Sophie Poisel – Innovation Leader K – 6

The Imaginarium in 2019

The Primary Imaginarium is developing into a wonderful space that seeks to empower our students to envision our world differently and take action towards designing & creating a better future. For new parents, the Imaginarium is our MakerSpace which houses tools for all types of making within and beyond the curriculum. The space also hosts a range of opportunities that foster the development of Design, Systems and Computational Thinking in our students.

The Imaginarium is starting to take shape after two years of research, visits to over 30 MakerSpaces in North America and Australia and searching for common features of innovative schools (See report: https://tinyurl.com/InnovationInEdu). Over the holidays the space has been transformed and now includes ideas designed and created by our students. In Week 3 will be ready for students to continue investigating, imagining and iterating.

Opportunities for Innovation

In Term 1, we are starting to collect problems students identify on our Opportunities for Innovation window at the entrance to the space. We hope that these ideas spark conversation and connect with problems other students have identified.

Finding opportunity for re-designing objects, processes and solutions is an important skill the will benefit our students now and in the future. We encourage students to look closely and listen, explore complexity and find opportunities for re-design. Some of the thinking routines that our students have started using over the past two years that foster this can be found here http://www.agencybydesign.org/thinking-routines-tools-practices.

There are a number of long term challenges that focus on students identifying problems and developing innovative solutions. Your child may be interested in working towards the following opportunities in 2019 including littleBIGidea, Young Scientist Awards, Young ICT Explorers, Grok Coding ChallengeTech Girls are Superheroes Competitions, National History Challenge and the Wonder League Robotics Competition.These opportunities rely on students developing their sensitivity to design and developing transferrable skills. In 2018 we were excited to have a team win the National STEM Award in the Tech Girls are Superheroes Competition. In 2017 one student was awarded the NSW Award for the National History Challenge and another student achieved a perfect score in the Intermediate Division of the Grok Coding Challenge. Please encourage your child/ren to learn more about these challenges. Colleen Elkins and I will offer more information about these during Term 1.

Leadership

We are excited to announce the inaugural Year 6 Imaginarium Leaders for 2019: Jonah Ernster, Kaila Nabarro, Toby Seeman and Liam Winter. Our leaders will be instrumental in developing the direction and implementation of new opportunities in the space, including fostering a maker culture within the Primary School. Our leaders will also be launching Emanuel Primary School News Network (EPSNN) in Term 1, working with several reporting teams across the School.

Liam Winter, Jonah Ernster, Toby Seeman and Kaila Nabarro

Community

We are excited to welcome Emma Clemens, who has returned this year as an Innovation Teacher. She will be team teaching with teachers to further embed new technologies, computational thinking and coding into class programs.

Parents and community members who would like to volunteer to share their skills are invited to attend a meeting on Friday 22 February at 8.30 am in the Primary Imaginarium (Level 1 of the new Innovation Building). Ideally we would like you to be able to commit to a regular time throughout the year. We would particularly love to hear from you if you possess skills in the following areas: hand tools, media, entrepreneurship, art and design, electronics, science, engineering or technology. Please RSVP to spoisel@emanuelschool.nsw.edu.au.

Looking forward to a wonderful 2019.