Website+Launch

On Wednesday 30th June Motu, Waipaoa Station, Waerenga-O-Kuri and Tiniroto schools gathered at the Tairawhiti Museum in Gisborne to share their first websites about the histories of their local areas. The turnout was amazing; over 100 people attend the showing off the living heritage websites. The launch was a celebration of our inquiry learning over the whole term. We began our journey with a huge brainstorm. One of the younger children asked "Did dinosaurs ever live in Tiniroto?" and most of us laughed - we didn't realise how wrong our assumptions were! There were lots of questions though - we hadn't really thought about what has always seemed to be a quiet little country place in the hills. We made up inquiry teams and sorted the questions into topics, and then each team grabbed a topic and then got stuck into the researching. This was the hard part and there was lots of time wasted going around in circles. It was a hard lesson to learn that you can't find all the answers on Google! Much of our information was best found directly from people who had grown up here, or their relations had and that there can be different versions of events that occurred. We learnt a lot about checking the facts and really wanted this to be a resource that people would refer to in the future and the unique stories of Tiniroto's history wouldn't be lost. Our teachers had to do a lot of learning too and the Living Heritage facilitators were so much help in getting our learning uploaded. At the start of the launch, all the school students sat down and waited with the teachers and guests for the event to begin. The audience was seated and now was the time for Mrs Trafford to make the first speech and introduce the event. “Welcome teachers and parents” Mrs Trafford began. All the students were waiting patiently (and a bit nervously) for their turns at speaking in front of over 100 people. Motu went first introducing Motu – From Bush to Grass, then it was Waipaoa Station School – Identity, followed by Waerenga-O-Kuri – History, and finally Tiniroto – Through the Looking Glass. All of their website pages were completely different to ours – not just because of their topics but because the Living Heritage facilitators said that ours was like an encyclopaedia there was so much information! When it was our turn to speak in front of the audience I got really nervous because I had to introduce our inquiry; Tiniroto through the Looking Glass! My speech was about 5 cue cards long and it seemed to take forever but I got through it alright. My Mother and brother were very impressed with my speaking because I am very shy and last year I didn’t like speaking in front of people. Mrs Trafford was also very impressed with my leadership and presentation skills on the evening. It was great that each group got to give the audience a taste of the topics on our website, for example, Moa in Tiniroto, Earthquakes and Te Kooti – to name a couple. We wanted to encourage people to look at the whole website back at home. All presentations were very interesting and even other schools parents and teachers commented on our depth and how well we had prepared ourselves for the launch. After all students who had participated were awarded certificates from Ivan Lomax (Cluster Facilitator) and Kris Gunawardana (Awapuni Computers) there were refreshments sponsored by Awapuni Computers and Agfirst Gisborne. It was interesting looking at all of the learning that the other schools had done as well to create their websites in the displays around the room. Overall it was a fantastic evening for everyone involved and pretty interesting holding it at the Museum with all of the other taonga that is special to our area. Check out the website at [|www.livingheritage.org.nz/School-Stories] and you too might want to create an exciting resource that everyone can use. Jessica Candy Y7 Tiniroto School
 * __ Living Heritage Website Launch – Higher Learning Cluster [[image:LH_Launch_crowd.jpg align="right" caption="Check out the crowd"]] __**

This event was reported in the Gisborne Herald on July 2nd. Gisborne Herald Article

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