baldwhiteguy.co.nz

One of my earliest jobs after university was with Massey University's Distance Education programme in New Zealand. I was tasked with the set-up and administration of Internet-based technologies to support the delivery of the university's distance education programme for students across NZ and internationally. A spin-off from this was the Telecom Amazon Adventure which I started in 1996. This was aimed at NZ primary schools to demonstrate the potential for bringing distant locations such as the Amazon rainforest right into the classroom. The project had a website, blogs, and weekly telephone audio conferences with students in about 800 schools. Back then, before everyone was on the Internet, the world seemed much bigger - and hugely exciting for a recent university graduate.

Interestingly, since we didn't have (good) digital cameras for instant publishing back then, I ended up doing the trip twice - once in January 1997 to take the photos, reconnoiter the area, and prepare the website. The second (live) journey, with schools in tow, ran from July to September. Photos shown here are a selection from those trips. The original slides/negatives and scan files are still in storage in NZ including many dodgy out-of-focus animal pics, photos of me going up trees, down rivers, and negotiating with a Spider Monkey to return my watch. I'll repost the original archived site here in future.