Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last Friday I was very happy to host our Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, during a visit to one of the many state primary schools in my electorate, Blackburn Lake Primary School. Having previously visited the school back in May this year, I had seen for myself what a great atmosphere and wonderful teaching environment exist at the school. The care and attention of the teachers, the close involvement of the parents and the leadership displayed by the Principal, Mr David Jewell, make Blackburn Lake Primary a great example of a state school that matches the needs of its community.

There are 26 primary schools in my electorate of Deakin, and I am sure that the Prime Minister would be more than happy to visit as many of them as possible in the future. But for now I would like to describe what we saw at Blackburn Lake Primary. In the prep school class area, we watched and joined in as the children went through various literacy and numeracy exercises. The teachers composed these in a way that was both fun and exciting for the kids—and you could really see the enthusiasm on their faces.

We also sat down with the prep school children and watched them do counting and addition exercises by using an interactive whiteboard. With colour, movement and sound, the kids could not wait to get up for their turn to show off their maths skills to us, each of them standing up and counting the objects on the screen and then writing their answers in the boxes at the bottom of the screen. It was really interesting to see kids of only five or six years old wanting to be that involved in learning. Each and every one got their answer right, and the interactive whiteboard played different sounds and music for each answer. Although I have seen and used interactive whiteboards before, this is the first time I have witnessed children of that age use interactive whiteboards.

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