Latest news with #KaiapoiHighSchool
NZ Herald
7 days ago
- NZ Herald
Kaiapoi student rescued after being left behind on mountain biking trip
But a final headcount was not conducted before the class departed the trip, and his son's absence went further unnoticed as the group returned to school. 'Everybody knows you do a headcount, and not just once, you do it when you pack up, and you do it when you unpack,' the father said. Oxley said the alarm wasn't raised until his son did not return home from school and his concerned mum called him. The boy then confirmed he had been left behind, and it wasn't until 3.35pm that the student managed to contact the school. Oxley said his son was a 'calm lad' and loved the school's outdoor programme, but it was 'outrageous' that the school was unaware of the absence until his son reached out. 'For everyone to get back in the vans and drive away without him, and nobody to mention it,' he said. 'It's lucky that his mother was the first person to ring him, as she usually works without her cell phone until 6pm. 'Otherwise, how long would he have been out there without anybody noticing?' He said it was also difficult to get through to the school to notify staff of the situation. 'When we called the school, there was no line to get through to anybody,' he said. 'It was all about pressing a button to get to a machine - there was nobody directly we could get in contact with.' Oxley said once notified, the school acted quickly to locate the boy. 'They got their own group together, they got search and rescue out, they called the police,' he said. 'But it's winter and at 3pm or 4pm the sun starts going down. 'He only had his jersey and mountain bike gloves, with no water and no lunch.' Jason Reid, Kaiapoi High School principal, said staff maintained regular contact with both the student and his family throughout the incident. He said the student was provided with mobile data to use location tracking services. 'As a safeguard, the school also contacted emergency services to assist with the response,' Reid said. Police sent the boy a mobile locate text, which, when responded to, gave the coordinates of the stranded teen. This allowed members of the search party to then locate him. This morning, the school met with the family for a review of the incident as part of the Education Outside the Classroom protocol. After the meeting, the boy's father said he was pleased the protocols were being reviewed, and he believed the school was taking the situation seriously. 'I don't want any child to be left behind, so as long as everybody's nice and safe, outdoor activities are great,' Oxley said. The incident and its processes would also be reviewed with the assistance of the external agency, Education Outdoors New Zealand. Kaiapoi High School said it was committed to implementing any additional safeguards that resulted from the review and would keep the school community informed about any findings. Jazlyn Whales is a multimedia journalist based in the Christchurch newsroom.
1News
28-05-2025
- Science
- 1News
Two Kiwi students shine in Apple's global coding competition
Two 16-year-olds from New Zealand have been named among Apple's Swift coding competition winners for 2025. Alex Liang from Westlake Boys High School and Ben Lawrence from Kaiapoi High School were named among the 350 winning submissions from the tech giant's global competition associated with the Worldwide Developers Conference. Applicants span the globe, representing 38 countries and regions, and incorporating a wide range of tools and technologies. Liang's entry called Make A Wish follows his success last year as the only winner from New Zealand, this time using maths to predict a meteor path, track it in the sky and capture pictures of meteor showers from a phone, rather than a meteor camera. He said he vividly remembered standing outside in May 2021, holding his mother's phone up for three hours and being "very happy and proud of myself" when he finally captured a meteor on camera — but it was time consuming. ADVERTISEMENT "My app is focused on meteors because many people actually try to see meteors and then try to take a picture of it. Right now, the cheapest way to capture a meteor without having to endure it is to use a meteor camera." Alex Liang demonstrates his app to a fellow student. (Source: Supplied) For Liang, it's the second year in a row that he has been named as a winner and he said there had been a "very clear rise" in the number and calibre of applicants this year, and in the use of Artificial Intelligence. "And so this year, unlike last year, I mentioned little planets, which was no AI at all. But this year I did actually implement AI/machine learning in the form of object detection." Liang said he was "not surprised at all" that Apple had decided to allow the use of AI in the competition this year but all usage had to be disclosed. "In fact, I was expecting it. Without AI, many of the things from the app I made would not be possible. "I use it to bump up my efficiency sometimes because I do actually use AI to debug and stuff and then sometimes to create new features or learn new frameworks. But using it does not mean you have to rely entirely on it. ADVERTISEMENT "You have to understand your code top to bottom, every single line, not just saying 'hey GPT do something for me, just write me an app that's doing this'. And AI is not able to create things like that just by saying one word." Liang said planning was already underway for next year's entry, and Make A Wish was being reviewed by Apple to be added to the App Store. "Words cannot describe the experience. I felt like I stepped up to the whole next level of not just astronomy, but innovation. It is something I'm very profound about, something I'm very happy about." Helping money make 'Good Cents' Ben Lawrence pictured using his app, Good Cents. (Source: Supplied) 16-year-old Ben Lawrence from Kaiapoi High School, Christchurch, told 1News he "didn't expect anything" after entering his submission, Good Cents. The app simulates real-world financial scenarios in which users get a job, spend and save money and navigate complex financial curveballs. ADVERTISEMENT 'You do a quiz on some financial questions like 'What is a good way to spend money?' 