Major changes for Christchurch schools

Two years ago Christchurch started being rocked by earthquakes. Since that time we have had over a thousand of them, several doing a lot of damage and one where there was a signficant loss of life. Most of the problems have occurred on the East side of the city. Life is still far from normal for the people who live in these areas. Many are not able to live in their homes and for many it is not known when their lives will return to normal. A lot of people have left as many homes are on land that has been deemed too difficult to use to build on for a long time. At the end of last year many of the schools in these areas found that their staffing for this year was down from the previous year due to the loss of population in the area. It must be remembered that many of these children were very traumatised due to the earthquakes. This year many schools kept their staffing levels up by directly paying a teacher from their school funds.

Last Thursday the Minister of Education announced new plans for education in Christchurch. There was shock and disbelief throughout Christchurch schools over the plans. 13 schools are due to be closed, 18 schools to merge with other schools or relocate and 5 schools will close and merge as one.

The 5 schools that are to merge as one Learning Centre include 3 primary schools, 1 intermediate and 1 secondary school. This will be over 1300 pupils in the 5 to 13 year range and then several hundred in the 13 to 18 year range!!  This is what they are looking at in the long term. All schools will be part of Learning Clusters.

 As you can imagine many schools, parents and children are very upset with the announcement.  At this time there is supposed to be ongoing discussion but it will be interesting to see if there are any changes to the proposals!!

I wonder what people think our schools will be like in 10 or 20 years.

Watch this space...

The Ready Classroom

The Ready Classroom

The Ready Classroom is a great resource for teachers to use with their classrooms. Although it has been specifically written for schools in the USA all of the content is appropriate to schools everywhere.

This resource is to prepare schools, students and families in the case of a disaster.

Disasters that are dealt with on the site are:

• Earthquakes
• Extreme heat
• Floods
• Hurricanes
• Landslide and debris flow
• Thunderstorms
• Tornadoes
• Tsunamis
• Volcanoes
• Wildfires
• Winter storms and extreme cold

There are also links to appropriate videos which open in a new window. These vary in length and have been graded as to what is appropriate for different class levels.

My city has been through two major earthquakes over this past year. Naturally I therefore had a look through the area about earthquakes. In here is an explanation of what an earthquake is, a checklist to download and all the videos about earthquakes. While the checklist is good it does not deal at all with liquefaction which we found a real problem. At the time of the earthquake many cars got stranded in deep sink holes.

There are teacher tools including lesson plans, themed puzzles and resources. In addition children can make a family plan for emergencies. This is online and is not saved but may be printed out and some parts may be downloaded and saved. This would be well worth doing with students.

The Ready Classroom is part of the Discovery Education web site.

Chrome web store

I have just been looking at what is available in the Chrome Web Store. There are some interesting applications or Web 2 tools that would be good for schools however...

I have been looking at the map showing earthquakes that have happened in the world during the last 7 days.

As you can see from the screen shot it tells us that there have been no earthquakes of a magnitude of 2.5 or above in my country in the last seven days. They say none at all!!!

This is completely incorrect as we have had 27 earthquakes in my city (or surrounding countryside) in the last seven days! Where am I? Christchurch New Zealand. The majority of these earthquakes are over 2.5 but of course that is not a big quake as far as we are concerned. Below you can see a screen dump of where some of these earthquakes happened, their magnitude and the depth.

What concerns me here is that if there is such a glaring error i.e. 27 earthquakes not registering on this site how accurate are any of the other offerings here?

If you are using any with your class I would suggest that you check it out carefully before the children use it.

Earthquake update

On Monday we had two more significant aftershocks. The first hit at 1 o'clock (lunch time) and many parents came and took their children home then - it was about 5.3. The school I was at did not suffer any new damage at that time despite the fact that it was a school near the sea. Other areas did suffer some damage and that time and then the second hit at 2.20 and was 6.3 - a vicious aftershock which did more damage to the eastern suburbs. The liquifaction came back, more flooding more buildings damaged and some came down. There has only been one reported death this time - an elderly resident in a rest home who had something fall on his head. In Feb there were 181 deaths.

