The last Blog (for this group)

Today we watched the clips from the past two terms with all our photo’s we have taken. Looking back at the pictures we all felt very emotional and touched. These days will never come back but we have so many good memories. Every time we go past these places we will think of all the work we have done. We cannot believe how much we have achieved and how much we have put in together as a team.
We also introduced the new mums to Family Learning and managed to interest 10 new people to come next term.
We will miss meeting as a group on Thursdays. We would like to thank Clare for teaching us how to use the PDA’s with all the different techniques and we are sure we will be able to use them with more confidence and be able to use our mobile phones, camera’s and video’s at home.
All that remains to say is goodbye from
Clare Fry
Sue Jones,
Shorrifa Begum
Saifa Begum
Nasima Akther
Masuma Akther
Taslim Miah
Happy Begum
Nuresa Begum
Radia Begum
Jusna Khatun

Lights, camera, action!

We first of all worked with the children and did lots of speaking & Listening. The children did Christmas activities. We had a visitor today called Esther who was taking lots of video of us whilst we worked. Esther works for RSC Wales and we will be on screen in a conference showing use of IT in adult education.
Then we talked about Asian married life and did some recordings of it. The recordings were excellent compared how we first started. They were very steady and captured the conversations.
Next week is our last session and we will be showing new mums what sort of things we do in Family Learning.

Working together

Today we talked about differences in cultures and came up with some discussion topics that we will record next week. The topics included marriage, family and growing up. We recorded greeting the children. The children then made Christmas cards and video was recorded of us working with our children. We are looking forward to seeing the videos next week

Looking at buildings on St Helen’s Road

Today we went back to St Helen’s Road to look at the buildings. We looked at Miah’s first, it is a restaurant now but it used to be a church. We decided it was quite old. We think it’s a good idea that it is a restaurant now as it is being used as it was empty before. We then walked further along the road. There was a block of flats that we think may have been a hospital before. It had a clock tower on top which made it look like a church at first but we decided that it probably wasn’t. We saw the Methodist church and found out it was built in 1873 it is still in use and is the only one that is still used as a church. Next we saw the old church that has been converted into flats. It is a beautiful building with a classical Greek design with the pillars but there was no plaque on it to find out how old it was. Finally we looked at the large old church which is now having money being raised to convert it into a mosque. Once it is finished it is going to be a community centre and have lots of activities going on.

St Helen's Road

Today we went along St Helen's Road looking at the shops and interviewing people. At first we were quite nervous and were not sure about going up to people and asking them questions but Clare and Sue were very impressed as we grew in confidence and interviewed quite a few people. The local people use the shops and restaurants quite often and a few people would like to make the streets a bit cleaner. Everyone we spoke to liked St Helen's Road. Next week we will go back as there are lots of buildings we didn't look at.

Patti Pavillion

Today we walked with the children to the Patti Pavillion. The children were very excited and enjoyed the walk. The children took lots of photo’s on the way. We wanted to interview some people but there weren’t any around. We were surprised that it wasn’t used as it’s a very busy area. It could be because of the weather.

The flower beds were very pretty and the children took photo’s
We also took photo’s of the statue and building work and intend to compare them with photo’s we took in June.

We have emailed the building contractors to find out the plans for the building as we are not sure what it will be.

We talked to a lady who was walking her dog and she didn’t know what was happening either!

The children played in the play area. They preferred to play on the skateboard ramp rather than the swings and slides. It would be a good idea to have a bigger adventure play area to keep the children interested, similar to the one on the beach. Unfortunately there was glass and stones on the floor which are dangerous for the children.

Looking around the school

Today we spent time looking around the school at things we liked and what we would like to improve. We liked the reception area now it has been changed and think the school is nice and bright and very friendly. We like the interior as there are lots of displays and photo’s on the walls.
We would like to improve the junior playground, the cloakroom in the junior side looks a bit old and some areas need painting.
The garden area at the back of the school needs a bit of work and we would be interested in starting a gardening club possibly run by parents where the produce can be sold and the money can go back to the school and the club. We don’t think it would take too much to improve the area and it could be ready in time for spring when we can start planting.

First day back

We were all happy to be back working with the PDA's again. Clare was thrilled about how much everyone remembered. We talked about what we are going to do this term we are keen to re visit the patti pavillion as we have learnt that it is not going to be a restaurant but now a children's activity centre. we revised some of the PDA functions. We took photo's, video and sound recordings (and played the game of course!)
When the children joined us we were really pleased how much they remembered too.
In our next session we hope to go out to the patti pavillion, so lets hope for good weather!

End of term

We are very pleased to have an extension on our PDA course and will be starting again in September. We put together a list of questions about the park and interviewed each other using video and sound.
We have also put together a list of things we would like to look at next term, including looking at the differnt buildings and their uses on St helen's road, interviwing shop keepers, Change of use of the area e.g churches now restaurants, flats etc.
we also spent a bit of time consolidating our knowledge so we practiced video recording, taking photo's, sound recording and microsoft word. We think we might need a recap in September after the long break!

Victoria park

We started the lesson off by talking about the history of the Patti Pavillion. It was named after a famous opera singer called Adelina Patti. The paviliion was originally in her back garden in her house and it was moved in 1920 to Victoria Park.

We walked down to the park. On the way we saw the highest recorded tide level in 1846 and we imagined what it must have been like.

The gardens were beautiful and well kept. The trees were lovely and unusual. We were upset at the state of the Patti. It used to be used for weddings and other important functions. There was a drunk on one side and a pile of clothes on the other side. It was boarded up and fenced off. We thought it was strange contrast to have such beautiful gardens with the building falling down. We took photo's but didn't find anyone to interview as the weather wasn't very good.
We think we will go back next week as there were things we din't get to see.
we would like to see the pavillion renovated and used again.

On the beach

Before we went to the beach we looked at photo's of the area that we were going to visit. The photo's were taken over a hundred years ago.

We decided to try and look at what had and hadn't changed. The bay view hotel hadn't changed and the wall along the front was the original wall. We think we stood where the old train station had been. Now the cars are where the track used to be. On the beach there is now a playground which the children enjoyed!

There weren't many people on the beach today but we think that is because there aren't any toilets and people travel to the gower. Paking can be a problem in the area as well, it is easy to park at some of the beaches on the Gower. We looked at the old bridge and it looked very sad and not attractive for people to come to the area. We would like a new bridge to make it easy and safe for children to cross the road. We need good clean toilet facilities and beach shops and cafe's for families. Somewhere to buy buckets and spades, ice creams and kites etc. We were impressed that the beach was nice and clean with not much litter and even saw someone cleaning the beach. The area has so much potential to be used to bring people to the beach, we feel that it wouldn't take much to change it into an area like Mumbles

Video of Playground

Here is a video of the school playground taken by the Family Learning group a few weeks ago.

Rained off!

Even though the rain prevented us from going to the beach as planned we learnt a lot on the PDA and viewed videos and pictures from last session.
We learnt how to copy pictures into word so we were able to write a little text.
We also wrote a letter to the Council about the dog mess in the area. We looked up on the internet what the laws were about dogs in the area and we may email Environmental Health next week.

Out & About

We started the session with a recap of what we had done before half term. We then went outside in the playground, first of all without the children, and looked at what we liked and didn't like about the playground. We liked the flowers and the play area. We didn't like the rocks or the sand but the children loved them!Without the children we practiced taking photo's and video and then taught them how to record.
We ventured outside the school and found an engraved stone about the school when it was enlarged.

We walked around looking at the junior playground, the children liked the junior playground but we thought it was small.

Reporters

Today we learnt about sound and video. We did the sound recording first. when we started we were a bit shy but the more we recorded each other the more confident we became. We got better at using the PDA to record. We each did interviews with everyone in the group, some of us shared the same views.
We asked the following questions;
What is your name?
Where do you live?
What are your hobbies?
Tell me an interesting fact about yourselves?
What do you like about living in St helen's?
What don't you like about living in St helen's

We all agreed that we didn't like the dog mess in the streets of St Helen's

We did video recording but we were more shy talking into the camera than just speaking. We preferred recording the voice than video.

Word Fun

In today's session we used Microsoft word and learnt different ways of writing with the PDA. Most of us liked using the on screen keyboard to type. Transcriber was fun but it came out with some funny words!
The children wrote a short story by completing sentences, here are some examples

We went to folly farm. We went with Miss John and some friends. We wore summer clothes and hats and suncream. We saw Llamas and meercats, they wore big sunglasses. They smelt muddy and horrible.

We went to the park. I went with my mum and dad and my brother. We wore hats. We saw a slide. We also saw ducks swimming in the pond. We fed them some bread. It was fun.

First Lesson a success!!!

The family learning group had their first lesson with the PDA's. After technical problems at the beginning of the lesson we were underway having fun learning all about the PDA's. The group learnt the basics, played the addictive game jawbreaker and mastered taking pictures.

PDA Course

The Family Learning Group at St Helen's primary School will be working with XLWales during the summer term. The group will be using Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's) to record their views on the local community of St Helen's.