Digital Technology Update

The current climate of COVID has made it challenging for students and teachers to learn and adapt to new ways of learning and embracing the use of digital technologies to do so. Although there has been disruptions with face-to-face learning, the Digital Technology faculty has been working hard to provide exciting resources and content to the students.

We were lucky enough this year to receive our own official classroom that allows the College to provide exciting resources to the students. The College has invested time and money in the acquisition of Virtual Reality headsets, such as the Oculus Quest, programmable drones, a class set of Micro:Bits and Bit:Bots, 3 x class sets of Arduino smart cars, a lego smart city, a plastic recycling machine to make 3D filament and 8 3D printers. These valuable resources have allowed the students to be learn and to be exposed to cutting edge technology and how it can be used not just in the Digital Technology classroom, but other subject areas.

A few programs/units of work have included Year 7s design a 3D model of a chess piece and having it printed on the 3D printers, Year 8 students building and programming a smart car, Year 7 & 8 students using computational thinking and algorithms to program a drone to fly around a course successfully and many more.

We also currently have been supporting students with their own work or projects of interest and are proud of the work that these students are producing. Some students in Year 7 & 8 have been making a rechargeable bluetooth speaker in their lunchtime, where they design and 3D print the housing unit before wiring up the electronic components.

For Product & Design, Daniel McInerney SotoMayor from Year 11 has used the 3D printers to print a Star Wars Clone helmet in 12 separate pieces, where he then attached and smoothed the piece. He will be using this model as a mould where he will be able to replicate and 'clone' more of these helmets. 

Christian Privitelli and James Fuller have been working hard this year to create a 3D printed bionic limb that is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and an app that Christian wrote which controls the movement of the hand.

We are so excited with the work that students are producing at the College and encourage others to use the facilities for their school work, such as using the drones for Maths, or 3D printing to create models or prototypes in Woodwork or Science.

Brenton Reid  Learning Area Leader: Digital Technology