awhiworld update and a 3D excursion

A certain primary school had another visit from Raewyn (picture left), the intrepid portal investigator this week along with my story-ing, Suess- hat, wearing self (picture right).

This time the focus was on gatekeepers, and the importance of guardianship.

Who are gatekeepers and guardians? What are the qualities they bring to communities and schools?, we asked the children?

They protect the school. They look after our garden. They guard the magical doorways and portals... the children answered.

The children attentively listening to my story of portals and gatekeepers through time, and watched Raewyn's inspirational images and ideas about protective energies and structures. They all then disappeared back to their classrooms to work with their teachers to construct gatekeepers for their school garden. They are starting on paper, but will eventually work on a bigger scale with recycled materials. The vision is to end up with creative structures that will sit around the school greenery to remind them of good gatekeeper/guardian values.


A couple of days later the staff of this amazing school attended a teacher development day at Nextspace: www.nextspace.co.nz,
one of NZ's leading 3D graphic imaging innovation hubs. Brenda Frisk (Business and Education Strategist for Nextspace) the visionary school leaders, and myself, had designed this excursion in order to help teachers develop their skills in 3D virtual space, and thus prepare for even more creative hijinks next year.

On the day, Brenda worked with the teachers using Right Hemisphere designed Deep Exploration software, to create storyboards, presentations and other documents with 3D content. Brenda also assisted us to look into the future, where our workforce (and therefore education system) will need to dramatically change in order to keep up with the 3D revolution that is occuring in every industry and profession.

Next year the vision is that Awhiworld will go 3D, and that innovative practices will occur simultaneously in the physical, digital and imaginal rhealms. While current digital and communication infrastructure at the school is extremely poor, but school leadership is working very hard to bring it up to a level that will allow creative juices to move from 2D to 3D visual work.