'How do you save?' 'What's a budget used for?'. 'And based on that, you'll be awarded points, you'll get promotions and the player can also complete lessons that will teach you certain elements and aspects and then I'll quiz you on it to make sure you've actually read through it." Throughout the game, Lawrence gave examples of "random events" players could encounter designed to test whether they will spend money or not. "Oh, the new iPhone came out. You know you already have one, but you want the new one. Do you want to do it, or should you save your money? That kind of thing." Ben Lawrence's app, 'Good Cents'. (Source: Supplied) "Or if your savings are low but you have tonnes of money in your spending [the app] might say, 'hey do you want to put some money into your savings, get some interest on it?'." Lawrence said learning money skills in class could be "pretty boring" and hoped his app could be a way to make learning finances more fun. ADVERTISEMENT "Just making learning more fun and then also helping people with skills better pretty darn important and going into adulthood." The app took him three months to develop, and he hoped to launch it on the App Store soon. 'But I'm working on kind of upgrading it, almost making it so it's more of a platform so schools can sign up to it, license it, whatever and you can have classrooms and teachers can assign work to students and certain aspects of it. 'Phones are banned in schools so that's a huge problem, but I'm working on making it so that they can do it through a website now as well.' An idea that could go 'global' Denis Vida, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Western University in Ontario Canada, runs a project called the Global Meteor Network (GMN), which has over 1400 meteor cameras globally across 42 countries. Liang said he was collaborating the organisation with the goal of sharing his app with the global astronomy community. ADVERTISEMENT Adjunct Research Professor at the University of Western Ontario. (Source: Supplied) "Essentially everyone can follow a simple set of instructions and buy very reasonably low-cost hardware and install a meteor camera, then install our open-source software and contribute to the project," Vida said. He said "you don't really need to know much about space or science" to do so. "We have a lot of participants in New Zealand who are farmers with no previous context or interest in astronomy, but when they heard about potential meteor fall in their area they got in touch to get a camera installed." He said Liang reached out to him as one of New Zealand's "strong, well-organised" group of space enthusiasts, and was excited to collaborate with him on a project to solve a common problem. Vida said the main issue they faced was that people may be told when a meteor event could happen in their area, but won't know where exactly to look or which way to point their phone in the sky. "Most of the time when people do it, they hold their phone up, they wait for the right time, and it turns out they were looking the completely wrong direction. Or they'll swing the phone and then the only thing they have in the frame is just the fireball with no other reference points. ADVERTISEMENT "The problem is if we want to make measurements in that, we can't use it. There needs to be stars, it needs to be static or have some kind of reference points." He said developing an app to solve this problem sounded like the perfect project for programming pro Liang. "So the idea was let's build an app or some service that people can install where every time something like that happens within a certain radius of you, you'll get a notification and a set of instructions of how to start calibration and the sorts of images to take." Vida said now that Liang had created the app, the next step was getting it installed on a lot of phones, to get other meteor agencies on board. "Once we know that, you know things are going to happen and then people are going to install it, they're going to take pictures with the app and then once we show results that's where the app is going to get more established or where people are going to get more recognised." He said with some more rigorous testing and development of some features, Liang's app would have the potential to have an "oversized impact" globally. "Impacts of little asteroids happen all over the world in a random way. So something's on the App Store and anyone can download it, that's literally [going to] go global." ADVERTISEMENT "These challenges are a great way to find talent. You have pretty small investment and you set some sort of a goal, and you find talented people who are inspired by it," he said.
