The STEAM Team

Led by the executive team at Quakers Hill Public School, and driven by its Deputy Principal, Chris Lambert, the Blacktown Learning Community’s STEAM Team brings together a learning community of almost thirty Western Sydney schools. They come together to learn, collaborate and innovate with STEAM technologies. They share ideas, problem solve together and support each other on their technology innovation journey.

It starts with a teachers' professional learning day, followed by an intensive student immersion experience. They have combined their collective professional learning resources to gain access to a quality, technology professional learning program. In addition they have created a local community of practice to support each other well after the face to face events have concluded.

This is a true project of building technological utilisation capacity to increase engagement in STEAM disciplines. The team at T4L innovations is proud to be able to support this community to ensure technology is an enabler in the classroom.

Why STEAM?

The Blacktown Learning Community’s STEAM Team were driven by a need to equip their students with skills for the future. STEAM provides the basis for a real, connected and engaging activity that not only focuses on STEAM competencies but also the soft skills of collaboration, adaptability, problem solving, teamwork, networking.

After embarking upon this project, many of the students have now identified an interest and a passion in engaging in STEAM careers such as computer science and programming.

STEAMing it up with Arduino?

Working with industry and maker education experts, the STEAM team's technology focus this year has been on Arduino-based technologies. This has allowed them to explore the potential of simple circuits, physical computers and connected devices. Starting with building a simple set of traffic lights, the students then transferred this learning to create a connected robot racer. The teams will showcase and race theirs at a gala STEAM Expo at the end of the year.

One of the aspects of this program focuses on coding and computational thinking. These are key elements of a renewed focus on Digital Technologies in the K-6 Science and Technology curriculum. This program not only covers graphical programming, but extends students to working within the text-based Arduino environment. Future innovators and creators are being nurtured within the Blacktown learning community!

Students as teachers

A large part of this project is that both students and teachers are participants in the professional learning process. Teachers from the participating schools work on a train-the-trainer model with a small cohort of their students. These students then take this knowledge back to their school community and become the lead learners in rolling the STEAM project and learning out across the school. The teachers who are part of the program have revelled in giving back control of the classroom to their students and have been inspired by the passion that their students have approached both the project and teaching aspects of the journey.

Linking it to the curriculum

The great advantage of this program is the direct links to all the STEAM areas. In addition, armed with skills in physical computing and programming, students are equipped to solve problems across the curriculum. Some teams were connecting their learning to Agriculture in the form of a Smart Farm, others were looking at the finer details or geometry in Mathematics with a Robotic Billiards Player, while others were keen to investigate how Arduinos can be used to collect data for analysis in a range of curriculum areas.

For further information contact the T4L team: T4LNews@det.nsw.edu.au