Technologies  

This term the technologies team have turned the dial to 11 on the creativity and discovery scale with lots of new and exciting things happening across all the subject areas. You’ll get to hear about them all if you stick around.  

Students in 9/10 and 11/12 Textiles have just finished their unit making wearable art for the Tasmanian Chocolate Winterfest Wearable Art competition. A huge congratulations to Year 10 student, Hannah Grey who won the Judges Choice Award this year with her entry ‘Lindt Glamour’. Year 7/8 Dyeing and Printing students have just started to tie-dye their first items, making a book cover as their first project. This semester they will be investigating the arts of tie-dyeing, batik dyeing and eco-dyeing, whilst learning the skills of hand-sewing and machine sewing to construct items from the fabrics they have dyed.  

In MDT and Design Graphics, students have been able to continue to explore projects on the laser cutter, creating trees and LEGO style building blocks. Their creations also included a collaboration with the Book Week parade, with one student designing, cutting and assembling a working, and wearable cardboard AT-ST for his costume. This term we have also purchased and are exploring the capabilities of 2 new Bamboo Lab 3D printers, a forge and a CNC machine. These new devices will allow students to create tangible products across all learning areas. Students have printed different animals, spacecraft and a magnetic whiteboard marker basket. Staff may also have some fun creating new teaching resources for students to interact with in the future.  

This term the food classes are busy again designing recipes. In The Art of Baking, they are making and decorating a mini chocolate cake to give as a thank you gift. The Tasty Meals class are designing a delicious dessert. In middle school, students are designing rainbow pizzas in Colourful Food, healthy fruit muffins in Creative Baking and a chicken and veg stir fry in Fast and Tasty. The senior students are working hard on budget meals in pairs and as a class group. 

In Middle School Robotics, students are learning to design and code LEGO Mindstorm EV3 robots to make deliveries. The High School Robotics class have been investigating the jobs they are happy for robots to do. They have had to carefully consider the ethics behind robots taking over human jobs and their implementation. The Middle School LEGO League class has been learning all the key skills for the Innovation Project, Robot Design, Robot Game and Core Values required to compete in FIRST LEGO League and have begun preparation for the 2024/25 season. 

On 6 August the 2024/25 FIRST LEGO League Challenge competition season launched. This season’s theme is SUBMERGED. Students will have to think like an ocean explorer as they investigate the challenges they face in their careers and then create a unique solution as part of the team’s Innovation Project. In the Robot, Game students will need to design, engineer, build and code a robot to complete a series of missions across the ocean themed challenge table. Robots will have to collect krill to feed the whale, collect sunken treasure from the shipwreck and look after the coral reef, amongst many other challenges of varying difficulties, all while racing to be the final team to reach the FLL Chicken in the submarine and send it on a journey across the ocean. Teams need to do all of this whilst demonstrating the FIRST Core Values of innovation, impact, teamwork, fun, discovery, inclusion and gracious professionalism. It is very exciting for us to have a record number, 4 teams, representing Leighland at the Burnie regional in November, all using the “Techno…….…” name this season in the tradition of our previous teams.   

3-2-1-LEGO! 

Jacob McNab 

Technologies Learning Area Leader