Piggley returns home to Kilvemnon

Welcome to Mrs. Barbara Luttrell, our new principal in Scoil Mhuire Kilvemnon. Here you can see her receiving a bouquet of flowers from Fr. McGrath who is Chairman of our school Board of Management.



Hi everyone! I had such fun today when I arrived home with Ms. O' Connell from the 2008 Microsoft Innovative Teachers' Forum. Here I am getting a medal from the children. Check out my special red outfit from Hong Kong!



Here you can see a group photo of us all in Kilvemnon



Check out the Photostory I made with Ms. O' Connell about my adventure in Hong Kong.

Piggley's Adventure in Hong Kong: Day 6

Good morning everyone!
Myself and Ms. O’ Connell had an amazing day yesterday! We were invited to visit St. Paul’s Convent School in Causeway Bay in Hong Kong. ( Link to their website: http://ihouse.hkedcity.net/~sp1400/)

This is the school building.

St. Paul’s is a girl’s school with 3,000 pupils. The girls start in kindergarten at 3years of age and continue through to secondary school where they graduate at 18 years.
The principal Sr. Margaret Wong had visited the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum at the Asian Expo Centre on Thursday and was really excited when she saw all of the hard work that went in to your project.
Here you can see me with Sr. Margaret and Ms. O' Connell

You can imagine how excited I was to hear that St. Paul’s girls are building an aeroplane!!! This is the classroom they are using to construct the frame.

They are working with Cathay Pacific Airlines to build a two-seater aeroplane. The girls are also learning to fly and they hope to build a flight simulation room in the school to help them learn about aeroplane take off, control and landing. They hope to have the aeroplane built within the next two years (it will take 2,000 hours of work!) and that each student involved will have an opportunity to fly their construction.

Here are some aeroplane parts already started on. Can you spot the gears below?

Sr. Margaret and Jenny were both extremely excited to hear about the films you have made in the school. They showed me the room that they use in their school to create a TV station and they have a green screen in the room.
Here you can see me with Ms. O’ Connell in front of the green screen.
I wonder what we could edit to put in the background? Perhaps a picture of all of our lovely students in Kilvemnon?!

I made lots of new friends in St. Paul’s Convent School.

There is a dance studio in St. Paul’s where the students learn to dance. Here I am trying out some Irish dancing which they also learn at the school! They performed Riverdance as part of a school graduation two years ago!

The students podcast and videocast. Here I am trying it out! I hope that we will be able to podcast information about Kilvemnon so that the students of St. Paul’s can learn about Ireland and that they will do the same so we can learn about Hong Kong.
Even though St. Paul’s are so far away from us in the world and their school is so much bigger than ours, they are very similar to us in many ways. They also create robots with LEGO Mindstorms and program them on the computer. Here you can see me looking at some of their models. They work together in groups to create these models and they keep a record of all of the work that they have done, just like us!!


They like to create lots of colourful art work like we do in Kilvemnon. Here you can see some of their work.


St. Paul’s is a Green School just like us. They encourage people to conserve energy and not to litter their environment and have made a film to ask people to do the same.
They try to help the environment by being self sufficient in terms of energy useage. They have a peaceful area in the school with a fountain and this fountain is powered using solar panels.


The school is very lucky to have a ‘Classroom of the Future’.

This room is all powered by solar panel energy on the roof and they have interactive whiteboards and screens all around the room. The seats in the classroom are all designed so that students can move freely to encourage co-operation and collaboration. They can sit in two ways, using the back as a rest or somewhere to put their laptops. Wow!


I was invited to tea with Sr. Margaret and Jenny. They offered me delicious Chinese cookies and also some special sweets made from eggs and black sugar. They were delicious!


I would like to thank all of the staff and pupils of St. Paul’s, and especially Sr. Margaret and Jenny, who made myself and Ms. O’ Connell feel so welcome! I hope that I can visit them again sometime in the future and I’m sure that all of you in Kilvemnon will be really excited to email them an make some podcasts for them next week!

See you all on Monday in school!
Lots of hugs from Piggley!!