A beautiful day today, sun is shining and we're expecting high temperatures.
We were greeted by a red carpet and the Union Jack was flying! The general feeling was that the school was relaxed and friendly towards visitors and we were told to make ourselves at home.
The school has lovely grounds, a nice amount of green, open space and loads of plans and trees. It was interesting to see that there was no fencing around the site, despite there being a main road on one side!
After welcomes, we were introduced to David Couche, the ICT coordinator. He talked us through the ICT facilities and courses in the school. Like the other schools they are starting to move towards the 1:1 digital devices program, but are slightly earlier in the process than some of the other schools. There are 640 students on role.
All staff are supplied with a HP laptop that is considered as their own. All year 9 and 10 students have been supplied with their own Acer laptops that they take home with them. There are 7 ICT suites, with 160 desktops in total. There is also an on site media centre.
They are the only school who deliver 3D animation through to Y12. They deliver Multimedia in Y10 and eMedia in Y9. CAD in Y11 and in Y8 as part of tech. There is a strong emphasis on ICT across the curriculum.
With the advent of the student net books and all staff having a laptop, the staff are now really beginning to see the possibilities for redirect the learning of their students. The staff see this year as a year of growth and a change of direction in teaching pedagogies for many of them, many of them entering what has been up to now, an unknown and scary realm.
After only 2 and a half weeks of having netbooks for students, staff are already noticing that Y9 and Y10 students are more engaged and producing more work willingly since they have had their own devices. Site licences mean that students have access to all the software that they have in school. Of course there are a couple of intensive programs that won't run on netbooks.
They seem to see the importance of keeping students from becoming completely reliant on computers - they still have to write for 3 hours in their english exams!!
Rules include policy that students must bring their laptops to school every day and they must come fully charged.
3D Animation
There are strong industry links within the school, with some leading businesses in the 3D animation industry locally. There are also links with the technical colleges where the students can go on for further study. Uses Autodesk Maya.
We went to see a Y10 class who were an option group for 3D animation, the classroom was set up with 30 machines around the outside of the classroom and the objects that the students were trying to recreate in 3D were displayed in the middle of the room. It was nice to so much space in the classroom and the students seemed quite relaxed, but very engaged.
Graphics Calculators
Bronwyn Eglinton, a maths teacher showed us how she users graphics calculators in maths lessons. They do a lot more than a typical scientific calculator, they can draw graphs, be programmed and connected to a computer.
Some students in maths now only have an electronic copy of the maths text book and read it on screen in lessons rather than using the paper based book. Tis could potentially save a lot of storage space and save money on replacing lost and damaged text books.
Overview from the Principal
There are 2 schools in South Australia that have international 'status'. There are currently only 20 international students on role, but often it has been more like 60. There are approximately 24 countries represented.
It is expected the international student take extra English lessons, the department for education had mentioned on Monday that they had made it compulsory that none english speaking students pay for additional English lessons.
There are a large number of transition programs and open days for primary school children and parents.
Interestingly, the Principal and VP's are only employed for 5 years, then they would have to reapply for their job. The Principal is not chosen by the governors, but DCS.
Another interesting day, the most shocking thing for me was the amount of free rooms around when we were taking a tour of the school, and yet, they are over subscribed...
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