John Key came to Owhata Primary (Rotorua) on Thursday 12 March 2009. He spent some time in classrooms seeing what the children are doing with Interactive Whiteboards.
In the brief time he was in classes, he learnt how to draw, write, freeform capture, record himself and insert a sound file into an interwrite document. This shows how easy the programme is to use and how many skills our 6-8 year olds have acquired in guiding him through these processes. He was impressed with the level of technology these children were using.
A fantastic experience for our children and staff.
- Robyn, Owhata Primary School
My writing group this morning had a great time exploring the features of the Scholastic Story starter Dragonsinger showed me yesterday . Below are the few stories:
Once in a millon years a mystic blueberry is born. The nerdest was born today. He went flying throw the air, he landed on some ice. He skidded down the hall, he landed in a time warp that led to the medieval ages. He pooped his pants , when a knight in evil dragon armour almost trampled him. It was a huge battle , and knights in evil dragon armour were winning. They had won the battle. A lady started making fire with her bare hands. 5 years later, the mystic blueberry became the king of evil.
Two days ago a ghost plane flew through the Napier movies only two people saw it. The government had to shut the moveis down. Two days later they had to investigate how it happened. It would take them about ten more waeks to find out how it happened.
“The movies will be closed for weeks. we have sent five ghost hunter and there was nothing there” said a man from Napier University, “and we don’t know if it will open again.
Thanks Jo for the heads up with this cool story writer thing. I was wondering what my group was going to do tomorrow as I have had to cancel the trip. But this just answers it perfectly. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.
As I visit schools around the country there is a common thread emerging. The higher the decile rating the less money there is and the more rural you get the smaller the budget. Imagine the impossible position of a decile 10, rural school is in. Could someone please educate the dragon as to how the current school funding system works to make state education fair to all.
Currenly, I’m looking at school with an eye to my boy going in about 12 months and the ‘voluntary contributions’ are really quite far from being voluntary and are in fact quite sizeable. Thoughts anyone?
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I love the fact that I can read some great posts from some great minds. Andrew Churches wrote this post about the use of twitter and I spent the whole reading time nodding my head. If you haven’t read it I suggest you should. The next time some talks to about the value of Twitter I’m armed and ready… Thanks Andrew .
