title: “Malamalama- Miss, it means to understand, but it can mean light also.”  Pasifika students’ perspectives of studying history in New Zealand.

authors: Reymer, Christina Helene

subjects: Pasifika

abstract: This thesis looks at Pasifika students’ perspectives of studying history in the New Zealand secondary school I currently teach in. The methodology for the thesis was centred on a Tongan research approach referred to as Talanoa. This is an informal conversation during which Year 13 history students, who felt they belonged to the Pasifika collective, shared their experiences, attitudes and perspectives of studying history.  The ideas and insights from the Talanoa are discussed and explored in this thesis. I contend that understanding the identities of our students is essential if we are to understand their experiences and perspectives of the enacted history curriculum and school programme. Therefore, this thesis explores the notion of identity formation, and looks at the various factors that shape the identities of the participants in this research. It is my view that as a result of lived rich cultural experiences Pasifika students have a personal sense of history. This in turn provides a unique lens through which they experience history in the classroom. This way of knowing the past influences their perspectives of the nature and purpose of history education. This includes how they see the role of interpretation in history, and how they find relevance or make connections with the historical contexts they study in the classroom history programme. I discuss curriculum theory that has informed my curriculum understandings. I reflect on the revised New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) and its supporting assessment policies in light of the implications for both history education in New Zealand, and for Pasifika students who receive this curriculum. It is my contention that the students in this research project demonstrated a deep understanding of history and provided valuable insights for teachers that may enhance teaching and learning experiences in the history classroom.

text: “Malamalama- Miss, it means to understand, but it can mean light also.”  Pasifika students’ perspectives of studying history in New Zealand. This thesis looks at Pasifika students’ perspectives of studying history in the New Zealand secondary school I currently teach in. The methodology for the thesis was centred on a Tongan research approach referred to as Talanoa. This is an informal conversation during which Year 13 history students, who felt they belonged to the Pasifika collective, shared their experiences, attitudes and perspectives of studying history.  The ideas and insights from the Talanoa are discussed and explored in this thesis. I contend that understanding the identities of our students is essential if we are to understand their experiences and perspectives of the enacted history curriculum and school programme. Therefore, this thesis explores the notion of identity formation, and looks at the various factors that shape the identities of the participants in this research. It is my view that as a result of lived rich cultural experiences Pasifika students have a personal sense of history. This in turn provides a unique lens through which they experience history in the classroom. This way of knowing the past influences their perspectives of the nature and purpose of history education. This includes how they see the role of interpretation in history, and how they find relevance or make connections with the historical contexts they study in the classroom history programme. I discuss curriculum theory that has informed my curriculum understandings. I reflect on the revised New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) and its supporting assessment policies in light of the implications for both history education in New Zealand, and for Pasifika students who receive this curriculum. It is my contention that the students in this research project demonstrated a deep understanding of history and provided valuable insights for teachers that may enhance teaching and learning experiences in the history classroom.

year: 2012

title: Effective classifiers for detecting objects

authors: Mayo, Michael

subjects: computer science

abstract: Several state-of-the-art machine learning classifiers are compared for the purposes of object detection in complex images, using global image features derived from the Ohta color space and Local Binary Patterns. Image complexity in this sense refers to the degree to which the target objects are occluded and/or non-dominant (i.e. not in the foreground) in the image, and also the degree to which the images are cluttered with non-target objects. The results indicate that a voting ensemble of Support Vector Machines, Random Forests, and Boosted Decision Trees provide the best performance with AUC values of up to 0.92 and Equal Error Rate accuracies of up to 85.7% in stratified 10-fold cross validation experiments on the GRAZ02 complex image dataset.

text: Effective classifiers for detecting objects Several state-of-the-art machine learning classifiers are compared for the purposes of object detection in complex images, using global image features derived from the Ohta color space and Local Binary Patterns. Image complexity in this sense refers to the degree to which the target objects are occluded and/or non-dominant (i.e. not in the foreground) in the image, and also the degree to which the images are cluttered with non-target objects. The results indicate that a voting ensemble of Support Vector Machines, Random Forests, and Boosted Decision Trees provide the best performance with AUC values of up to 0.92 and Equal Error Rate accuracies of up to 85.7% in stratified 10-fold cross validation experiments on the GRAZ02 complex image dataset.

