Your stories: Northern Peninsula Area State College, Injinoo Junior Campus

By Libby Foley,
Teacher, Injinoo Junior Campus

Students and staff at Injinoo Junior Campus excitedly received a CSER mixed kit from the CSER National Lending Library. The school is a remote Indigenous community in Cape York Queensland that caters for the educational needs of students from Injinoo and Umagico communities.

During a student free day, teachers participated in a workshop where they learned the basics of how to operate the devices, available resources to support implementation, and had an opportunity to get hands-on. Teachers went away thinking about ways they could incorporate the devices in the Digital Technologies curriculum to create digital solutions and engage students.

Some early years classrooms used the Beebots to teach directional language and reinforce non-standard measurements. The Year 3 classroom used the Beebots to develop computational thinking and team work through a series of challenges and activities. The Year 5 classroom utilised the ozobots. Students began with pens and drawing codes and experimenting with cutting and pasting codes. Students then moved to lessons provided in the mixed kit. The final stage was to create algorithms on laptops using Ozoblockly.

Injinoo Junior was lucky to borrow the kit in Term 3 as the kit was utilised during National Science Week. Injinoo hosted a Science Extravaganza Day where there were age appropriate rotation activities that focused on different Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics concepts. Devices from the kit were heroes of the day with many students commenting ‘technology is the best’ and ‘I love learning with technology.’

The school rolled out classroom sets of laptops and iPads during Term 3 so there was a lot of teacher trialling of all resources in the kit and professional discussions around possible implementation.

Thank you CSER for the wonderful resources. It prompted professional dialogue, more teacher confidence in forward planning the Digital Technologies curriculum, and the creation of engaging learning experiences for Injinoo Junior students.

Thank you to Libby for sharing this wonderful school experience.

If you would like to share how your school is implementing the Digital Technologies curriculum please email us at cser@adelaide.edu.au.

This project is supported by the Australian Government Department of Education and Training.