Arkana College
Shadia Ghazi-Elzayat, K-2 Coordinator – Arkana College
Digital technology education is of huge importance to Arkana College. It is a central part of our future and it is our duty to provide our students with the skills to become fluent in its language, understand how it relates to their lives, and then in turn learn how to apply and use it effectively. We have a vision that any child going through Kindy to Year 6 at Arkana College graduates with the ability to code, develop robotics and to create web pages.
The integration of digital literacy, digital technology and design/engineering perspectives are some of our strategic goals for the next few years. We want to make sure our students have an extra edge. When we started out with our own digital technology lessons, we quickly realised that there were many specialist skills required to teach the content. So we began looking for a clear, syllabus and outcome based program to kick start our venture, and we were excited to find ScopeIT Education. Once we started our sessions, our staff commented on the fact that as they were learning along with the students, they were then able to integrate the ideas/language/skills into other aspects and learning areas in class and pair the teaching content with our scope and sequences.
Our students look forward to ScopeIT Education each week. During the sessions, students are focused, are gaining amazing skills and they love the teamwork enforced - it teaches them how to collaborate. ScopeIT Education Instructors are well versed in their subject matter, they are patient and knowledgeable.
Parents are so happy with our ScopeIT lessons. They have commented that it has given their children opportunity to learn such vital skills. We had instant feedback thanking us for the initiative and we have also had parents comment that they were really happy that the children came home with work samples, e.g. Year 2’s self-designed boats, which were printed using a 3D printer.
Education Excellence Awards
Recently, some of our female senior students were awarded with ScopeIT Education Excellence Awards, recognising their achievement in their digital technology lessons. The girls were proud to receive the awards and had the following responses:
"I like learning IT because I love robotics and there are so many different parts! When you put them altogether it makes something. It’s really fun to make robots. It’s way more fun than doing classwork. You can even make lights." – Amina
"I like ScopeIT because you get to use wires and learn about the different parts. It makes me motivated to choose a job in robotics. In the future, I want to be something good, which has to do with robotics e.g. an engineer. It’s really fun!" – Zaynab
"I like it because it’s good to learn about technology. It might help me in an exam. It’s really fun!" – Zeinab
"If you’re one of those people who like movies or video games, you get to learn how these things are made and how they work. Instead of wasting your time, you can learn about robotics instead of watching tv. Not only do you learn, but you have fun!" – Alia
"I gained a lot of knowledge about IT. We don’t usually look at electronics and think about how it’s made. The kids go to school and they’re not in the mood, but when they do electronics it’s so much fun! It can help us in our future e.g. to become an engineer. It makes you think outside the box and learn that you can become what you want to be. We can learn how to fix things when they are broken." – Mirha
"You can make the future come to you, even though it feels so far away." – Mirha and Zaynab
