Parent technology sessions

Kathy Moy-Low
We’ve engaged the community by really making sure that at every opportunity we were talking about e-learning and the new direction of the school, right back from when staff first received an iPad to go and use as a learning tool in their classroom, to today when we’re bringing mobile devices in our senior rooms to school. So it’s always in my board report. Often there’s a lead teacher coming to talk about something from our e-learning framework to board meetings. At PTFA we ask, “Have you got children who are in a mobile device classroom? What’s e-learning look like for you? How have you found it?” We’re not frightened to talk about the pitfalls with our community, and there have been. We’ve had interesting issues with Facebook useage and lots of other things, but we’ve journeyed with those and it’s the open door policy that has helped to build the communities buy-in from it.

Fiona Tuffs
I am old school definitely, and all the devices, and electronics, and all of that was foreign to me, and new to me, and I was in denial to start off with, but I’m really glad that I did purchase one for her. Definitely worth it.

Kathy Moy-Low
It’s also been a regular item when we meet with our whānau parents, with our Tongan parents, with our Samoan parents, with our Filipino parents, and with our Indian parents - our PTFA. All our community meetings have e-learning on the agenda. We are listening to what the parents' thoughts are, and we’re saying where we are in our journey. One of the things that we’ve instigated this year, which came out of the trial in our mobile classrooms, was what we’re calling Techie Meetings.

Pesio Matiseni
I’ve attended the techie sessions that the school has put on, and it’s just I suppose, it’s just given me a bit more knowledge about how it will work in the classrooms, and how my child will use it to further their learning.

Kathy Moy-Low
The techie meetings happen in the first Tuesday of a month before school and at 5 o’clock. So parents can choose to come to those, and they’re run by the mobile device teachers, and they just go with one app to show or one tool of what they are using in the classroom or they answer parents questions.

Fiona Tuffs
Loved the parent tech classes. There isn’t, I don’t think I would have been able to go through this e-learning journey without the guidance of the school, so it’s been really beneficial for me as a parent to be able to come to the classes and learn more about what Coretti is learning about and what I need to learn about.

Aurora Fakasiieiki
I’ve been going to the school’s tech programmes, which has been very beneficial to me. Reason being is because I know what my children have learnt through technology. When I take my iPad along to those classes, as well, because then I can not download, but also fiddle around with my iPad things that I didn’t know I could do, and also it was good to see that what I was doing my children are also learning the same thing at school as well.