Friday, August 19, 2016

A Visit to Emmaus Catholic School

Thursday, July 28, 2016


Gary Pascoe is a Deputy Principal at Emmaus Catholic School and an ICT teacher.  He is also the Marketing Coordinator for EdTechSA. While I have been keeping track of similarities and differences on my journey, one significant similarity that I noticed at Emmaus were the classroom and common area bulletin boards with Mindset phrases. We have comparable messages on our bulletin boards. It was encouraging to see that, as educators, we value the same initiatives. One prominent difference at this school (as in many schools in Australia) is a no hat/no play policy.  Australians spend a great deal of time outside, and they are conscientious of the damaging effects of the sun. At this school they have proactively instituted the stringent hat policy. Students must be in the shade and are not allowed to play if they do not have their hats. The hat must be wide brimmed to cover their ears (not a baseball style cap). 



Other highlights of this school visit include the low cost resources that Gary uses while implementing coding initiatives. He was considering a high cost paint for one wall to use as a green screen, but found that an inexpensive green sheet from IKEA works fine.  He shared some frame stands that he also purchased at IKEA that are perfect for an IQ code project. Instead of expensive charging stations for the iPads, a plastic notebook holder works is also suitable. Gary is interested in supporting his students to use their ITC skills to be producers rather than consumers. He also uses a few of the common tools for coding such as Little Bits, Ozobots and Spheros. He has shared a great social news magazine app call Flipboard. I am following Gary's Flipboard and he has an abundant amount of information on coding and ideas for integration. This is an amazing resource!








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