Principal Andrea Dance describes the trust’s support at “remarkable”.
After seeing some of the lastest technology at a conference and the suggetion that a grant might help fund its provision in the school, the ball started rolling due to a friendship with a basketballer Dylan Boucher.
“I was talking about wanting a purpose-built basketball court for the community,” says Andrea.
“Dylan said have you reached out to a trust called We Care.”
After a successful application for funding for the court, she was contacted by the trust and asked if the school would like to locally pilot a programme already running in South Auckland providing technology in schools.
“I said ‘absolutely’ and they gave us funding for our one-on-one devices and we’ve got the Promethean boards, a teacher and student resource in the classroom.
“They are just the most incredible people who really want the best for your community, but especially for children. They ring up to see how things are going - they just want to help.”
Andrea says it is clear the trust sees the benefit of nurturing a bright future for the entire community, not just for one school, with Fairhaven, Te Ranga, Pukehina and Rangiuru schools also receiving IT equipment.
“They believe if they can get devices into schools, because that’s the way things are going, then they are going to make some differences as far as developing skill sets for youngsters.”
Te Puke Primary School’s ICT leader Mike Douglas says the Promethean boards work well for all students.
“It doesn’t matter what age level it is because there are different apps available for the different learning stages.
“It’s very interactive for the kids and the kids actually lead the learning for many of the subjects that we are teaching.”
He says the boards represent the latest step on the evolution of learning.
“It’s taking it a little bit further. What’s good is [students] are not just doing it by themselves, it’s a collaboration and that means everybody’s learning and it’s not just the teacher up the front.
“There are opportunities to be intuitive, opportunities to lead, opportunities to support - and they are learning skills that mean they can be good contributors to society - those soft skills, social skills - that’s one of the things that is the strength of having the Promethean boards in class.”
Andrea says the way technology is used in the classroom has moved on.
“These boards are opening up a whole new skillset for jobs that we don’t even know that these children are going to have yet because they haven’t been created so we need to arm them with a skillset for lifelong learning.”
Having the technology available to everyone thanks to the trust means everybody gets the same opportunity, she says.
We Care Trust chairman Raghbir (Raj) Singh says children are the foundation of the country.
“We want to take the country forwards and we have to teach the young generation and give them a good skill set for new jobs. Technology’s changing and people can earn a living working from a computer from home - everything is changing so we have to teach our kids with the technology to create a better society,” he says.
Jaspal says through the Stadium Bar he tries his best to help the community through We Care.
Fairhaven School principal Paul Hunt echoes Andrea’s comments.
“What the trust has funded at Fairhaven is absolutely huge,” he says.
The school has had two grants for iPads and Chromebooks.
Senior students now have one device to one or two students.
“We wouldn’t have been able to buy devices and get the school to that number, we just wouldn’t have been able to afford it,” he says.
“There’s still the need to do things with paper, so not everything is done on a digital device, but there are some things that you can do better on digital devices like researching and putting together presentations and so on.”
He says there is also an equality element to being able to provide devices in the school as it gives all students an equitable chance of having access to them.
