Geysers in Rotorua at Te Puia

By Wesley Fryer On February 27, 2009 · · 1 Comment

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One of the highlights of my day yesterday in Rotorua, New Zealand, was visiting Te Puia and seeing the mud pools as well as geyser basin. This was an introductory “welcome” video I recorded in the morning from my hotel balcony, overlooking part of the crater lake of Rotorua.

I am now COMPLETELY sold on the value and utility of flash-based camcorders. I took 24 video clips (1.5 minutes long and less) at Te Puia, but have not had the time and bandwidth to upload all of them to Flickr yet. I have, however, uploaded my photos from yesterday at Te Puia.

Some daring kids were actually swimming in the pool just below this geyser as it erupted yesterday. We considered joining them, but in the end decided not to. This is certainly a scene we wouldn’t see at Yellowstone National Park. The kids were having a GREAT time. What an exciting place to swim!

Here are two videos of the geyser eruption as well as the mud pools at Te Puia.

In addition to seeing geothermal features at Te Puia, we also learned a great deal about Maori culture from our tour guide, including information about Maori traditional woodcarving and weaving.

I hadn’t realized the Maoris were cannibals. I found the history of the Moa in New Zealand particularly interesting this trip. Like the Dodo, the Moa is now an extinct bird. The Maoris ate the moa until it was extinct, however, whereas European visitors were the scourge of the Dodo on Mauritius.

Technorati Tags:
maori, rotorua, geyser, newzealand, moa, dodo, cannibal, mud, tepuia

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On this day..

http://dakinane.wordpress.com David Kinane

Wes, it was great to finally see and hear you speak in person in Rotorua and not via your disembodied podcasts as I normally do! I would have loved to have had the chance to turn over some ideas with you while you were at lats09, but my schedule ensured that our paths did not cross. I have been following your blog and podcasts for a number of years now and we have spoken in the past, not sure if you remember?

I am prompted to comment however, because of your example of Skype teaching that you presented in your keynote. You might be interested to know that I have been teaching several classes of students in the UK using Skype and Dimdim for the last couple of years. I teach them from New Zealand late in the night. It is all part of a collaborative project that is partnering students at Meadowbank school in Auckland with Woodford School in Plymouth in the UK. Our blog is http://tohatoha.blogspot.com and Helen and I presented our project to the IFIP VIASL conference 2008 in Prague, where we met for the first time!

I will be teaching two classes again this week from 9:05 PM NZDST until 11:05 NZDST this Tuesday. We are currently working on an Excel project together and a collaborative Gamemaker project. If you would like more details please keep in touch.