In Week 10 this term primary students will be involved in our annual -a-thon. This year will be focused on the key skills and dispositions associated with developing an innovative mindset. All students from Kindergarten to Year 6 will be participating in a collaborative build of a future city in the Angles Leadership and Learning Centre. This will be on display as part of the 2018 Innovation Festival on October 26, Term 4, Week 2. Next week you will receive an email more information and a sponsorship form and your child/ren will come home with a Design Diary.

 

 

As part of our CSIRO STEM in Schools Day, the Hon Matt Thistlethwaite MP and UNSW Scientia Professor Toby Walsh joined our Year 6 students in the Imaginarium. The students learned  about the importance of STEM careers and the many different and exciting trajectories that are possible. The students explored the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development and used this to create and pitch a job of the future Year 6 students had time to ask Professor Walsh and Mr Thistlethwaite questions. One student asked Professor Walsh, “Do you ever think in the future that A.I. will be self conscious?” and directed our discussion towards other questions like “what is consciousness?” and “will they have rights?”. Another student asked the Professor if there were many women in his field, to which he said “not enough. It should be 50% and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be… it is really problematic… because it means we are not asking the right questions because there isn’t the diversity of opinion. There are too many people like me who ask questions based upon our assumptions and experiences. The world is 50% women, and the world of Science should also be 50% women. There are great opportunities for women in the field.” Professor Walsh spoke about the need for diversity in the field and the importance of having a balance of questions and assumptions of the world. He also spoke about how many jobs are out there for people interested in technology. Another student asked what Professor Walsh’s greatest achievement was and he said “my students, they are the greatest legacy you have as a teacher.” We look forward to Professor Walsh returning to visit us with his friend of a non-human kind, in the upcoming weeks.

This fortnight with Ms Grieve and their classroom teachers, Year 1 students experimented with digital technologies to describe, follow and represent algorithms to solve problems. Students played to learn using some of our new robots Cubetto & Codeapillar, experimented with Osmo games and visual programming interface Scratch Junior. The goals of this session and sessions to come involve students learning to follow and represent sequences of steps and decisions (algorithms) to solve problems by controlling a digital device remotely and present a sequence of instructions using a visual programming language.