Rotorua Tulips

There is something magical about being in Rotorua for a conference.

Rotorua museum in the morning

I took this photo on the last day of the conference as I walked toward the event centre. The light was amazing.

Pukeko

Each morning I walked from my hotel to the convention centre past a family of Pukekos, they are amazing looking birds with such big feet.

ULearn 11 - Rotorua Museum

Ulearn11 has come and gone. This year it was in Rotorua as the venue we normally use is in the red zone of Christchurch. The conference was a huge success as always and everyone I spoke to went away buzzing. My job is to shoot video for the duration of the conference. I captured 35 videos over four days. You will be able to see them on the EDtalks website very shortly. This photo is the Rotorua Museum which is right next door to the convention centre. It is a beautiful building, and the flower gardens on the walk in to work in the mornings were just glorious!

QR codes

This image is from the first day of the Learning@School conference in Rotorua, snapped quickly on my iPhone. Allanah has had a pair of earrings made with QR codes on them. Reading them with the iPhone was almost impossible as she kept giggling and jiggling. People must have wondered what we were all doing with Allanah on the floor right at the entrance of the conference centre with Erin scanning her earlobes.

Wellington, Rotorua, and an earthquake

I have had a very full week, I have taken photos but not had the time to put them up, so I have decided to make this post a week's digest.

To start the week on Sunday I had a lovely day wandering around art galleries in Wellington with Esmay. This orb hangs in the sky outside the Wellington Art Gallery.



The day was beautiful, the sun was shining and as I sat in Mac's restaurant I looked across and saw the day framed. It seemed the perfect image for my girls' weekend away - the perfect day framed.



From Wellington I traveled to Rotorua for our annual Learning@School conference. This is a conference that I always look forward to. 1000 enthusiastic teachers sharing their practice with each other around technology, pedagogy, curriculum, and everything else. We had two days to set up for the conference but tragically in the middle of setting up on the Tuesday the news came through about the earthquake in Christchurch. CORE Education, who I work for, are based in Christchurch and about half of our staff at the conference had family there. Everyone was on their phones to find loved ones and then we found a way for them all to go home. Fortunately all were safe, but very, very shaken.



The conference went on with the remainder of the staff stepping up to fill in for the Christchurch staff who went home. Everything ran smoothly and the delegates would not have noticed how frantically everyone was working. My last image of Evelyn trying out one of the electric bikes at the conference summed up the experience for me. The conference went by in a blur of activity.