My own house has more damage and more broken crockery etc (I'm running out...). Again we lost power and water - chemical toilets and portaloos are becoming part of every day life here. It was a cold night - down to freezing. Luckily I had a gas heater so the neighbours came over to our house for the evening and everyone sat round telling stories. We got the services returned on Tuesday.

All schools were closed on Tuesday but many reopened today (Wednesday) some are reopening tomorrow but a few do not know when they will be able to reopen. We still have several high schools sharing sites - this entails one school taking all their classes in the morning and a second school being bused over and taking all their classes in the afternoon before being bused home again.

Earthquake update

Our power and water are still very fragile and likely to go down at the drop of a hat. The electricity frequently cuts out.

We have had assessors, builders etc out to check the house over the last two weeks and they do not know what to do at the moment. It is increasingly looking as though they will demolish it.

It is such a shame as we are right on the beach and have views all over the city looking out to the mountains as well as over the sea.

More on the earthquake

We have finally got water back on and power – a week and a half without!! Let me tell you you get over the ‘fun camping’ idea very quickly. I have put the hot water back on and am looking forward to having a bath (a good soak).

Having a flushing toilet – let me tell you they are a wonderful invention. We coped OK with cooking on gas but the water was another thing.

The bad news is that they are no longer looking for survivors and the expected death toll stands at 240

We have felt very isolated not really knowing just what was going on even though we had radio which was good for the first couple of days but went back to regular programmes after that. We haven’t really had any interest in what is going on anywhere else in other parts of the world which is a funny feeling.

Although I generally cope with things pretty well I have found myself in tears a lot in the last few days, I think that is because you worry about making things as ‘normal’ as possible for everyone else and then suddenly it all starts to fall in on you. I am still piling rubbish up ready to get rid of it all.

Earthquake

Well we do have power but no water.

The dust is now a major problem making breathing difficult. This has been caused through the liquefaction which was very bad throughout the city. I saw this at first hand when I went to get water last week and saw vans down holes in the road and submerged in the liquefaction. They have now been dragged out. Students have been helping to shovel up the liquefaction in the streets and there are huge mounds up and down the streets. The students have been fantastic. With the dry and dusty conditions the winds are now creating the breathing problems.

We are continuing to get a lot of after shocks which make everyone very jumpy.

I must admit this sort of experience makes you realise what is important and it is not the material things!!

Earthquake

One week ago we had another earthquake. I have been unable to blog as we have not had electricity, water or sewage. We now have generator power but still no water or sewage. Today is the first day we have seen any news (only had battery radio) and in some ways I am pleased not have seen it before. I just feel shell shocked.

Our house is badly damaged. Things are a real mess.

It is not nice not being able to have a shower for so long. Yesterday we went to visit some people some distance away (they had power and water). I used a proper toilet for the first time in a week and also had my first shower, LUXURY!! We have portaloos along the street and are also being asked to dig long drops. We have been using gas BBQs for cooking and boiling water. We have to go out to fill bottles etc with water (all need to boiled before drinking). It is really not pleasant but with so many dead it seems not so bad.

People have been coming together looking after each other which is fantastic although many have fleed the city.

Although it was only 6. something the devastation is far greater. There have been many deaths and the toll is expected to be a lot greater.

I am praying for Christchurch and all the people who are staying here and helping each other.

More earthquakes

Believe it or not we were hit by more earthquakes on 26 December. (see blog posts in September) Everyone here was just starting to relax as the after shocks had settled down and then...

we were rocked by several big ones on one day and a lot of further damage has been caused. I have been very lucky as we have had very little damage but many of the buildings in the central city area were badly hit again. Some of the ones suffering damage this time had survived the first major one but not this one. Hopefully that is the last of them but they are predicting that it is not all over yet.

Earthquake wiki

Jill Hammond has started a wiki about earthquakes. This will be an interactive collaborative teaching and learning opportunity for our pupils.

It is entirely open and public which means anyone can edit the site so feel free to add your ideas or use it with your students.

Already there are some great ideas for teachers on the Share Ideas page as well as photographs and movies.