Innovation Festival
Sophie Poisel – Innovation Leader K – 6
Forth Annual Innovation Festival
On Wednesday we hosted our 4th annual K-6 Innovation Festival celebrating the innovative thinking our students have engaged in so far this year. As well as parents and community members, we also welcomed Majorie O’Neill, MP and four award winning STEAM Professionals: Dr Vanessa Pirotta, Associate Professor Ronika Power, Dr Katie Sizeland and Dr Meg Tonkin.
Our festival opened this year with a performance by Dramatic Action on emerging technologies, by our Creative Director Brooke Oldfield. Our Imaginarium Leaders Jonah Ernster and Kaila Nabarro led our celebration by introducing the theme for the year – designing and creating a better world. The audience was moved by Kaila Nabarro’s reflection on her Northern Territory experiences earlier in the year, before the acknowledgement to country.
Following their introduction, our STEAM Professionals spoke about the problems they solve and what a day in the life of a STEAM Professional looks like. Years 1 – 6 students were engaged by these brilliant communicators who spoke about their work combining Science and Technology in Marine Biology, Archaeobiology, Chemical Engineering and Social Robotics. Liam Winter facilitated the panel discussion, to learn more about their pathway to now, the key skills that are involved in their work and messages our students need to hear from the adults in their lives.
Parent Learning Opportunities followed across K-6 classrooms, where students guided their parents through Visual Programming tutorials. This involved the students teaching their parents to program Spheros, Dash Robots, Micro:bits and to use the various functions Scratch.
2019 K-6 Classroom Projects, pilot programs and Imaginarium Leader Initiatives were exhibited in the Innovation Centre. It was a wonderful celebration of Making, Innovative Thinking and collaboration. Our students are so fortunate to have teachers who design such amazing learning experiences for them.
You can access a digital copy of the program here: https://tinyurl.com/2019IFProgram