year: 2007

title: Me ko Māui: Harnessing the sun to provide better outcomes for marae and communities

authors: Greensill, Waikauri

abstract: Marae are the cultural centres of Māori communities, providing a space for important gatherings both joyful and sad. With the advent of solar energy capture technologies and rising electricity bills, many marae are becoming interested in whether a solar powered system will be beneficial for them. However, marae have unique electricity demand profiles, distinct from commonly modelled building types such as residential or commercial buildings. It is thus difficult to estimate an appropriate solar and battery system size based on annual or even monthly electricity usage data, which may be the only data readily available, requiring more in-depth analysis at a highly site-specific level to find an answer. This thesis aims to increase understanding around how solar power could benefit marae, first by investigating the characteristic electricity demand profile of marae, then by observing how proposed system configurations meet the demand. The potential community benefits arising from such a system was also investigated. Using a year’s worth of half-hourly data from three marae, five characteristic day types were found in the analysis of the demand profile, namely a “Non-Event” profile that maintained a low baseload and accounted for 70% of the days in a year, a “1-Day Event” profile that lasted only a few hours, and for events spanning multiple days a “Start”, “Middle” and “End” day profile that varied greatly in demand magnitude. The demand profiles were then used to develop an annual demand profile for an average marae that was broadly representative of a wide range of marae. Different configurations of solar and battery powered systems were then applied to the annual demand and a technoeconomic analysis performed to determine whether a specific configuration met the needs of the average marae or not, which then produced a range of acceptable system sizes based on the needs specified. Not many solar and battery configurations resulted in positive economic returns for the marae alone, but widening the scope of the analysis to the surrounding community allows other interests such as local grid resilience to be considered, some of which may justify a marae’s decision to invest in a non-economic system to gain better community benefits. While investigating the use of peer-to-peer energy trading and community energy scenarios, sharing excess energy generated by a system with the wider community was also found to improve the economic outlook of solar for marae.

text: Me ko Māui: Harnessing the sun to provide better outcomes for marae and communities Marae are the cultural centres of Māori communities, providing a space for important gatherings both joyful and sad. With the advent of solar energy capture technologies and rising electricity bills, many marae are becoming interested in whether a solar powered system will be beneficial for them. However, marae have unique electricity demand profiles, distinct from commonly modelled building types such as residential or commercial buildings. It is thus difficult to estimate an appropriate solar and battery system size based on annual or even monthly electricity usage data, which may be the only data readily available, requiring more in-depth analysis at a highly site-specific level to find an answer. This thesis aims to increase understanding around how solar power could benefit marae, first by investigating the characteristic electricity demand profile of marae, then by observing how proposed system configurations meet the demand. The potential community benefits arising from such a system was also investigated. Using a year’s worth of half-hourly data from three marae, five characteristic day types were found in the analysis of the demand profile, namely a “Non-Event” profile that maintained a low baseload and accounted for 70% of the days in a year, a “1-Day Event” profile that lasted only a few hours, and for events spanning multiple days a “Start”, “Middle” and “End” day profile that varied greatly in demand magnitude. The demand profiles were then used to develop an annual demand profile for an average marae that was broadly representative of a wide range of marae. Different configurations of solar and battery powered systems were then applied to the annual demand and a technoeconomic analysis performed to determine whether a specific configuration met the needs of the average marae or not, which then produced a range of acceptable system sizes based on the needs specified. Not many solar and battery configurations resulted in positive economic returns for the marae alone, but widening the scope of the analysis to the surrounding community allows other interests such as local grid resilience to be considered, some of which may justify a marae’s decision to invest in a non-economic system to gain better community benefits. While investigating the use of peer-to-peer energy trading and community energy scenarios, sharing excess energy generated by a system with the wider community was also found to improve the economic outlook of solar for marae.

year: 2024