Carving Report -Interview with Johnny Sparks Rm 11

On Monday, Mr Miles Kau Kau, a tutor in Maori Arts came to school to show children from Rooms 9, 10 and 11 how to do soap carving. First we put a piece of paper over the soap and drew over the pattern. Then when we took the paper off, we could see the pattern on the soap. Next we got a special tool and carved over the lines. We had to cut away more of the soap around the pattern we wanted.

At lunch we cut around the outside to make it stand out more. Next we smoothed it over with a chisel. We added three pieces of paua , two for our parents, and one for ourselves. We carved more patterns to show how many brothers and sisters we had. Lastly we decorated the base.

It was awesome and Miles was lots of fun. We sang heaps of Maori songs with him as we did our carving.

Enhancements to Google News for smartphones

Posted by Arun Prasath, Tech Lead, Google Mobile News

Last November, we redesigned Google News for mobile access on smartphones including Android, iPhone and Palm Pre. Today, we're globally rolling out new usability and visual enhancements that we hope will make browsing news on your smartphone easier.

We expanded the story space to make tapping on articles easier and more accurate. Tapping anywhere on an article headline or snippet opens it up, and clicking on a section heading opens up that topic section on your screen.

In addition, the default view of stories is now collapsed which reduces scrolling time. You can 'expand' a story by tapping on 'More sources', which brings you to related stories from other sources. The screenshots below show the collapsed and expanded view of a story.

Collapsed:


Expanded:


So, pick up your smartphone, point your browser to http://news.google.com, and catch up on news on the go.

Wellington Visit

Well what a great day was had by all!

It started off with a very early rise for everyone involved (the bus left from the school grounds around 5.50am to transport the group to the airport).

They arrived in Wellington in time for breakfast and from there they were taken on a guided tour and lunch at Te Papa. They also had a ride on the “High Ride” and visited several of Te Papa’s Discovery Centres.

The highlight of the afternoon was a great tour of the Rugby Union Headquarters where the group were shown some very fascinating memorabilia and given a very interesting tour and talk. They were fortunate enough to be able to have their group photo taken with the Tri Nations Cup and some of the students even had their photo taken wearing on of the gold medals recently won at the Commonwealth Games.

The group later travelled to Parliament and although there was not time for a tour of the buildings they did have their photo taken on the steps of parliament buildings and were able to view the beehive and have a picnic afternoon tea on the Parliament lawn.

A short walk from parliament took the group to the cable car where they had a trip up the hill to the botanic gardens. This gave the group a chance to have a walk around to enjoy the marvellous Wellington weather and to take in the fantastic views from the top of the hill. After having their evening meal at McDonalds the group were transported back out to the airport to await their flight back to Christchurch.

As many parents will already be aware, a group of very happy but tired students arrived back in Christchurch after having spent a day in Wellington. We know that the memories of this day will be a highlight in their lives for many years to come.

All the students must be commended for their behaviour on this trip. They were all in Wellington as ambassadors for our school and they certainly represented us well at all times.

We would especially like to thank Shirley McDonnell for the tremendous amount of time and effort she put in once again to plan and book this trip for our year 6 children. Shirley’s organization was superb down to the last little detail and this certainly ensured the success of the whole day.

Zone Sports Success!

Yesterday 17 Senior students travelled to Hillmorton High school for the Zone Athletic Sports Day. Our students competed in Sprints, Long Distance, High Jump, Long Jump, Discus and Shot Put. Everyone showed their Addington Attitude and had a wonderful day.

Congratulations to Grace Sorby who came second in the Long Jump and Caleb Gregory who came second in the 50 m Sprint. Both Grace and Caleb have qualified for the Central Zones. Well done!

A huge thank you to those parents who helped with transporting our team down to Hillmorton and were able to cheer our children on. It was much appreciated.

Farewell to Mrs Teear

This afternoon Amanda Teear was farewelled at a full school assembly. Mrs Teear had taught at Addington for almost 7 years and said that they were the best teaching years of her life!

Te Tipuranga, Whanau Kowhai, Room 10, and the Green Team all paid tribute to the wonderful contributions she had made to life at Addington school.

Ms Heath thanked Mrs Teear for being such a great teaching practitioner, collegue and friend.

We will all miss her sense of fun and fantastic contributions to teaching at our school and wish her all the very best for the future.

$5 million to encourage innovation in digital journalism

Posted by Nikesh Arora, President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development

Journalism is fundamental to a functioning democracy. So as media organizations globally continue to broaden their presence online, we’re eager to play our part on the technology side -- experimenting with new ways of presenting news online; providing tools like Google Maps and YouTube Direct to make websites more engaging for readers; and investing heavily in our digital platforms to enable publishers to generate more revenue.

But while we're mostly focused on working with news organizations to develop better products for users, we also believe it's crucial to encourage innovation at the grassroots level. That's why we’re giving $5 million in grants to non-profit organizations that are working to develop new approaches to journalism in the digital age. Our aim is to benefit news publishers of all sizes.

We've granted $2 million to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has a proven track record of supporting programs that drive innovation in journalism. It will use $1 million to support U.S. grant-making in this crucial area. The other $1 million will augment the Knight News Challenge, which is accepting funding proposals from anyone, anywhere in the world, until Dec. 1. Now in its fifth year, the News Challenge has supported projects like DocumentCloud, which aims to bring more investigative-reporting source material online so anyone can find and read it.

We’re eager to do even more internationally, so we will be investing the remaining $3 million in journalism projects in other countries through a similar partnership. Stay tuned for more details early next year.

We hope these grants will help new ideas blossom and encourage experimentation. As Thomas Edison once said, "When there's no experimenting, there's no progress. Stop experimenting and you go backward." We look forward to working with the journalism community to help digital news move forward.

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Shining a Spotlight on Video News

Posted by Natasha Mohanty, Google News Software Engineer

Today in the U.S. we’re launching a new section in Google News called "Spotlight Video" that showcases popular videos from news channels on YouTube like "NOVA: The Secret Life of Scientists: Jean Berko Gleason" from PBS.



Google News has always helped users find recent articles from a wide variety of sources. But we recognize there are other types of stories that our users are interested in. So last year, we created the Spotlight section to feature stories of more lasting interest. Like the rest of Google News, Spotlight articles are selected by our computer algorithms, but they aren't your typical breaking news. Instead you'll find stories of enduring appeal such as feature articles, investigative reporting and opinion pieces. In fact, Spotlight quickly became one of our most popular sections.

So now we’re shining the spotlight on videos too. In the right-hand column you can find the new Spotlight Video section and check out recently popular news clips, like "Singer-producer Bruno Mars Continues to Rise" from the Associated Press.

If your news organization isn't already making its video content available on YouTube and Google News, we encourage you to get started. More information on how to submit your news videos to Google News can also be found in the News Publishers' Help Center. And here are some additional tips on news search engine optimization.

Side note: today you may have noticed we also modified the left-hand navigation. Now, as you scroll down the page, the navigation menu will move with you. This way, you can always see the sectional and hot topic quick links.

Please tell us what you think and we’ll keep working to improve Google News for you.