Year two

Title sequence: 4Up. Four years of laptops. Year two.

Victoria: Year 10 has been so hard. We’ve had so many assignments just one after the other, and if it it’s not assignments we’ve had just so many tests. So I think that’s actually prepared me a bit for next year. This year’s been a lot harder than Year 9.

Jake: I feel that I’ve had to mature a lot for my jobs and my school and had to knuckle down and become a better person. New Year’s Resolution is to start living by karma, be the best I can. If I do something wrong, make sure I fix it.

Rob: Big changes? Oh, not so much. But, as growing up, I’ve been noticing a lot more going on in the world, getting a different perspective on things and stuff like that. Noticing who your true friends are.

Ramese: I played football. I played the whole season. We made it to the last few rounds and then we, um, it was pretty devastating. In the last five minutes, they passed it out to the wing and the wing scored, pretty much an 80 metre try. Ended our season.

Gemma: You know, I had a lot of friends last year. Like they’re still there in my life, but I’m not that good a friends with them anymore. Relationships have just kind of slipped. And it’s like, well I’m happy, I’m healthy, what more could you ask for.

Ruby: Big changes have happened. My friend Shaun, one of my best friends, Shaun left to go live in Belgium for, like, ever. They’re in Brussels and he’s going to the International School.

Nethanel: I may have wondered if I went to the formal what would happen. I’d be dressed in my suit, enjoying some food. Would I’ve enjoyed a good dance or two with a few good girls? Would I have just been sitting there watching from the sidelines?

Tylar: It has been an eventful year, had its negatives and its positives, but all over I’d say it would be a good year to sum up Year 10.

Voice Over: This year saw the second rollout of laptops across NSW as part of the Digital Education Revolution. One year on, how do these students feel about their laptops?

Tylar: It’s been good. Last year all our laptops got collected to get, I think it was re-imaged.

Gemma: It got all new programs, wiped everything off it.

Rob: When we’ve seen the Year 9 this year get their laptops they were a bit different to ours, they were a bit bigger and they had a few different programs. There were actually some stuff that was unblocked on their laptops.

Ramese: And then they were showing us all this new stuff that we couldn’t do. Now that we’ve got our laptops re-imaged, it’s alright now.

Tylar: So it’s shinier and they just updated everything we had.

Ramese: But they were a bit cocky for a few weeks.

Voice Over: Year 10 is a year of mixed emotions – a year of anxiety, personal growth and relationships. So what has been the biggest challenge of the year? What have they learned?

Nethanel: I’ve found that I can show they world who I am, I don’t have to hide it all the time. I had boot camp right at the very start of the year and it started my whole brown belt frenzy. I’ve now got my fourth Q brown, I’ve got a few more to go and I’ll be black, hopefully. And, pretty much, I’ve got more responsibility than I had before; I’ve learnt a lot more. I met Oki in Year seven, start of school. Both of us were kind of new to everything, because we didn’t have many people from our old school, so we just kind of stuck together.

Oki: We’re great friends, like, um, yeah. We’re in most of the same classes; we do karate together a lot of the time, yeah.

Nethanel: At home we’ve gotten broadband, so I’m able to connect it to my computer and I can do assignments on my little computer. It’s helped us in a way that now I can go home and I can check my school email and not have to concern all of my school work with my home computer. Then I don’t have to exchange documents all the time. With this broadband as well, I now don’t have to stay in the study where everybody else is using the computer. I can go into my room and say ‘Okay don’t come in, I’m doing stuff, and let me go’, so it’s all good.

Victoria: When I was little I was sick all the time. Mum and Dad didn’t understand why but then when I got diagnosed with coeliac so that explained why. But because I’ve got a depressed immune system I get every sickness that goes around. Anything, I get it for sure. So I have a lot of time off school.

Victoria: So I’ve had a couple of trips to Westmead hospital to get some tests done. So that’s missing out on more school which is important at this stage. So I get my friends just to send me the work and then I have it.

I have a small obsession with photo-editing at the moment. I’ve edited like over 200 photos in the past, probably, a year. I just find photos on the internet and then just edit them on Picnik, the website. And I also found this Polyvore, it’s just got lots of photos and that kind stuff and you can create kind of like a collage of photos and images and like that kind of stuff.

My Mum’s been not well. She had a couple of seizures. It puts a lot of strain on us, because it’s more kind of like us looking after her a lot of the time. But the main thing is her getting better. Thankfully my brother just got his Ps so that makes it easier with driving around so we still have two people with cars; because it was getting difficult with just dad driving.

Ruby: I like doing stuff with my friends, and we have this group, it’s called ‘Don’t stop believing’. Well, it’s called ‘Manic’, but it’s for the ‘Don’t stop believing thing’, it’s like this singing and dancing thing, so it’s kind of like X Factor and so what we do is, Miss Mannox set up this group to audition, and we put in this video audition so it’s got lots of singing and dancing. And it’s a whole group of us, like who are all friends from basically ‘Suessical’ and stuff. And we get on really well. So that’s fun.

