VCAL

Castlemaine Art Gallery

On Friday the 21st of July the year 12 VCAL class went to the Castlemaine Art Gallery to see Graham.

So, who is Graham?

Graham is a lifelike interactive sculpture demonstrating human vulnerability in car accidents developed by the TAC for the Towards Zero campaign.

Graham is the culmination of the ideas and insights of three experts in three different fields. David Logan is a Senior Researcher at the Monash University Accident Research Centre. Patricia Piccininin is an Australian contemporary artist, and Dr Christian Kenfield is a trauma surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. These three collaborated to design Graham,

The students used tablets to interact with Graham. They hold the tablet up to Graham and tapped on icons to go beneath his skin and watched quick videos about parts of the body that have been altered to show what a human might look like if designed to survive on our roads.

It was a very practical way to get you thinking about some of the different sorts of accidents and trauma you can have on the roads.

Mural project

When a poor piece of graffiti appeared over summer on the wall of the Etty St library, a student suggested we do something decent that represents VCAL students.

And so, the planning began. Many students did the Art V Street elective in Yr9 and enjoyed it so much they wanted to continue with the paste-up method that has become so popular around Castlemaine. By developing some activities around calculating, measuring, budgeting, scale drawing and enlargement, we were able to develop an activity that incorporated both Numeracy and Personal Development.

The challenge was for each person to selct and image that in some way represented them or their interests. The finished product (hopefully) will be a design made of different images capturing the spirit of VCAL. Fingers crossed.

Dirt Jumps.

Bikes: who would have thought so much of a curriculum could be developed around a single concept? A group of Yr11 students wanted a ‘hands-on’ challenge and wanted to build some jumps behind the old gym. Apart from the physical challenge, we were able to align a number of VCAL outcomes with the idea including:

Numeracy Outcome 1- Design
Numeracy Outcome 2- Measurement
Personal Development LO1- Develop a complex project
Personal Development LO 3- Apply communication strategies
Personal Development LO4- Demonstrate leadership
Work Related Skills LO 2- Communicate ideas around OHS
Work Related Skills LO 4- Develop an OHS plan
Literacy Outcome 3- Write an explanatory text

I knew when I arrived at work at 8.00am on a frosty winter’s morning and saw a student who’d bought his own shovel and mattick from home and was digging holes, that we had student ‘buy-in’. A few phone calls to order dirt saw a truckload of soil donated from our new best-friends at Leechs Earthmoving.

Connecting with students passion for extreme bike riding, is the opportunity for work experience placements when construction starts on the development of the Mt Alexander Mountain Bike in Harcourt, later this year.

Another emerging development with this project is collecting old bikes from the tip or donations and repurposing them into functional machines. Stay tuned for further developments on this one.

Who would have thought?

VCAL- Literacy

Every year Dad and I go to the Castlemaine truck show on the third weekend in November. They get all kind of trucks: Kenworth, Peterbilt, Mack, Western Star and many more. They come from Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and one has come from Western Australia twice.

On the Saturday Dad and I go to the Campbells Creek footy oval around 12:15 to look at the trucks on display. I feel happy that I get to spend time with Dad on both days. When we are looking at the trucks on display we can smell the chemicals that the drivers use to clean the trucks and we can see them polishing the trucks ready for judging. They have bands playing throughout the day to entertain the public.

On Sunday I get up around 8:00 to watch the trucks head up for the street parade. They blast their horns on the way up to where the parade starts. Sometimes they get a lot of trucks in the parade, in 2012 they got 110 trucks. You can hear the trucks before you can see them. Watching the trucks and the driver’s parade from the other side of town back to Campbells Creek, you can see the driver’s faces as they go past. They show they are happy to be part of a parade by blasting their horns. When they come around the bend the drivers apply their Jake brake. When the Jake brake is activated it opens exhaust valves in the cylinders after the compression cycle, releasing the compressed air trapped in the cylinders, and slowing the vehicle.

The truck show is not what it used to be. They used to have a Ute show on the Saturday, they used to have the truck pull, they used to have bands playing on the Saturday night, but they don’t do that anymore. The only major thing about the truck show now is the street parade on Sunday morning. By Brad Retallick

Steve Carroll