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Embedding mātauranga Māori in computing courses: A follow-up case study
No full textThis paper discusses practical implementation of methods used to increase the awareness of ākonga regarding Māori beliefs, language and practices in IT courses. Direct and indirect methods provided by Unitec to embed mātauranga Māori in teaching and learning were used. The paper examines how these methods were applied through a case study of the Information Systems Application Project course, which relies heavily on group work, in the New Zealand Diploma of Information Systems (NZDIS). Ākonga were surveyed at semester’s end. However, due to lack of previous data for the Information Systems Application Project, comparisons will be made against the overall data for the NZDIS programme. The results indicate an increase in awareness of Māori beliefs in the Information Systems Application Project after applying the methods over the average score of NZDIS programme. These results suggest that continued use of these methods for embedding mātauranga Māori should further enhance ākonga understanding in the future
Mapping Waiheke Island's festivalscape: Community activism and festival reclamation
No full textWAIHEKE ISLAND IS THE THIRD MOST POPULATED ISLAND in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Situated in the Hauraki Gulf and its Marine Park, and close to the most populated city, Auckland, the island has played many roles. Before colonization, it was a food basket for the region and after colonization it has been a forest to plunder, a holiday and retirement community and a bohemian retreat that is increasingly attractive to the moneyed class, which has contributed to a higher cost of living. The island’s vineyards and art studios, pleasant microclimate and many beaches attract weekend visitors and increasingly unsustainable numbers of cruise ship day trippers throughout the year. Along with its expanding tourism, wine industry and rural gentrification, the island is also known for its growing significance as a maritime suburb as well as a “political hotbed” with an activist culture (Baragwanath 2010, 15).
Waiheke was chosen as the focus for this study because festivals have always been an important and integral part of this island’s community life and are often linked to the island’s rich activist culture, which has used festivals as a way of community building and protesting on social issues. Waiheke’s island identity and economy also contribute in a significant way to the tourism product of the Auckland City. In recent years there has been an increase in cultural tourism events organized by the Auckland Tourism Events & Economic Development, which has resulted in some events taken over from their local island focus to a regional, national and even global cultural festival tourism market, including the Sculptures in the Gulf biennial festival and the Jazz Art and Music Festival that attracts thousands of visitors annually.
In this chapter we explore island festivals and related forms of public culture as performance events that construct and negotiate meaning for the hosting island community and the visitors that come to the island to participate (Magliocco 2001). Through the mapping of Waiheke Island’s festivalscape, we explore related concepts like festivalization and festival reclamation and we discuss the contribution of the island’s festival culture to its identity and community organization. We conclude by linking these to the interconnected concepts of strange island and island imaginaries. Data for this research was collected through in-depth interviews with island inhabitants who have been involved in organizing and volunteering for festivals and ethnographic observations, partly participatory, by one of the authors, John Stansfield, who has been a Waiheke Island community member and activist for over three decades
Cross-sectional survey of public perception of commercial greyhound racing
No full textThe commercial greyhound racing industry in New Zealand is struggling with an eroding social license and ‘on-notice’ status. Multiple independent reviews of the industry have identified ongoing issues of animal welfare during and between races, euthanasia decisions, poor data tracking, a lack of transparency and problems with rehoming dogs, resulting in New Zealand animal advocacy agencies and the general public questioning the continuation of greyhound racing. The current paper assessed the New Zealand public’s awareness and familiarity with commercial greyhound racing, identified current levels of public support or opposition for racing, and provided context in terms of engagement with greyhound racing using a comprehensive survey of a robust sample of New Zealanders. The results confirm that the social license of the greyhound industry is under challenge with most respondents expressing disagreement with or lack of knowledge of current industry practices and indicating they would vote in support of a ban. There is scope for increasing public acceptability by addressing welfare issues, increasing awareness of positive industry practices, and encouraging transparency of the greyhound racing agency. However, as greyhound racing is on the decline worldwide, calls are likely to continue for a phase-out of commercial greyhound racing
Tomato disease detection with lightweight recurrent and convolutional deep learning models for sustainable and smart agriculture
No full textThe detection of plant diseases is a critical concern in agriculture, as it directly impacts crop health, yields, and food security (Fang and Ramasamy, 2015). Traditionally, this task has relied heavily on the observations of farmers and agricultural experts, which is fraught with many shortcomings, including human error and the inability to identify latent or early-stage infections. In response to these limitations, the scientific community has developed multiple innovative solutions. Among these, image classification techniques have gained widespread adoption due to their cost-efficiency (Chhillar et al., 2020) and the ability to enable real-time monitoring, allowing farmers to promptly detect diseases and take timely action (Chen et al., 2020). Additionally, these techniques are highly scalable, adaptable, non-invasive, and non-destructive and can be applied to different crops and disease scenarios (Ramcharan et al., 2017)
Nature: Mana, majesty & mayhem
No full textRESEARCH QUESTION
In the age of the Anthropocene, how can a contemporary photographic practice evoke an appreciation of te taiao through the interconnectedness of kaitiakitanga and whanaungatanga?
ABSTRACT
Within this Master of Creative Practice photographic Project, I endeavor to evoke an appreciation for Te Taiao/the natural environment within the age of the Anthropocene. This objective I have enveloped within Te Ao Māori whereby humankind is co-existent with te taiao within Ranginui and Papatūānuku whereby there are ‘...inbuilt obligations that the individual feels towards his/her Divine Parents and the way s/he should act with and inter-relate to everything that has been created’ (Pere, 1991, p26). The interrelatedness between tangata and te taiao is one of respect and adhering to due reciprocation (Keenan, 2012, p. 36) and reverence within the care and duty of kaitiakitanga. Moreover, kaitiakitanga operates within whanaungatanga as an expression of collective environmental consciousness.
