Your Stories: Highgate School Adelaide - CoSpaces 360 Kit

Lucy Jachacy is a Design and Digital Technologies Teacher at Highgate School Adelaide. Lucy shared some insightful feedback on her recent experience of using a CoSpaces 360 Kit from the CSER Lending Library. 

I am still quite new to teaching Design and Digital Technologies in Australia, but I am happy to experiment.  

Over the last two years my students and I were using 3D modelling tools (Tinker Cad and Makers Empire) to create small models. Some of them were printed using 3D printers. Our students are also very familiar with block coding.  

With the kit provided by CSER Lending Library I was able to build on the skills my students acquired previously and create spaces which they populated with 3D models. They also made them interactive using block coding.  

It was great to watch that to create more complex or unique structures students were back to Tinker Cad or Makers Empire and supported themselves with those tools. I had an impression that the coding came very naturally as the focus remain on designing.    

 I was strongly motivated to use CoSpaces after the training provided by Rebecca Vivian and Toni Falusi. Initially I used your key licence (including in the library kit), but I quickly moved to our own which will last the year. 

I used CoSpaces to support inquiry units for Year 5 and Year 6.

Year 6 Inquiry unit: 

Human actions impact the environment and all living things. 

During Technologies lessons students were designing a structure which would help to protect animals and their environment from human impact.  An example is shared below:

https://edu.cospaces.io/ZDN-MKF

Year 5 Inquiry unit:  

People and animals are affected by natural disasters e.g., bushfires 

Students were designing an exhibition about a natural disaster and its effect on people, animals, and environment. An example is shared below:

https://edu.cospaces.io/GYB-JCC 

Class teachers' feedback was very positive, students kept working on their projects beyond the Tech lesson, and presented solutions were comprehensive and addressed well the user.  
Students' work was presented using iPads and AR technology and VR goggles.  (It created a great opportunity to discuss those technologies.)

Most Y5/6 students experienced VR technology outside the school, but they were not very familiar with AR.  They were absolutely fascinated by the technology. They loved to watch their projects and interact with them.  

I also observed that they were motivated to improve their spaces by fixing bugs in code, locking models in, or adjusting their size.  

Recently two new buildings were completed and added to our school.  

We used Insta360 camera from the CoSpaces 360 Kit to take photos of the new classes. Although it is too late to make some designs for them, but it will provide me with great canvas to deliver projects like "a dream class" or "classes of the future" for younger students in Term 3 (Year 4/3).  

Benefits of using the kit: 

• The kit I was provided with was fantastic, and helped me to try new things on no cost e.g. Merge Cubes. 
• It helped me to understand the technology better and make decisions about some future purchases.  
• CoSpaces licence is quite expensive so being provided with free access is great. 
• I also had a chance to try some new apps which were already downloaded to the Library Kit iPad.  
• The kit was supported with a very useful set of instructions and links to resources which I printed out for students.  
• CoSpaces dashboard for teachers is very easy and intuitive in navigation.  
• Signing students in also very easy and quick.  

Thank you, Lucy, for sharing your experiences! The CSER Lending Library has two kinds of CoSpaces Kits to borrow, a physical kit containing Insta 360 Camera, ipads and the Digital License key to CoSpaces platform or a a Digital Kit which can be emailed providing immediate access to the CoSpaces platform for up to 30 participants per school. 

Thanks to the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment for supporting the CSER National Lending Library through the AI in Schools Initiative.