Technology News

Robotics Club

We’re going to the RoboCup Junior Australia national championships! Glen Eira College has been successful in obtaining a Commonwealth grant to sponsor the travel of up to 12 students to attend the RCJA national championships. The event is in Adelaide this year on the weekend of September 30 to October 2. 

Information has gone out to all Year 7, 8 and 9 students through their year level Google Classrooms as well as to students who are regular attendees of Robotics Club. This is a great opportunity for students to engage with like-minded peers from around the country in an area that has a very exciting future. 

To get started in RoboCup Junior no prior robotics or programming experience is necessary, but what is required is a regular participation in Robotics Club throughout the year to develop their skills and perfect their robot. 

Since only a limited number of students can go, they will need to complete an application which will aim to show their level of commitment. They can do this by either checking their year level Google Classroom, picking up an application from the front office or seeing Mr Ebert. 

Students are still most welcome at Robotics Club on Wednesday after school even if they are unable to attend the RCJA nationals.

For other club and extracurricular opportunities students should check the Clubs & Activities page on the GEC Hub (https://sites.google.com/education.vic.gov.au/gec-hub/clubs-activities).

Technology at GEC

Opportunities in the Digital Technologies has expanded at Glen Eira College in recent years, with offerings at Years 7, 9 and 10. 

In Year 7 the focus has been on getting students familiar with the school network systems, so if students have come home testing home network speeds to see how they measure up to what the Internet speeds at school, it is all part of what they are learning. 

The Year 9 students have been building and testing robots, learning what the robot “sees” and how they can program the robot to respond to its environment. Challenges have included programming robots to avoid objects or getting them to follow twisting paths. 

Year 10 students are using Excel to analyse very large data sets with popular choices being the World Happiness Index to see what factors impact the “happiness” of countries and regions around the world and COVID-19 case data from within Australia and from around the world. The challenge is to use the data to create interactive graphical dashboards that would make it easy for anyone to make comparisons or see trends with just the click of an onscreen button.

David Ebert

Technology Learning Area Leader