Scoop
30-04-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Kaiapoi School At Capacity Just 7 Years After Redevelopment
Article – David Hill – Local Democracy Reporter Kaiapoi High School is continuing to grow, prompting calls for new classrooms. A North Canterbury school is hoping the Ministry of Education will answer its call for more classrooms as its students chose education over an uncertain job market. Kaiapoi High School was redeveloped in 2018, following the earthquakes, with a capacity of 1100 students, but now has a roll of 1085 with more growth anticipated over the next few years. Kaiapoi High School principal Jason Reid said while year 9 enrolments have ''plateaued'', students are staying at school for longer due to the economic uncertainty. ''Our roll has kept growing because of the high level of youth unemployment, so we need to push harder because we are at capacity now. If you look at the way other schools in our catchment area are growing, we can see the growth coming.'' While students staying at school longer is a good thing, Mr Reid said it does place pressure of schools to stay relevant. ''We need to make sure schools are providing what a student needs. A student who would have normally gone into the workplace needs to know that high school is still providing value for them.'' Mr Reid said they are lucky to have board-owned buildings to teach in. ''It means we are not teaching in corridors like some schools. However, I would like to be proactive so in two to three years we are not still having these conversations.'' The school's 10-year property plan has provision for more buildings, but Ministry of Education regional infrastructure manager southern Simon Cruickshank said no building projects were in the work programme. While there has been rapid growth over the last five years, Mr Cruickshank said the school has experienced stable year 9 intakes since 2021. ''Despite this, we are expecting growth in the next few years which is why we continue to actively monitor school roll trends, residential development, and subdivision approvals to support the local education network. ''Updated population projections from Stats NZ, expected later this year, will help inform our planning for population change in the Waimakariri district.'' He said the Ministry is actively engaged with the Waimakariri District Plan Review process to ensure future schooling needs are considered. Tuahiwi School is opening six new classrooms in term two, Kaiapoi Borough School opened new classrooms in 2023, and Woodend and Kaiapoi North Schools are in negotiations with the Ministry to support roll growth. The Kaiapoi High School board of trustees has been contacted for comment.
Scoop
30-04-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Kaiapoi School At Capacity Just 7 Years After Redevelopment
A North Canterbury school is hoping the Ministry of Education will answer its call for more classrooms as its students chose education over an uncertain job market. Kaiapoi High School was redeveloped in 2018, following the earthquakes, with a capacity of 1100 students, but now has a roll of 1085 with more growth anticipated over the next few years. Kaiapoi High School principal Jason Reid said while year 9 enrolments have ''plateaued'', students are staying at school for longer due to the economic uncertainty. ''Our roll has kept growing because of the high level of youth unemployment, so we need to push harder because we are at capacity now. If you look at the way other schools in our catchment area are growing, we can see the growth coming.'' While students staying at school longer is a good thing, Mr Reid said it does place pressure of schools to stay relevant. ''We need to make sure schools are providing what a student needs. A student who would have normally gone into the workplace needs to know that high school is still providing value for them.'' Mr Reid said they are lucky to have board-owned buildings to teach in. ''It means we are not teaching in corridors like some schools. However, I would like to be proactive so in two to three years we are not still having these conversations.'' The school's 10-year property plan has provision for more buildings, but Ministry of Education regional infrastructure manager southern Simon Cruickshank said no building projects were in the work programme. While there has been rapid growth over the last five years, Mr Cruickshank said the school has experienced stable year 9 intakes since 2021. ''Despite this, we are expecting growth in the next few years which is why we continue to actively monitor school roll trends, residential development, and subdivision approvals to support the local education network. ''Updated population projections from Stats NZ, expected later this year, will help inform our planning for population change in the Waimakariri district.'' He said the Ministry is actively engaged with the Waimakariri District Plan Review process to ensure future schooling needs are considered. Tuahiwi School is opening six new classrooms in term two, Kaiapoi Borough School opened new classrooms in 2023, and Woodend and Kaiapoi North Schools are in negotiations with the Ministry to support roll growth. The Kaiapoi High School board of trustees has been contacted for comment.
