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| Living Heritage-Into Finals |
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| Author : Edusearch News Retease
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| Created : 29 Aug 2002
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| Last Revision : 29 Aug 2002
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New Zealand Website Makes it to Finals.
Living Heritage, a bilingual initiative aimed at capturing and preserving
the nation's heritage online, has been chosen as the sole New Zealand
finalist in the Stockholm Challenge, the prestigious global awards
programme that rewards best practice in information technology (ICT).
Living Heritage was established in 2001 with seed funding from the National
Library, 2020 Communications Trust, Sun Microsystems and The Learning
Centre Trust of New Zealand, who developed and manage the web site.
"Living Heritage is a remarkable and culturally significant initiative"
explains Trust chairman, David Copeland, "which provides the opportunity
for our young people to uncover, research and tell the stories of their
local community, activities, families and whanau in their own unique way."
"We have included a self-publishing web environment to ensure that young
people can publish their discoveries themselves, and share them with local
and international audiences via the World Wide Web. In this way, we can
all celebrate and preserve New Zealand's unique heritage and taonga and
encourage young people to become local historians and storytellers in
themselves."
"I'm delighted that there are now close to ninety schools involved in the
project, five of whom have already published projects on the web site."
"The Living Heritage project is very exciting" says National Library's
Geraldine Howell. "We see this as an opportunity for young people to
create a digital record of the historic, present and future heritage of New
Zealand which the Library can showcase and from which we can establish a
permanent collection for the benefit of future generations."
Project manager, Lucy Ryan, describes Living Heritage as a way to ensure
that young people's work across New Zealand will be preserved forever. "It'
s a way for their stories, voices and their perceptions of what their world
is like, to remain available and to live on. For example, the story of a
recycling project carried out by an Auckland school may not seem like
heritage now, but in 50 years time it could well provide fascinating
insights into how we lived our lives today. People might look back and
think that what we were recycling in 2002 was quite strange and might even
think that we were an incredibly wasteful generation. We're creating a
unique collection of perspectives that look both back in time and to the
future."
Recently awarded NetGuide's Site of the Month, the Living Heritage web site
is available at Living Heritage
and includes information about
the project and its participants, the treasures/taonga, with links to the
education curriculum. The site can be viewed in both English and Maori.
The Stockholm Challenge is an annual awards programme for pioneering
information technology projects in areas where there is a great impact on
people's lives. Over 600 projects were entered this year, each aiming to
show in practice how information technology can be applied to bridge the
gap between rich and poor.
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