World around us

Voulez-vous faire du surf avec moi?

Our fourth group of French exchange students loved the surf at Anglesea this year. They experienced some excellent weather conditions and many of them managed to get up on their boards. This was one of the excursions they participated while staying here in Castlemaine with families of CSC students. Other activities included a visit to Sovereign Hill and the Ballarat Wildlife Park. They also went to Melbourne to see the Vic market and other shopping experiences as well as up the Eureka Skydeck for fabulous views of Melbourne. Our CSC host families also gave them some wonderful experiences, both local and further afield of life in Australia. The French group also spends time in the school going to classes to see what the system of education is like here. In our French class they were happy to help by talking to many of our French students and assisting them with their French conversation. We also compared schools and there were some interesting observations about the differences between us. They noted firstly how the Australian students have a better relationship with their teachers than they do in France.

The exchange is a biennial two-way event whereby our students will travel to France in September and stay with the families of the students who come here. We have had some excellent feedback from both French and Australian parents about the program. Our students have made some great relationships while they were here and so they are really looking forward to the return visit to Arras.

Jane MacDonald

French Exchange Co-ordinator

Host Families for Japanese Students 2 -6 August 2017

We are again fortunate to have a group of students from Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan visit our College this year.

To enable this to run smoothly, we are looking for students and families to host these students whilst here.

This is a truly rewarding and worthwhile experience.  Primarily we are looking for families of year 7 to 9 students, but any year level would be more than welcome. The  application forms are available from the reception office for anyone that is interested.

If you would like more information or have any queries please contact Lyn Ellery on 5479 1111.  Thank you.

Lyn Ellery 

Japanese Exchange Co-ordinator

'Make Your Own App' Excursion

On Friday the 21st the CSC VCE Computing and Software Development classes took an excursion to La Trobe University. There they learnt about the fundamental basics of programming a mobile application using MIT App Inventor. This is a cloud-based visual programming language with an Android emulator for rapid development. Thanks to La Trobe for hosting this event. The class was able to learn the inner working of the mobile apps which we use every day, from Snapchat to Safari. During the excursion, the class was taught about functions, variables, arguments, expressions and statements, the five necessary cornerstones to every software program.

We also had time to explore the La Trobe campus including their library and some of the services available to students on campus. Despite the very wet weather, we all had a great day.

Fletch, Year 10