HUMANITIES

A BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF MELBOURNE

After visiting Melbourne’s CBD as part of their geography field work, Year 8 students have been in the East Campus virtual reality (VR) lab to get a different perspective of the city.

Alastair Ling (IT) very kindly tailored a programme that allowed the geography student to access Google Earth and travel around the world visiting places of interest to them before arriving back in Melbourne to revisit our physical field work sites along the Yarra River, Federation Square, Birrarung Marr, Sandridge Bridge, Southgate, The Arts Centre and Alexandra Gardens. As these places were visited before camp, a quick revisit before the project began was ideal!

Over the next few weeks, students will investigate one of these sites and examine how it has changed over Melbourne’s European history in relation to the pressures of both population growth and different waves of migration. They will then create a news report presenting this research either as an interview with relevant characters or highlighting the changes over time. They will also need to propose future changes to the City of Melbourne and identify which parts of the city are most likely to be redeveloped as the city grows to accommodate a population of up to 12 million by 2065.

Students also took the opportunity to use the VR equipment to fly across to the new East Campus site and investigate what was here before the new campus, visit their own homes, and look at other sites of personal interest.

The VR lab provides an amazing opportunity for McKinnon students to engage in fabulous technology and most students had to be prised away from the computers and headsets at the end of the session! We look forward to being able to incorporate more VR technology into future geography classes.

Year 8 Geography Team