Skype

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Today (June 2nd 2011)our teacher Mrs. Stevens showed the class a short piece of a TV show called Rural Delivery. We watched a piece on an organic farmer named Mr. Robin Greer in Gore NZ. He has an organic dairy farm with cows that they milk and make cheese and yoghurt. Mrs. Stevens organized a Skype session with Mr. Robin Greer to talk to us about his farm and to help with our new topic this term, Our Living World.

The Skype session Room 13 came into our class and we asked Mr. Greer questions. He gave us some interesting knowledge about organic farming. He gave me a better understanding about organic farming because I didn't know that Organic farms don't use any chemical drenches, pesticides, antibiotics and so on.

He decided to change to organic farming because his father and his wife's father died from liver cancer when they young and so decided to make healthy food.

I also learned that organic farms production rate is on average 10%- 15% lower than conventional farms. A student asked if Mr. Robin Greer's income had dropped since he switched to organic farming, I found out that in the South Island organic farmers don't get payed premiums and if they did his income wouldn't have dropped.

I found it interesting that the cheese he makes tastes better as it ages and cheddar cheese has to age longer. I also found that his cows don't graze on normal grass instead they graze on a mixture of grass, herbs and what some people consider weeds.

Our skype session with Mr. Guptill. 28/10/11 At the end of term 3 our class did some work with a class in the States on wikispaces to learn about what their life is like as kids in the USA. This is the link to our wikispace http://handsacrossthepacific.wikispaces.com/. This morning we skyped the class in North Carolina to ask them some questions we came up with. When we were skyping them me and the rest of my class could hardly hear some of the questions they were asking us and them moving was a bit distracting. A lot of people in our class didn't get up to ask their question also.