It is about 7 AM at the resort. It is Friday and I must admit the last 4 days have been very productive. It is almost like a new dawn for the school to see the new library take shape. I spent some time in the classrooms yesterday. I spoke to the year fives and sixes and we talked about moviemaking and role-playing. The behaviour of the children is faultless. They are also welcoming and it seems to have a very positive impact on one’s psyche. Is is almost like an environment where students want to learn and teachers want to teach. I also went into year 3 (Mr Singh and Mrs Naceva) and 4 (Mr Reddy and Mr Inoke) classrooms. I showed them Microsoft Photo Story. I asked the question how many of you would like to make a Photo Story. 95% said yes but there are 3 girls who said no. Their reason was that it was too hard. So I got them to the front of the classroom and showed them one or two basic steps and in no time they were explaining to others in the class how photo stories can be made.  I also asked students about how many of them had computers at home. Just by the show of hands, it was obvious that only 10% of the students’ had computers at home. Other than video games, there was little use for these at home. The use of computers at home by the students was not much different to what has been observed in some of the countries in the west.

A data projector in a classroom - a first the students!

At lunchtime the year sixes got into groups and sorted the LEGO bricks. A robotics club is probably the most feasible way of introducing robotics at this school.  I spent some time with two of the teachers and did some basic programming in robotics. There has been some success with picking up the Internet signal in the library. Connecting to the Internet is almost a hit or miss situation.

Teachers - Mr Seremaia and Mr Reddy putting a robot together

After school, I went to my “home” – the place where I grew up. There is another family which has bought the property and is making good progress. We are were welcomed with open arms by the new owners. We had a cup of tea and then headed back to the motel.

I once live here