WALLAN PRIMARY SCHOOLCASE STUDY | snapshot February 2021 |
Wallan Primary School is a government school situated in regional Victoria. They school has 600-650 students, and the class structure is single stream year levels. Wallan Primary school has a dedicated specialist Digital Technologies teacher. The Digital Technologies specialist classes operate from Foundation to Year 6. The current teacher has been in the specialist role for 3 years. The program started out focusing on coding and algorithmic thinking activities for students. Each year the program has developed to reflect the growing skills of the students. There is a dedicated Digital Technologies room which contains 30 dedicated laptops. In classrooms, F-2 students have access to a bank of 20 iPads, 3-4 students have 20 iPads, as well as a bank of 20 laptops, and 5-6 students have the same. Other hardware available at the school includes: Cubetto, Beebots, Microbit, Makey Makey, Sphero. Software programs that are utilised include: Scratch Jr, Purple Mash, Beebot App, Hopscotch, Microsoft MakeCode, Scratch, Minecraft EE. Professional learningTo support development and knowledge of the curriculum and devices teachers have attended conferences such as STEMaker and DigiCon 2019. A representative from the school presented at ACCE2021. The school is also part of a Minecraft Education Edition cluster. Our biggest success The passion and enthusiasm of learning from the students. Programs and lessons have been developed with high engagement results. The implementation of Minecraft Education Edition saw increase in engagement at school and even at home. The fertility of the program has assisted to develop design thinking, prototyping and coding. Our biggest challenge When starting out, students had little to no prior knowledge. Students from 3-6 were all at a similar level. This meant adapting planners to the students’ needs became a high priority. |
CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION
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GOING FORWARD What we identified for development Ensuring all areas of the Digital Technologies curriculum are assessed. 3 things we would avoid or do differently
| INPUT FROM DLTV and ACS NOTE: This advice is relevant to this school snapshot as at February 2021, with documents provided at that time. starting out > building practices > consolidating practices Wallan Primary School continues to develop their Digital Technologies program. There is an obvious skill development of coding skills from Foundation to Level 6, with the use of multiple platforms and devices. The current approach at Wallan is to focus on coding, but we recommend broadening the implementation of Digital Technologies to take in content descriptors under the Data and Information strand of the curriculum; data representation concepts and skills for acquiring and manipulating data. There is opportunity to use data from the community to help drive other lesson ideas that fit the target of creating units that engage with the community more. Finally, the approach of a specialist classroom and teacher can carry vulnerability in case of staff change. We recommend a deliberate strategy to ensure that the school can continue to deliver Digital Technologies and utilise the range of learning tools should a crucial staff member move on. |
CONTACT School contact: Kirsty Bridge, Digital Technologies Specialist Teacher Phone: (03) 5783 1232 (school office) Email: wallan.ps@education.vic.gov.au, subject line: ‘Attention: Kirsty Bridge DT Implementation’ |
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