 |
| Father Tony Man-Son-Hing from Christ the King Parish and grade 4 St. David student Lorelai Bushy work together on the ipad. |
November 7, 2011 -
Students and teachers might know each other, they see each other each day in their classrooms. But what happens when a visitor arrives?
Every visitor brings with him something to be offered, something to enrich, something new to be learned. But those lessons will only be learned if they are presented in a way that is interesting and attractive to the audience. Students at St. David Catholic Elementary School had the unique opportunity to share in their learning with a familiar guest to the school. Father Tony Man-Son-Hing from Christ the King Parish, who is a regular guest to St. David, had a chance to interact with the students and, along with the students is also learning how to be comfortable with technology.
Every Wednesday, Father Tony Man-Son-Hing shares breakfast with one of the classes at St. David Catholic School. On Wednesday, November 2, coffee cup in hand, he arrived in Ms. Gran's grade 4/5 class to share raisin toast and grapes almost the size of clementines. Almost immediately students were willing to engage. They were excited about challenging the priest to "Find Jesus" in the iPad app by the same name. They also wanted to know how well he would do with the "Catholic Quiz". At level 1, Father Tony scored 10 out 11 questions right and the computer said he was "genius".
Firing up the smart board, the children then were eager to demonstrate to this newcomer their expertise in naming and locating all the provinces and territories of this vast land. They did well. Much better than the computer did. Somewhere between Saskatchewan and British Columbia there was a crash. Was the computer de-railed or was it challenged? We will never know. Thinking fast, Ms. Gran chose another alternative and thus the students were introduced to Father Tony's blog (www.aaog.blogspot.com). After a brief tour of the site, the students then helped Father Tony to compose his post -- all about his visit to their classroom (http://aaog.blogspot.com/2011/10/technology-in-classroom.html).
Father Tony left the students of Ms. Gran's class with the message, "ipads and blogs are tools for today to find Jesus, to find faith, to find something to inspire and to feed the heart and soul".
| 
