End of Yearitis and Retail Therapy

It's been interesting to plot the changes in some of our children over the past few months as we have adjusted to life with earthquakes. From time to time we are seeing evidence of stress in the form of  niggles, tears and arguments. Thank goodness the teachers are doing a lot better!!!
When I am stressed I go shopping and as a result of our roll growth this year we were able to replace a lot of technical equipment and appliances identified in our budget but pending funding. I have an amazing office executive in Jacqui who can turn a dollar into $10.40.
We had a pod of laptops coming out of their lease this month and we decided to buy twelve new laptops to add to the eight that the PTA had purchased.
Donna had the laptops in her class this week and it was fantastic to watch the children using applications to present their work in power points and movies. Donna is a bit of a techie freak and she admits that she learned new things by watching the students. How good is that? We now have a large range of cameras, flip videos, data projectors, laptops and desk tops for the students to use as part of their learning programme. Some of them are so quick at accessing information, photos, video etc and including multi-media in their ways of learning and presentations of learning.  Gone are the days of ploughing through a book to find the one paragraph relevant to the learning. In a few minutes children can access several sources of information about the same topic and they are learning to discriminate between reliable and dodgy sources. That involves higher levels of thinking and the ability to sort and separate facts from fiction.
What I enjoy seeing are the children who struggle with "pen and paper, teacher- talk -at -me" learning, actually making independent decisions and becoming involved in real learning because the technology makes the learning fun. Suddenly the "kids who can't" become the "kids who can and do!"

The lovely blonde is Olivia our teacher aide who graduates with her BSc this year and will go into teacher training in 2011. Olivia will be greatly missed by our staff and students. We have been very blessed to have had her on our team.

 We are installing a 42" flat screen t.v. in the admin area to run continuous data shows and videos of life at West Spreydon School. Kaye my clerical assistant thinks it is for her to watch daytime soaps and Oprah! She's in for some heartbreak. Mind you I can see the teachers in the foyer on a Friday night, passing the pop-corn and fizzy, watching a movie on the big screen. Yeah right.