Wednesday 9 December 2015

2015 the year that was

Yesterday we celebrated the final graduation for 2015 for the Te Heti Te Kohanga Reo and Whanganui Learning Centre classes.

 The theme of this graduation was how technology can empower lives and the lives of our children. I had the privilege to share the story of one our Computers in Homes mums who finished Computers in Homes in 2006.

After Computers in Homes she went from being a volunteer to part time work.  She then went on to be a part of our BYOD trial in 2014 and has just completed her Kiwiskills Jobseeker qualification. She has dyslexia and was amazed to find how easy Kiwiskills was for her to learn. It really suited her to be able to do it whenever she had time rather than turn up to class. A group of mums got together and learned together to get them focused. She loves that now she knows stuff like doing a poster for work, converting it to a PDF for email and then a jpeg for facebook - "It's so awesome to be able to do that" she said.

She also  spoke about how having technology at home has enabled her boy who is often unwell to keep up with his school work. The teacher can email him the work to do, he does it online and then the teacher reviews it online, makes notes and sends him the next lot of work. Before technology he would have just fallen behind.

 She also spoke about how, living week to week, they can't afford to travel. They have whanau all over the world. Having skpe means they can be there virtually at all of there families events. It keeps them connected as whanau.


Our 15 graduates today spoke of overcoming their own learning challenges and how supportive their tutors and environment were. Congratulations to you all.  Our team wishes you every success on your technology and learning journey




Graduation at Te Heti Kohanga Reo on PhotoPeach


2015 has been a challenging one for Whanganui. The flood in our region in June has had a very real impact on the health of our families here.  We look forward to a positive, healthy 2016 and wish you and yours a very happy holiday season from all of us.