In the final week of Term 3, 2018 Farrer Primary School hosted the second Woden Cluster Digital Technology Day.
The annual event is coordinated by Farrer Primary School and led by Kate Banwell (Lead for Digital Technologies at Farrer Primary School) in collaboration with Torrens Primary School, Mawson Primary School and Melrose High School, a Woden district ACT public school cluster. This year, the day was organised into four one-hour workshops with an opening session in the morning, a closing session in the afternoon, and a Come and Try Roadshow in the middle. Teachers from each of the cluster schools encouraged Year K-6 students with an interest in Digital Technologies to attend and student guardian consent was a prerequisite to confirm attendance.
The day is a great way for students to come together in a summit style event and also gives Year 6’s an opportunity to practice their leadership skills by presenting and demonstrating workshop elements to their peers.
The workshops enable students to build relationships with students from other cluster schools and connect with future teachers and educators. The day is designed to foster an understanding of a learning pathway for developing students skills required for the jobs of tomorrow.
- Come and Try roadshow
- Google Expeditions experience
- Ozobot programming challenge🔽
- Robogals activities
- StikBot animation and moviemaking🔽.
🔽The StikBot and Ozobot workshops were run by Year 6 students from Farrer Primary School.
After the welcome and acknowledgement of country by Year 6 group leaders, Kate Banwell opened the event with an overview of the activities. All were reminded to regroup in the hall at the end of each activity before the next rotation.
StikBot Workshop
I attended the session with the Green Kinder to Year 3 group. After a demonstration of the tools, devices and props by Year 6 leaders, the group divided into teams to work on their animation theme and storyline. The end-product was not so much the focus of achievement, but rather the ability to work with each other’s ideas and skills.
Google Expeditions (VR) Workshop
I followed the Red Year 3-6 group to the Flexible Learning Environment for the Google Expeditions workshop. This classroom space is where magic happens in Maths, Media & Arts and Digital Technologies during regular school days. The environment was thoughtfully prepared for the activity - a cleared carpeted area with furniture pushed against the walls for a safe virtual reality experience.
Classroom teacher, Michael Tinio (Farrer Primary School), was the Google Expeditions leader. Year 6 group leaders assisted setting up each student with a headset and mobile phone device. Before the sets were handed out, students were asked what they thought an expedition was and what they might want to see or do on their next one. Students were reminded to remove the headset if they felt sick and to come see the classroom teacher. Michael guided the group through three expeditions - The International Space Station, Mt Fuji and The Human Digestive System. At the end of each expedition the students were asked to pair up to discuss what they saw and experienced. There was also time for questions and answers to enrich the learning experience.
Come and Try Roadshow
At the Come and Try Roadshow, the young ‘tekkies’ could have a go at a number of activities. The hall was divided into five areas, each abuzz with gadgets and excited participants. There were challenges in:
- Programming Dash and Bee-Bot robots
- Writing drag-and-drop gaming code
- Moviemaking in a pop-up green screen studio
- Drone handling.
🔼 Ozobot robots available from The University of Adelaide, CSER Digital Technologies Education
🔼 Google Expeditions kit available from ACT Education Directorate, Digital Strategy, Services & Transformation
🔼 Other equipment owned by Farrer Primary School
Ozobots Workshop
I followed the Pink Year 3-6 group to the Ozobot workshop. On standby and well prepared were the Year 6 leaders to demonstrate the activity challenge, tools and resources.
At the end of this workshop each participant received a Certificate of Achievement and the Year 6 leaders received a well-deserved thank you for their guidance and support.
Robogals Workshop
I again joined the Pink Year 3-6 group for the Robogals Workshops. Robogals is an international student-run organisation that aims to inspire, engage and empower young women to consider studying engineering and related fields.
Workshop leader and Canberra Robogal volunteer, Rachel Alger, welcomed and settled the group in by providing some background information about herself and Robogals and then asked students what they thought engineering was. The Year 3-6 students responded with well-informed answers: ‘design, building, engines, creating, electronics’.
Rachel’s introduction to the first activity had everyone in suspense. The group was divided into two: ‘secret work’ was allocated to Group 2 and ‘guess work’ to Group 1. Each student in Group 2 was given a line drawn image, paper and pencil and had to write instructions in words for their Group 1 partner to follow. The desired outcome was for Group 1 to recreate the line drawn image from the written instructions. This activity creates a fun and engaging environment whilst reinforcing computational thinking.
For the next activity students formed into groups to calculate how to navigate their Lego Mindstorms robot through a maze. The challenge was in producing a ‘colour-card-language-code’ for the robot to follow and successfully drive through the maze.
Wrap of Day
All gathered in the school hall for the closing session. The floor was opened for feedback: ‘Could StikBot backdrops come in a choice of either green or blue to provide contrast for green and blue StikBots in the movie making process?’ was something worthwhile to consider.
Everyone was thanked for their positive and engaged participation as well as for their organisational support. As an opportunity to gather feedback, students were asked to participate in the ‘hot dot’ activity. After collecting their participation certificate, students placed a red dot sticker on the poster of their favourite activity.
Staff at all the participating schools were pivotal in making the Woden Cluster Digital Technology Day possible with special thanks to Kate Banwell and the Year 6 students from Farrer Primary.
Students develop capability in using ICT for tasks associated with information access and management, information creation and presentation, problem-solving, decision-making, communication, creative expression and empirical reasoning. This includes conducting research, creating multimedia information products, analysing data, designing solutions to problems, controlling processes and devices, and supporting computation while working independently and in collaboration with others.
F-10 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability, Australian Curriculum
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Are you based at an ACT Public School and would like to feature a digital teaching and learning event, project or classroom activity? Make contact with us here on the blog or mail to DSST@act.gov.au. We can arrange to visit your school when it is most convenient for you.
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