Principal Report

Evan MILLER 

Principal

Jessie Y

You may remember I mentioned earlier this term that Jessie Y was chosen to represent Victoria in the Under 18 Golf team. I am very pleased to report that Jessie and the Victorian team won bronze at the Golf Championships and Jessie will be competing in Queensland and Western Australia over the last weeks of this term. This is an amazing result, and we are extremely proud of Jessie's achievements.  

Spring Concert

Next week on Thursday evening we have our Spring Music concert. This will be another amazing opportunity to see our very talented music students performing pieces they have been preparing. We wish all of our students the best of luck for the night. 

Welcome Lewis Mallows

I would like to extend a big welcome to Mr Lewis Mallows who has joined the Highvale teaching staff in the area of Digital Technologies. Mr Mallows has been teaching in the UK for a number of years and has experience in teaching VEX robotics, eSports and coding. We are very excited to have Mr Mallows join our amazing team at Highvale and please make him feel welcome if you see him around the college. 

Curriculum Day Feedback - Friday 18 August

On Friday 18 August, the staff at Highvale explored the implications of AI in education, specifically focusing on ChatGPT. We spent the morning with Leon Furze, and educational consultant and expert in the AI space, talking through the benefits of tools such as ChatGPT, but also the limitations of ChatGPT and factors that need to be taken into account when using it. Staff cycled through three smaller hands-on sessions after Leon and then had time to explore and trial using ChatGPT to help with planning, refreshing, improvising, personalising, collaborating and communicating. While there are some negatives, we need to be aware of in using ChatGPT there are also some great benefits. There was one statement that Leon said in his presentation that stuck with me and was a great reminder of the importance we have as educators in using and implementing new technologies that our students are already using. He said "ChatGPT is doing the work with you, it is not doing the work for you". While ChatGPT can provide many types of information, the tool is predictive. We are the experts and need to use this tool with the judgement we would use with any new technology or resource. 

We as a school will not be using ChatGPT as a learning tool in our classes yet, and will be continuing our discussion on how this may be implemented in line with further advice from the Department of Education.