is made with exciting technology WebVR

I’ve long been interested in emerging technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality. You probably heard of virtual reality and augmented reality. I remember one of the earliest examples of virtual reality which was a software product by Apple – QuickTime VR which was an amazing software package.