Calton+Hill+Milestone+6

Calton Hill School Milestone Report Term 3, for us, was quiet in the way of PD. It gave us an opportunity to reflect and use some of the tools we have learnt thus far. The whole school was involved in a unit on China and the Olympics. As well as this we took an inservice day to go to the presentation by Kate Murdock which all staff felt was worthwhile. Individual staff members applied what they had learnt to their own classrooms. Pesamino attended an open day at Fairfield to look around their ideas of inquiry base learning. He said it was a worthwhile experience and had come away with a number of ideas. I think, on the whole, our staff are learning to be more comfortable using ICT in the classroom as well as thinking tools. Glenda is in the process of learning how to set up a wikispace for the school to use in general, especially the staff. Pesamino has set up a wikispace for Room 7 to use as well. Term 4 has been a busy term for PD. Robin Simpson one of our teacher aides, took 3 children to a two day programme for ICT. Our children were very enriched by the experience, however it highlighted to us the need to update programmes and software within our school. Glenda attended a Principals Management Meeting at Tahuna Normal on the 22nd of Oct. On the 7th Nov, Pesamino and myself went to Anderson’s Bay School were Sarah presented ideas on using technology within the inquiry. I was pleased to see how you could take small movies with a digital camera and download them onto I Movie and make a small movie from it. Something I will definitely be putting into my goals to achieve next year. On the 10th November Linda Homer, myself and Pesamino attended a course with Learning Network New Zealand by Guy Claxton. Once again, we were free to take out of it what we could use in the classroom. 12th Nov Glenda and I attended a demonstration of interactive whiteboards. They were really impressive to see in action, but we will need to go back to our board and prioritise what we can afford to buy, if anything. Liz Hayward