Friday, May 18, 2007

** Special Visitors**
Dino and Bella from Appleby School New Zealand visit Cefn Fforest in Wales and have a Skype Video-Conference, Speak in our Friday Assembly and then join in a Class 3H Celebration Party - phew what an exciting Friday at Cefn Fforest Primary School. Dino from Moturoa Class ( Miss King) is an e-pal with Dinosaur Harry, and they got to once in a lifetime chance to meet each other in Wales today.
( we will post the link to the podcast of our chat very soon )
Dino and his sister Bella made it to Cefn Fforest, very early this morning ( at around 8.20a.m.) They are in the UK on holiday before returning to via a break in Malta ( by the pool, I guess!) back to New Zealand.

We had arranged with Miss K at Moturoa to have a live Skype class to class VideoConference at 8.30 am - ish UK ( 7.30pm NZ time)
It worked out really well from both sides (11,000 miles or so apart) - in New Zealand parents and pupils waited excitedly, while in Wales we waited excitedly for Dino and Bella to arrive. The Skype chat lasted for about 30 minutes before we had to let our friends in New Zealand go to bed!! Miss King has podcast the skype video chat here with 2 others they were involved in this week.

Dino and Bella then came into our assembly at 9.15 ( Dino took loads of photo's) and they told us something about New Zealand and the things that they get up to there - they both spoke very confidently to around 200 children ( a compliment to their teachers I am sure). Before finally heading off laden down with presents and cards from their friends in Wales.
We combined their visit with our celebration party for having 1,000 visits to our ClassBlogmeister Blog, so Bella and Dino got to have an early morning party as well, how cool is that ??

1 comments:

Moturoa said...

That is just so cool. Thank you so much for hosting Dino, Bella and family. I am sure the visit will be one of the highlights for them. I have just finished making a podcast of some or our Skype chat but as it is close to one o'clock in the morning her in NZ I will publish it tomorrow morning.

1 comment:

Jane Nicholls said...

Wow! I've got goosebumps :) What an exciting adventure your two schools have been on. I have really enjoyed being able to take part in the adventure by reading the blogs and following the podcasts. By opening the doors of your classrooms to each other and posting it on the web you have opened the doors to motivate so many other classrooms too. Students will be demanding to visit their online buddies next... :)

A dear friend

It seems very apt to be writing this blog post in tribute to a dear, dear friend. The world has lost a true global educational  IT innovator...