Last night we had a bit of a highpoint for our podcasting and Skyping endeavours- through one of our Appleby parents we made contact with Rob Waddell, Olympic gold medalist and now grinder on Team Emirates New Zealand yacht in the America’s Cup challenge in Valencia, Spain.

Children had prepared fat questions to ask and we had all gathered back at school at 7pm on Monday night.

In order to overcome the problem of feedback when Skyping to a larger audience I plugged a splitter into the headphone jack and had one pair of headphones in one socket and speakers into the other. Perfect!

To add a little spice to the session TVNZ had got wind of it and were filming in Appleby, NZ while a second crew were filming in Valencia.

Rod proved to be an excellent spokesperson for Team New Zealand and had an easy rapport with the children.

You can view an edited version of the call on our podcasting page.

And to top it all off we made it onto the nationwide TVNZ six o’clock news tonight. How’s that for being globally connected with a rich, real authentic context!