Digital Technologies

Dear families,

You will have all received an email from nForma with a link and temporary password to access your child's report.  If any families are still experiencing issues with this please email me nadine.jones@sjvermont.catholic.edu.au and I will sort it out as soon as possible.

You may have read an article in the Herald Sun recently in regards to coding in young students.  Some of the take outs I got from the article were:

Kids will have better problem solving and maths skills by the time they start school if they learn how to code and build robots as young as three years old.

Research by the University of New England is exploring the link between learning coding – programming that controls how devices such as phones or robots function – and better preschool kids’ improved performance in pre-maths, algorithms, counting and problem-solving.

While screens were also beneficial for learning, introducing coding to younger cohorts showed them how to make technology work without being glued to them.

The national curriculum was revamped earlier this year to incorporate coding in younger year levels after the national assessment body found “the need for a greater emphasis on computational thinking in response to the needs and practices of contemporary society”.

Whilst I am unsure of what local kindergartens do in regards to coding and robotics, you will be pleased to know that our Prep students last term started to explore robots using Bluebots and started to use directional coding to enable them to move and complete courses.  Coding in some form is then taught at St. James in STEMMS throughout all year levels.

Nadine Jones

E Learning Leader 

STEMMS Teacher