Brookside Live

Brookside Live News

You may have seen some new faces floating around last year as we trialled Brookside Live – a fresh new program that aims to engage students on a whole new level through digital technology. Joelle Peters is our new resident Animator for Brookside Live, she brings with her industry standard equipment and programs for animating, these setups you’ll usually only find in secondary schools and universities.

Joelle will work with Year 4 Animators. The creative engagement of Year 4 is extraordinary, as their fun and very imaginative ideas come to life. Stay tuned, as we aim to get these up for the end of Semester Winter Festival Exhibition.

The workshops aim to further promote student engagement and empowerment.  Brookside Live do this by creating a process similar to a production team. Run over the Semester, it takes students on a journey from writing scripts, storyboarding, illustrations, set building, animation studio time (soon to be unveiled) is where a much of the magic comes to life, voice recording. From there, a collaboration has been made with our Music Department, who work with those same groups to make matching audio. Finally, honing editing skills using professional software. The end product is a short animation film, entirely made by our students. With this process, students have the opportunity to find their passion and niche.

Jason Holmes is an active touring artist, music producer, and creative facilitator working with Brookside students. He’s been working with Year 4-6, conducting projects in the Virtual World - a unique platform to assist modern learning practices implementing humanities, art, geography and maths, among other subjects.

The current project underway is “Leaving The Earth”, and challenges students to imagine an apocalyptic conundrum on Earth that leads to an escape to Mars. The object is survival, and students design and create tools and systems necessary to lead their mission and colonise Mars. Working in groups, they research existing technology and imagine new possibilities, and proceed to build their designs in the Virtual World, finally combining apps to create digital diaries and short films of their progress.

Greta Tucker is a Melbourne-based filmmaker and photographer working in both the commercial and education industry. This term Greta has been teaching the year 9’s how to make documentary films. Students have been busy learning all aspects of filmmaking from pre-production right through to post-production. Over the term they have come up with ideas, scripted, shot and edited documentary films about topics of their choice.

The students are working with industry standard equipment and are learning how to work as a professional film crew to tell stories about subjects they are passionate about. The students are becoming confident in sharing their ideas and working as a team. The documentaries will be screened later in the year at the Brookside Winter Festival.

This cutting edge approach to education focuses on creativity, problem-solving, resilience, app smashing, design techniques and also questions how we operate in the real world. Boasting a near perfect level of engagement, students are gaining a deeper understanding of technology and the world around them.

Please subscribe to the YouTube Channel – Brookside Live, currently featuring work from last year. Expect more quality exciting projects over the coming year. We welcome you to see the new Mac Lab and say hello to the team.