The staff at St Joseph’s plan and collaborate in order to incorporate learning technologies across all key learning areas.
Every classroom is fitted with an interactive SMART Board and projector, teacher laptop and either laptops or iPads for student use. Students also have access to a number of robotics including Bee-Bots and Micro:bits. Students in Years 5 and 6 are part of a “bring your own device” (BYOD) program. This involves students bringing a Windows 10 device to school each day to use for a range of educational purposes. Devices are used for completing class work, researching, collaborating with peers and participating in interactive discussions and tasks. The Stage 3 curriculums require students to be digitally literate and some key learning areas require an increasing amount of research. The 1:1 device system allows for this to occur more often across the school week.
The Learning Hub is the school’s technology teaching centre. Weekly lessons expose the children to interacting with a range of technologies to find information, solve problems and complete tasks safely online. The Learning Hub supports students to become producers of digital work such as videos, websites and online presentations. The hub provides learning technology resources including laptops for every student, cameras, microphones, editing software, along with software that promotes collaboration and creativity.
The Learning Hub also provides opportunities for online collaboration and creativity. This is done through ongoing projects such as Minecraft Education club. This club is led by students who provide children with opportunities to collaboratively solve problems and create and build ideas. The Book Week video is another student-led project where every year children plan, film, edit and share a feature video for Book Week.