Connected Students @ Rosmini College

I have always been a great fan of the work that Geoff Wood is doing with his students at Rosmini College and have written on them often in the VLN Primary School blog (here, here & here). His classroom is truly a Connected Classroom and his students Connected Learners. Geoff is a full time classroom teacher and has 'flipped' his classroom to be revolving around the constant connections that fuel their learning processes, through the sharing and relationships they develop with the many, many different students who come 'virtually' into their classroom everyday. On my second face to face visit in two years i can see now how this has really developed into the culture of the students Years 7 - 13 in Geoff's health classes. They are organised, they are confident, they are patient & persistent (dealing with the technology), they are able to communicate with a diversity of students from new entrants, all over NZ and globally. On the afternoon i was at Rosmini two boys were in the workroom (cupboard?), teaching youngsters in South Auckland about sugars in our diet; another two were on the outside deck talking to students from Te Hapua about online safety & Geoff was preparing an international connection with Bangladesh & Pakistan (?) for later in the day. I was impressed with the ease of communication, through pretty average technology & connections (HD desktop VC it wasn't). It was a joy to watch the students at Te Hapua perform a waiata & haka for the Rosmini boys and then one by one approach the camera to introduce themselves & say thank you.
Below is are some snippets of one of the sessions and a short interview with two of the boys: