Day 6 - Urrbrae Agricultural High School

So, our final school visit today, the week has flown by. Another warm day today, but not quite as sunny as yesterday. It seems the mosquitos have taken a liking to me and I can count more than 10 bites! The rest of this entry are my notes from today.

Urrbrae is a fairly unique high school, they are selective, but not towards academic, more attitude. They are situated in the south eastern suburbs approximately 5 miles from the city.

We were next given a tour of the very impressive site. There is a fully functional farm, winery and the uses of computers is embedded throughout, including robots to help with the farm! There is certainly an underpinning culture of learning through doing - the cars in the fully functional workshop are an ideal example of this.

ICT at Urrbrae

There is a strong e-strategy at Urrbrae, they are on the way to having digital technologies embedded and are close to having 1:1 digital technologies. The whole campus is fully wireless. Every teacher has their own laptop. Where applications are ran that require high processing power, computer suites are available. For video and audio work, there is a stand alone Mac suite.

IT and computing are no longer taught as discrete subjects. the e-strategy is to increasingly embed digital technology into all teaching and learning activities across the curriculum. There is an expectation that all teachers will adopt digital technologies into their every day practice.

Need to look at ClickView - www.clickview.com.au - this is a facility designed to assist learning in the classroom by providing a solution for watching digital videos and other digital media within the school.

This is the second school that have mentioned deep learning, they employ a teacher librarian who is responsible not only for the library, but to assist teachers with research tasks, often digital, and to run the research project (sounds similar to our extended project). The library has a lot of 'traditional' books, but they also have access to a lot of online resources and ebook readers.

Finally, we got a ride on the back of a tractor to the wetlands where the students study the many environmental aspects of the area - what a fantastic resource!

Each school we have visited has had unique aspects that have been really thought provoking and interesting. What a great opportunity.