As originally published in the Newsletter on August 13th, 2015.
In the latest school principals’ magazine, “Education Today”, there is an interesting article on coding. It describes Microsoft’s 4 day #wespeakcode conference held in May this year. Over 7000 students attended the 4 day event, which shows students’ high interest level in this area. Microsoft’s Asia Pacific study found that only 32% of Australian students said they had an opportunity to learn coding in school, whether as a core subject or as an extracurricular elective. This is a different story at CLG! Walking through our school in recent days we have been delighted to see the range and depth of digital learning engaging our students. Our work on implementing the new Australian Curriculum: Digital technologies has obviously paid off!
In the Doolette building our very youngest students were using the iPads to makes little films about what was happening during activity time. When they played it to the class the children being filmed were explaining in great detail what they were trying to do and reflecting on the success. Great opportunities for oral language development! Other students were making up a little play about Little Red Riding Hood. They used the Puppet Pals app to put themselves into a story and then shared the play with the whole group using the Apple TV and interactive whiteboard.
Middle Primary years students have really enjoyed coding and robotics. We have a “Code Club” that meets every Tuesday lunchtime. With more coding activities happening in classrooms, this lunchtime elective has recently become very popular. Some students are using Scratch or Kodu to create their own programs, others are working their way through the challenges at code.org. In class, many students have been using the ‘BeeBots’ to learn basic programming skills. As you can see from the photos, this learning activity also provides many opportunities for students to develop our expert learner qualities of team worker, being resilient and a good communicator.
The older students have been using our newly acquired “Lego Mind storms” robotics kit. They have programmed the robotics using loops, if statements and investigated the sensors. Maybe we will produce the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs from our student cohort!