Reaffirming is the main impression that I took back from my recent visit to the USA.

New Zealand schools across the country are in an environment that allows us to be successful and this is something that we should all be very proud of. All of the American teachers that we spoke to were very envious of how the communities, principals, staff and to some degree the children set the direction of each school. We noted the frustration held by many Principal's of the district system, where a large number of schools all are given the same resources and targets for achievements despite being very different from each other. One could expect a significant amount of money is wasted in this system as we witnessed one school being delivered a large number of text books that they had neither requested or wanted but simply got because all schools in that district were being provided them.

Another theme was the impact that grades and state tests were having on their teaching and learning programmes. Teachers often discussed the negative impact that constantly providing an A-F grade was having on the students well being and attitude towards school and how tempting it was to simply teach to a test rather than deliver a broad curriculum that develops a variety of skills.

This experience has made me even more appreciate the value of our New Zealand system of community run schools who can focus on their communities needs and aspirations for their children. This should be something that we should continue to fight for.

Our visit to Google was also very reaffirming in that the future skills for many of our children will be very different to what we see today. I have spoken at length in the past about the future skills that will be required for our children of today and it was very interesting to see this in action in a work place.

The scale of the Mountain View Google Headquarters operation itself is daunting. With over 40,000 employees from all over the world focused on continuing to make Google a world player. They are well looked after and everything on the campus is provided free for employees; from all meals and coffee houses, gyms, swimming pools and even haircuts. We learnt more about Google time and how 20% of their time is given to the employees to work on passion projects. One of these passion projects became Gmail and many of Googles best ideas have come from allowing this freedom to explore. We also learnt about their 10X division which aim for "moonshots." Google glasses was one of these which didn't work but they are also responsible for driver-less cars and the Loon project which aims to deliver internet access around the world via balloons. It was reassuring to hear the importance once again placed on creativity.

We were also lucky enough to spend considerable time with one of the developers of the Google Apps for Education team. GAFE is something that your child is likely to use everyday at Kaikorai School if they are in Year 3 or above and it was great to hear that the people developing the apps hold the same beliefs about how children learn and what skills will be required.

It was also reassuring that it is not all coding at Google and we were surprised to learn that they had their own Makerspace, "The Garage" Employees were using some of their google time to work on projects. In many ways it didn't look dissimilar to ours with lots of cardboard, playdough, tools and 3D printers.

The conference was also information overload with 20,000 delegates from 70 different countries. 2000 people from the business world displaying the latest educational tools and hundreds of sessions to attend. Their were many big themes including GAFE, coding, robotics, virtual reality and the rise of drones to teach the curriculum. I have taken away many new ideas and identified what tools will provide the biggest impact for our students learning and look forward to rolling some of these out over the next 18 months. But it was also reaffirming to see that the direction that we are going with programmes like our makerspace and Kaikville is the right direction.

One very cheap and effective tool that I would like to use more of in the school is that of Virtual Realty. If you have an old iphone or android that is lying in a bottom draw somewhere that you no longer need and it can run Android 4.4 and later or iOS 8.0 and later we would love to have it to create a class set of phones for virtual realty. Of all the gifts that I brought back for my own two children, the $2.50 google VR box has been the favourite!

Many thanks again to the Board of Trustees for allowing me this wonderful opportunity and to Ricoh for their support.

I hope all of the children have a safe and enjoyable holiday and that parents get some time to relax as a family over the next two weeks.

Kind regards

Simon Clarke

Balmacewen Open Night

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