Young ICT Explorers
Three teams of Doncaster Gardens students were invited to present their ICT projects at the 2015 Young ICT Explorers judging event. One of our teams won the Merit Award in the Year 5/6 category and another team won first place in the Year 3/4 category. Our Year 3/4 winners are off to Sydney to compete in the national finals soon! Stay tuned for more news. Some photos of the teams and their projects are displayed above.
ICT - Information and Communications Technology
The famous story of the Tortoise and the Hare, acted out by Cannybot 3D printed robots. Cannybots designed by Daniel Y and Sara K, video editing by Emily L.
Ashkaan, Ahmed and Jon made this keyboard with an Arduino. Next they're going to tinker with the code and improve the design.
Doncaster Gardens was recently visited by the team at ABC Splash. Here are the videos they made about our participation in the Hour of Code.At Doncaster Gardens we integrate Digital Technologies with our classroom programs as much as possible. To supplement this integration, students have weekly Digital Technology sessions with a specialist Teacher. In our Computer Lab, students have access to state of the art technology including 3D Printers, BeeBots, Spheores, Makey Mamey, Arduino Kits, Edison Robots. Purple Mash, Lego WeDo and Mindstorm programmable robots.
Click here to read our ICT blog and find out what students have been learning and creating in ICT.
Students are introduced to ICT tools which they can take back to their classrooms to enable more powerful learning. We also foster their creativity and thinking skills by presenting them with problems to solve with technology.
Students are introduced to computer programming through game development software such as Kodu Game Lab and through robotics programming with Lego Mindstorms. We also teach basic programming with Scratch, Javascript and other programs and assist them with participation in the National Computer Science School programming challenge (NCSS). The NCSS helps beginners to learn to program with Python by solving problems.
3D Printing allows us to complement the Technology program and foster our students' creativity and design skills. Students are presented with a design brief. They model their design on 3D CAD software and manufacture their models by printing them in ABS plastic.
The Digital Technologies curriculum enables students to become confident and creative developers of digital solutions through the application of information systems and specific ways of thinking about problem solving.
Students acquire a deep knowledge and understanding of digital systems, data and information and the processes associated with creating digital solutions so they can take up an active role in meeting current and future needs.
The curriculum has been designed to provide practical opportunities for students to explore the capacity of information systems to systematically and innovatively transform data into digital solutions through the application of computational, design and systems thinking.
The curriculum also encourages students to be discerning decision makers by considering different ways of managing the interactions between digital systems, people, data and processes (information systems) and weighing up the possible benefits and potential risks for society and the environment.
The Digital Technologies curriculum aims to ensure that students can:
