A Visit to Quakers Hill High School

Monday, August 1, 2016

The final stop on my school tour was in Quakers Hill at Quakers Hill High School to meet with Sim Mediratta. Sim has participated in global collaboration projects through iEARN and I was excited to meet her and plan for a joint project for my upcoming school year. She received coverage for the afternoon, so she was able to provide a comprehensive tour of the campus and many of the classrooms. One of the highlights at Quakers Hill High School was learning about the Aboriginal learning space that was researched, planned, designed, and built by the students. It is an outdoor space with cultural significance. Students use it as a classroom/learning area and are continually adding to the gardens and keeping up with maintaining the space. The marker show to the left is titled Community Links. The circular symbol at the top is the representation. There are additional markings on the other side that relate to community. Each marker around the circle (two can be seen in the photo above) represent a concept related to Aboriginal life.

Sim's described how the students will work on a global collaboration project with my students later this year. She has been involved in global projects through iEARN. The students worked with the Adobe Youth Voices Project (Mars Project). It was a skill-based sustainability project. The students chose a common case study with two other countries in the program. The three areas of focus were: fix themselves; fix community; and fix globally. They shared around in a Wiki as they researched, drafted, and presented final projects. There were many challenges, but it was a worthwhile learning process.

The school, as a whole, has not yet integrated coding into all the classes.  These are some of the tools/resources they are using: laptop carts by department; filming; cameras; robotics; Adobe animation develop sustainable communities with MineCraft; Lego nxt, 2nd gen.; stay in line challenge; sumo challenge; Raspberry Pi; and Python (yr 10). The school has five computer labs to share in addition to the computers available in the media center. The photo on the right is of one of the computer labs being used by a substitute teacher. I found it interesting that the school has an academic team focus rather than a grade level team focus. Teachers spend their "team" time and meeting time with like minded teachers, not grade level teachers. For science, there will be a school wide integration of STEM next year (their school year begins in January). 

The students may visit the library/media center during their lunch. I spent some time there with the students and interacted with a few boys that were brainstorming the next storyline for a game and writing the code for it. The game was called Hearts of Iron. The lunch media center program is interesting. Students may use computers for school related or non-related business. Students sign in and sit at an assigned computer. They may also choose a book, read or just socialize. It is not a quiet zone, but it is structured. There are library helpers that each complete assigned tasks at the bell such as straightening keyboards and mice, pushing in chairs, and generally tidying up. I was impressed with the execution of the routines. Also, the students were very polite explaining to me what they were working on. The photo below shows the media center computers during lunch.

This was the final scheduled school visit, but I had an unexpected, yet informative conversation with an educator on the commute back to Sydney...