Technologies News
Hospitality Electives
Year Seven
Our Mokare House students have made an enthusiastic start in the Hospitality kitchen, showing curiosity, eagerness to learn, and excellent teamwork. To learn kitchen procedures and reduce food waste, students prepared fruit skewers with dark chocolate and French toast, using ingredients that might otherwise have been discarded. They also enjoyed creating a delicious taco salad with corn chips, beans, and fresh salad vegetables, making for a fantastic start to the term.
Year Eight
What a wonderful group of students we have welcomed to the Hospitality course this semester! We have started the term by exploring the importance of eating foods from the five food groups, as outlined in the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating, while also discovering a variety of unusual fruits, vegetables, and grains, with some students trying these ingredients for the very first time.
Students have put their new knowledge into practice by creating a range of delicious dishes, including French toast with marinated berries, colourful vegetable fritters, and fried rice. A particular highlight has been their enthusiasm for plating and presentation, with students demonstrating creativity and a keen eye for making their dishes visually appealing.
It has been a fantastic start to the term, and we look forward to seeing their confidence, skills, and culinary creativity continue to grow in the weeks ahead.
Year Nine
Our Year Nine Hospitality students have made an excellent start to the semester, exploring sustainability, seasonal produce, and food preservation. Through a sensory analysis investigation, they discovered how heat, acid, and sugar transform fruit while making raspberry jam and learning how pectin helps create the perfect set. Students also designed their own food labels after investigating legal labelling requirements and the City of Albany's guidelines for selling food products at local markets.
A highlight of the term was learning to make light, fluffy scones and hosting a traditional Devonshire Tea. Students practised guest etiquette, tea-making, and serving skills before thanking invited staff with a mini jar of homemade raspberry jam to take home.
The class is now investigating how yeast works by making pizza dough and comparing homemade pizzas with takeaway and frozen alternatives. We look forward to seeing their creativity shine as they tackle their first design brief: creating their own unique pizza.
Year Ten
Our Year Ten Hospitality students are currently working in three teams to develop an entry for the 2026 Flavour Forecast Recipe Challenge, with each group selecting the design brief that most inspired them. The journey has not been without its challenges, as some of their initial ideas did not produce the results they had hoped for. However, this has provided a valuable learning opportunity, teaching students the importance of adapting, problem-solving, and refining their ideas through trial and error.
It has been rewarding to watch students celebrate their successes as they make steady progress towards creating innovative and unique recipe concepts. While their entries are still a work in progress, the creativity, resilience, and determination they have shown have been impressive.
Most encouraging of all has been the positive attitude students bring to this complex task. There is a genuine sense of excitement and fun in every lesson, and we look forward to seeing their final creations come together ahead of the competition judging in November.
Certificate II Hospitality
Year Eleven
Students began the term with a range of team-building activities, exploring the skills required to work effectively in a team environment, including teamwork responsibilities, organisational policies and procedures, communication methods, conflict resolution techniques, workplace discrimination, ethical standards, and an appreciation of cultural and linguistic diversity. Through these activities, students developed their ability to cooperate with others, support team members, communicate effectively, and identify opportunities for improvement while working towards shared goals. It has been wonderful to see this strong teamwork reflected in the kitchen, where students successfully collaborated to prepare and present a variety of appetisers, showcasing the practical cookery skills developed last semester.
Year Twelve
Students have commenced a major research project that requires them to plan and cost an upmarket function from the ground up, working with local caterers and hire companies to bring their vision to life. The project is providing valuable opportunities to develop professional communication skills as students liaise with local businesses while planning every aspect of the event, including marquees, lighting, glassware, beverages, food, and the overall atmosphere of the occasion.
Our students' espresso coffee-making skills are also continuing to improve in leaps and bounds, with staff coffee orders prepared and delivered to classrooms and offices each Tuesday morning. Their teamwork and efficiency are second to none, particularly when managing large-volume orders under peak service conditions, an important requirement of their unit of competency. Recently, students extended these skills beyond the classroom by setting up a pop-up coffee shop at Albany PCYC for the Shelter Together Community Bank Albany Homelessness Fundraiser, where they worked into the evening preparing and serving espresso coffee to community members, once again demonstrating their professionalism, teamwork, and growing hospitality expertise.
Mrs Teresa McAllister | Head of Technologies/Teacher
Sustainable Production
Year Seven
Our Year Seven Baudin garden was enthusiastically planted and mulched in Week Two and is growing well thanks to all the rain. Students learned how to work out the best vegetables to grow in a particular season this week with a research task.
Year Nine
The year Nine students have been learning how to prune grapevines under the watchful eye of our Facilities team. Last week we introduced our Gap Students to a national pastime – visiting Bunnings. The students made the trip to purchase their materials and plants for their projects it was a very successful trip and most seedlings have been planted already.
Design and Technology
Our Design and Technology students across Years Seven to Eleven have made a great start to Term Three, with students continuing to develop their practical workshop skills, confidence and independence through a range of exciting projects.
Year Seven
Students have begun constructing their swivel-lid keepsake boxes. They have been introduced to a range of basic hand tools and are developing their skills in measuring and marking, sawing and chiselling. It has been great to see students gaining confidence in the workshop as they begin bringing their first projects together.
Year Eight
Students have now fully completed their lolly dispensers and were very excited to test them out – with the majority managing to eat their Skittles before they even left the workshop! Throughout the project, students were introduced to basic workshop machinery, including the disc sander and pillar drill, alongside a range of hand tools. They also had the opportunity to work with different materials and technologies, incorporating acrylic sheets and a 3D-printed bamboo-style knob into their finished designs.
Year Nine
Students have commenced construction of their folding picnic tables. They have begun preparing their timber using machinery such as the compound mitre saw and thicknesser and have cut the holes that will hold wine glasses when the tables are in use. Students are also beginning to design personalised graphics and engravings that will be laser cut onto the tops of their tables, allowing each student to add their own creative touch to the finished product.
Year Ten
Students have been busy working collaboratively on their Community Furniture Projects. Each group has been communicating with their client to identify their needs and develop an appropriate design solution. Students have used Fusion 360 to create detailed orthogonal working drawings and have now presented their proposed designs to their clients for approval. With the design and planning stages nearing completion, groups are ready to commence production this week and begin bringing their ideas to life.
Year Eleven
Students have continued working independently on their major individual projects. A wide variety of projects are currently taking shape in the workshop, including circular dining tables, dog houses, coffee tables, storage racks and hallway tables. Students are demonstrating increasing maturity and independence as they manage their own designs, make decisions throughout the production process and apply the practical skills they have developed over the course of the year.
Mr Kane Smith | Design and Technology Teacher
Digital Technologies
Year Seven
There has been a lot of excitement in Year Seven Digital Technologies as students dive into coding. We have been building the foundations all year, but now students are getting to apply what they learn in the context of Minecraft... often with entertaining results.
Using Minecraft Education Edition and MakeCode, students have been transforming Minecraft worlds through code. They have so far made it ‘rain chickens’, spawned zombies, and experimented with plenty of other wild, creative and complex events. There is always a fair bit of excitement when the code finally works… and sometimes even more when it doesn’t quite do what was expected!
Behind the fun, though, is really valuable thinking. We are learning to approach problems with a coding mindset, using computational and algorithmic thinking to design, test, debug and improve algorithms. They are quickly discovering that the smallest detail can cause a raft of problems. Even from things as simple as a misplaced full stop, the wrong coordinate or one small error in a line of code. Most important is working out why something went wrong, and then having another go, is very much part of the learning. I look forward to sharing updates about what we create later in the term.
Mr Kyal Rose | Teacher