Radish-O-Rama

Today, at lunch time, the Green Team harvested their first crop of radishes. These were then sliced  up and offered  to the rest of the school to try. The queue of children wanting to try a radish wound its way across the lawn, with children returning to the back of the line again and again. Some children opted for the radish with some dip.

Comments from the children included 'yummy', ' very delicious',"very sweet", "can I take some home for Dad?".  Staff had to move quickly to get a taste!!

This was a great way to introduce children to new vegetables and the Green Team plan to sow more radishes for later on the year. 

A new face to Google News Sitemaps

Posted by Andy Golding, Google News Software Engineer

Given the feedback we get from publishers, we've redesigned our interface to make Google News Sitemaps more flexible and easier to submit. [As a reminder, a Google News Sitemap is a file created by publishers which gives you even more control over the content you submit to Google News].

We're currently in the midst of an exciting transition period and need your help to avoid interruption in crawling your content.

To facilitate this transition, we'll have a six-month grandfather period during which you can continue to use the old format for any existing Sitemap that was originally submitted using the old format. Any new Sitemap submission must follow the new format. Please take a few minutes to make the shift. If no change is made by the end of the grandfather period, you'll no longer receive the benefits of having your articles crawled via a Google News Sitemap.

If your site is already included in Google News and you haven't submitted a Google News Sitemap yet, we encourage you to do so in order to manage your news content. Please visit our updated instructions for details on how to start using the new format.

Main changes in this release:

• Publication Label Pulldown Menu: The publication label pulldown menu no longer exists in Webmaster Tools. Instead, you should now attach the equivalent information to each individual article in your Sitemap, as described below.
  
  Note: For previously-submitted Sitemaps in the old format, we will "remember" the last publication label you selected from the pulldown menu and use that; however, please update to the new format as soon as you can.


• New tags: In place of the publication menu, there are now three tags that you can attach to each article in your Sitemap giving the equivalent information:


• <publication>: Specifies the name and language of the publication that the article occurs in. Required.


• <genres>: Specifies the nature of the article as a comma-separated list chosen from: PressRelease, Satire, Blog, OpEd, Opinion, and UserGenerated. Required whenever any of these properties applies to the article.


• <access>: Specifies the accessibility of the article. Choices: Subscription or Registration. Required whenever either of the choices applies.

Please visit this help article for a complete description of the new News Sitemap format.


• Title tags: Article titles can be added using the <title> tag to help us identify the right title for your articles.


• More options to resubmit your sitemap: In addition to re-submitting your Google News Sitemap through your Webmaster Tools account, you can now resubmit it two other ways: robots.txt or ping. Note: The first time you submit your Sitemap, always use Webmaster Tools.

Check out this page for more details on the transition process, and please let us know if you have questions about your Google News Sitemap. Publishers can also visit the Sitemaps section of our User Help Forum, a place to ask questions, and interact with other users and Google guides.

Create and Share custom News sections

Posted by Sharad Jain and Nilesh Agrawal, Google News Software Engineers

Today, Google News is making it even easier to follow the latest stories on whatever subjects interest you. We are happy to announce our Custom sections directory, which gives users of some of our English-language editions the expanded ability to create comprehensive sections to put on their Google News home page or share with other users.

One of the great things about online news is the ability to filter by topics. Google News has long recognized this so we've allowed users to track articles based on keywords of their choice. But it has been a little tricky at times. For example, to follow news about topics related to outer space, you would have to create a pretty complex filter.

Now, if you're using Google News and can't find the perfect section, just create your own! You can do that by adding the relevant keywords. Then, if you are happy with the resulting section, you can publish it to a directory so others can benefit.



We have created an initial set of sections to get you started. There's one on Space, and others on topics such as U.S. Foreign Policy, Global Trade, Solar Power, and Hollywood. If you like them, click on "Add this section" and they'll appear on your home page.

The feature is currently available in the Google News editions for Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and we look forward to expanding it soon.

Please visit our Help Center for more information on how to subscribe to custom sections or create them.

Local news now available in France

Posted by Mikey Levine, Software engineer

Last year we announced the launch of local news in the U.S., and later in the UK, India, Canada and Germany. Today we're delighted to let you know that we're making this feature available for France.

The Local news section lets you keep track of current events in your area. Once implemented, the top stories for a given area will be at the top of your results, and our rankings also take into account a publication's location to promote local sources for each story.

We work hard to improve our algorithm, including its ability to understand the relevant locations for a news story and the location of the source that reports a story. We also train our algorithm to detect when a news article is reporting about a particular location and when it's not. The city of Paris (also a world celebrity) has proven particularly challenging in this respect.

How can I add Local News to my Google News homepage?
To get started, look for the local section on your front page and enter your city or postal code in the local search bar, shown here:

If you don't see this section, you can also set up your local news by clicking "Personalize this page" on the top right of the page. On the menu that comes up, click "Add a local section":

Once you've clicked on this local section link, you'll see a place to enter a postal code or city. Use the drop-down menu to choose the number of stories you'd like to see. Once you click "Add Section" you'll see this section on your personalized Google News page.

As always, we're always working to improve our product, and appreciate your feedback.

Town Versus Country

Early on in Term 3 most of Addington's senior school went to Southbridge school to play some sport. It was a great day out there, and Southbridge wanted to return the favour by coming to our school for another day of sport. So on Tuesday morning, 60 children (4 sports teams) were welcomed at our full school assembly by Nga Matiko, Te Tipuranga, and Ms Heath. After a delicious morning tea (put on by the Addington PTA), we went out to play our sports.

First was soccer, which our team won 9 :1. It was a tough but fun game. Then it was the Netball B teams turn. Again we won 9:5.  After this the A Netball team played and they lost 26:9. This was a very tough game.

Last game was the Rugby which we won 24:14. This felt really good because the teams had tied at Southbridge.

All the teams played really well and worked together to the end. They all showed resilience, persistance, passion and personal best. Fantastic Addington attitude.

After the games we all gathered together in the hall, to eat ice blocks and chat with our new Southbridge friends. Then we said our goodbyes and they hopped on the bus and set off to Southbridge.

It was a fun and spectacular day that we all enjoyed and hope to do again sometime soon.

Green Team Digs In

Early Friday morning our soil arrived in a big truck and after lunch members of the Green Team enthusiastically filled the beds and spread the soil. Now we are set to go.

P.S. Our potatoes are up through the soil in our planter box bed!!!!!

Garden Beds Up and Ready For Planting

Yesterday, members of our Green Team were very excited to see the arrival of the new raised beds for the vegetable garden. Together with Reg Platt of Fresh Harvest Planters, and Graeme Wood, (friend of the school and great supporter of the Green Team), the children assembled the two new beds. There was much hammering of nails and sawing of pegs and the beds are now all ready to go! Thank you again to Reg for making the beds, and to Graeme for his continued help and advise. 

Four cubic metres of soil will be put in them today along with some donated compost from the Strictland St Gardens. The team is all ready to get planting!!!