Diary 2

Kia ora everyone,

This morning you made your way to Waitākiri School River Campus, the school previously known as Burwood School. Later on you were to visit the Waitākiri School Wetlands Campus, site of the former Windsor School. It is there that the new Waitākiri School is being built...

Audioconference time

First up for today was our audioconference and the less formal chat session in the LEARNZ Adobe Connect meeting room. The speaking school for the audioconference was Makuri School. Interestingly, Makuri School is only 25 kilometres from Pongaroa, where last night’s magnitude 5.8 earthquake occurred. Deputy Principal Dianna Reynolds and David Collins from Christchurch City Council were this morning’s experts answering the questions. You can always listen to an audioconference recording if you missed the live version. Later in the day David spoke to you about why New Zealand is so prone to natural hazards. Check out today’s videos to find out the answer!

There were quite a few schools in the LEARNZ Adobe Connect meeting room so it was great to see such a high level of interest in this topic. A range of further questions were put to our experts and before we knew it time was up! Make sure you join us tomorrow for the live audioconference at 9:15am and stay on for the post audioconference session – just go to http://connect.vln.school.nz/learnz/. Egbert says see you there!

Hearts and minds

Some experiences stick in our minds better than others. It is a scientific fact that the more emotionally distressing an experience is to us, the more likely we are to remember it. And today we heard proof of this fact with three groups of people - students, teachers, and parents – sharing memories from their experiences of the Canterbury earthquakes. The level of detail in their stories was quite amazing, and for a moment I felt transported back in time to those fateful events I too experienced.

The purpose of having these people tell part of their story was to give those of you who haven’t experienced a major natural disaster, an insight as to what it felt like, the difficulties that were faced, the lessons that were learnt, how the community responded, and so on and so on. I believe listening to people’s stories can be a very powerful way of learning. This is because what you hear comes from the heart, and what you hear is real –as it really happened! This is important because you need to know how crucial it is to be prepared for a natural disaster that can happen at any time and to any community. 

The time these people gave today was certainly appreciated. You can get a snapshot of their stories by going to today’s videos.

The new Waitākiri School 

In 2016 students from both the current wetlands and river campuses will move to a brand new school. Today you were given the opportunity to visit the construction site and see the nearly finished “learning studios”. More than a classroom, each learning studio will have room for up to 106 students, be fully self-contained, and showcase what a truly modern and innovative learning environment is. They will also be very, very safe in the event of an earthquake! Checkout the plans for the new school here. 

Site manager Josh gave you a tour of the nearly completed school, pointing out the building’s safety features and explaining how each learning studio is set out. It certainly is exciting times for the staff, students and their families, but also undoubtedly a well-deserved silver lining to the cloud this community has had to endure.

Catch you tomorrow,

Andrew