Within my work, kaitiakitanga is portrayed as an engagement within whanaungatanga as it occurs in the local rohe or, as I have transcribed and a term I have coined within this project, as an adoptive or localised whakapapa. The locations I have focused on within the local environment and community are Te Waiunuroa o Wairaka, Rangimarie Pā Harakeke, Te Auauanga/Oakley Creek, and the Whau River. The focus on a local vicinity is an antithetical response to some of the widespread damage of an Anthropocentric worldview that has antagonised a kaitiakitanga sensibility that places an intrinsic interdependence on the natural environment.
Within my photographic narrative, I have sought to photograph a perspective of te taiao in a state of transitory flux within the climate crisis, the impending Anthropocene. I have encapsulated this shifting state with a visual representation of the Mana, the Majesty, and the Mayhem of Nature. The production of this narrative has been a journey of both documentation and a more subjective visualisation. Establishing my tūrangawaewae has also been a journey. I have established a sensibility of responsiveness toward the whenua within my photography, which, for me, is a form of kaitiakitanga. It is a multifaceted analogue record of the incremental shifts and the more volatile reactions of nature under extreme pressure. I aim to record the natural environment within the expressions of a form of realism and alongside subjectivity as a signification that our personal choices affect the greater good.
Hands-on learning for interior design students
No full textReading a recipe from a cookbook versus watching a YouTube clip of someone preparing the same recipe is different in absorbing the same information. Likewise, with tertiary-level Interior Design student learners watching a tutor partially construct a 3D model in front of the cohort seems to be a much better way of transferring information, including tips and tricks of physical model-making. Learning methods set within the early stages of the current AI world revolution must continue to encourage individual authorship, offering fair formative and summative outcomes based on real-world learning. This paper sets out a new assignment related to an Architectural Technology course for Residential Interior Design Students (abandoning the previous essay writing), substituting the construction of a scale model of a partial Bathroom Interior, complete with scale-modelled timber framing (to hold wall-hung wash-hand basins). Each student was allowed to design (and construct) their bathroom interior, whilst the framed-up backside of the 3D model is the assessed component. This seems to transform the assignment from a chore to an enjoyment. During the period of model making, each student could, (if they chose to), bring in their partially completed model for verbal feedback before the final hand-in. For the tutor, these models provide rich material for their formative and summative assessments. This paper will unpack this hands-on learning method, referencing known pedagogy texts to ground this as a valid way of providing an experiential way of learning for the Interior Design student
Creativity saves the world
No full text‘Creativity Saves The World’, a collaborative animated short by Bachelor of Design and Contemporary Art whānau celebrates the transformative power of creative endeavours. The collaborative motion graphic sequence highlights artistic processes and mediums where imagination knows no bounds. ‘Creativity Saves The World’ is a testament to the universal language of creativity and its ability to inspire, unite, and uplift humanity
Sense of place: Filipino cultural centre in Auckland
No full textRESEARCH QUESTION
How might architecture enhance the sense of belonging for Filipino immigrants living in New Zealand?
ABSTRACT
The ethnic and cultural diversity of New Zealand has historically been enhanced by immigrant communities. The general idea of Filipino migrants is that they leave their families in order to work as nannies or as labourers in the building, medical, or agricultural sectors in more developed countries.
This is significant, as moving to a foreign country can result in a lack of sense of place or, as Edward Relph believes, a sense of “outsideness.” In his text, Place and Placelessness, he provides a comprehensive examination of the essence and significance of place as well as its role in human lives.
For Filipino immigrants living in New Zealand, this is an on-going difficulty. Creating cultural heritage communities that other migrant groups have successfully established is especially hard due to the difficulty of defining the homogenous national culture of the Philippines. As a result, many Filipinos have chosen to interact with the outside world rather than creating their own internal relationships. Although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, these communal bonds are essential resources for teaching the next generation about the language, culture, and society of their parents’ homeland.
This project aims to answer the question of how architecture may enhance the feeling of belonging for Filipino immigrants residing in New Zealand. The chosen program for this project is a cultural centre, which is located in Auckland’s Takapuna suburb.
This study focusses on the meaning of place as well as lessons gathered from texts about Filipino culture, history, and identity. Characteristics of Filipino architecture are also used to inform the design of the Filipino Cultural Centre in New Zealand
Facial expressions in different communication settings: A case of whispering and speaking with a face mask in Farsi
No full textThis study addresses the importance of orofacial gestures and acoustic cues to execute prosodic patterns under different communicative settings in Farsi. Given that Farsi lacks morpho-syntactic markers for polar questions, we aim to determine whether specific facial movements accompany the prosodic correlates of questionhood in Farsi under conditions of degraded information, that is, whispering and wearing face masks. We hypothesise speakers will employ the most pronounced facial expressions when whispering questions with a face mask to compensate for the absence of F0, reduced intensity and lower face invisibility. To this end, we conducted an experiment with 10 Persian speakers producing 10 pairs of statements and questions in normal and whispered speech modes with and without face masks. Our results provide support to our hypotheses that speakers will intensify their orofacial expressions when confronted with marked conditions. We interpreted our results in terms of the ‘hand in hand’ and ‘trade-off’ hypothesis. In whispered speech, the parallel realisation of longer word duration and orofacial expressions may be a compensatory mechanism for the limited options to convey intonation. Also, the lower face coverage is mutually compensated for by word duration and intensified upper facial expressions, all of which in turn support the trade-off hypothesis
Embedding mātauranga Māori in computing courses: A follow-up case study
No full textINTRODUCTION
• Case study
• CITRENZ 2023
• Implemented methods
• Survey results
• Conclusio