I enjoy writing stories. I’m good at it. We did this advertising topic and you had to create an ad either on radio or for TV and on so on the laptops so yeah that was really good and everyone produced these really cool videos and ads and everything.

I write emails, I write a lot of emails to my friend, Shaun in Belgium because you know he misses home. I use Skype, but I think the plan we have uses up heaps of download time or something so they get cranky when I use it so I don’t use that much, but it’s cool when I do.

Rob: I wanted to go to the formal in my race car. I tried to get all these permits through the RTA and unfortunately that didn’t work out. There are a lot of teachers that support me to do with mechanical and racing.

Teacher: Getting back to your racing Rob, no point burning fuel unless you’re getting the maximum output from the fuel...

Rob: Some teachers have met me outside of school where I’m a bit calm and relaxed. Oh, okay he’s this kind of student. They fully support me all the way with my decisions in life. Friendships are important. They’re always good to have. My friend is a lot older than me, he’s turning 20. He’s my best mate. You get to people at school and they kind of just don't look at you for who you are and what your interests are. I talk a lot about my cars and they kind of get annoyed with that.

Jake: The past year with football we’ve actually won the grand final and I was nominated by the district as the best and fairest in my age group and I ended up winning that.

My career in McDonald’s has gotten a bit better, starting to get promoted, get better work, better times and everything. It’s just that it’s a bit of drama now growing up starting to get into more serious school.

One of the programs that I think would actually be really good for the laptop is virtual DJ. It’s a live mixing program used by DJs who start off small and then become bigger in nightclubs and stuff like that, which would be really good for my entertainment course seeing as I’d be able to use it during a performance to mix live instead of pre-recording and setting up that way.

Gemma: I’m not so much of a social little butterfly that I was last year. I kind of went ‘Okay these people are my friends, these people are my friends but don’t make me feel good about myself’, kind of thing, so I’ve really pulled my head in and kind of gone, ‘Okay I need the people that make me happy but still allow me to get my work done still, you know let me be my own kind of person’.

My lovely boyfriend Ian, he does footy and stuff. He’s really cool; he’s just like a best friend as well as a boyfriend. It's good fun. I got my laptop back just before the holidays and I spent the holidays learning all the new programs that I could then use.

With dancing we’ve done a lot of video work, as in you video yourselves to work on your technique and critique yourself, and at the end of the year I kind of got all the videos that I’d done and it has been so wonderful to be able to see what I’m doing wrong and fix it. And I have fifty comment boxes down the page, but it is so wonderful to see where I can change things, improve things and all that kind of thing. So it’s really, really helped me with all my subjects.

Ian took me out to dinner on Valentine’s Day which was very cute. I’ve never been taken to dinner before. You know six months is not that long for some people but in high school it’s kind of a big thing and through all the stress and crazy moments that I’ve had he’s still kind of there which is cool, so I’m very lucky.

Ramese: My Dad is retired now so my sister had to move in and help pay the mortgage so the house is pretty packed. It’s got me and my Mum and Dad and my sister’s family as well. Like, school will be like tough and really like busy then I’ll go home and home will be busy as well so it’s no break. I just help him around the house, like now, but yeah, he was in hospital for almost like half a year. We just went and visited him every day after school. The computer’s just made school easier. I don’t lose any work and when I’m behind on work, people can email it to me.

I have a girlfriend. I met her in May through a friend. Yeah, we’ve been together for a while now. She’s the smart one in the relationship, she helps me focus more and she puts the hammer down when I get out of line and she tells me what to do and gets me doing my homework and stuff.

Tylar: I had family troubles. My best friend had family troubles and so she got moved to Queensland. I started work. It was good, and then it got a bit rocky. Because I had an eventful year I’ve had to mature, got, get stronger. Although there are weak points, you pull yourself through. I’ve got, you know friends and best friends. A few of my closer friends are more like sisters, and you know we care for one another. If something happens, you know, ‘what happened tell me, fill me in’.

The graduation was a big hit for me, getting my School Certificate … passing. Having a laptop means that you are more organised, you’re on top of what you’re doing. Instead of having seven or eight books, you’ve got the one laptop that holds everything. It’s much easier to revise. It’s more time efficient when revising, and it keeps everything in the one place. Me and my Aunty are back to good which I’m happy, I’m stoked, family is good and I’m on a new way of life.

Voice Over: The laptops have completely changed the learning environment and students are collaborating in a whole new way. Can they do without them?

Rob: I’ve adjusted so much to doing all my work on the laptop now that it would be just much too difficult to go back to pen and paper. For notes it’s much easier just to go straight on to a laptop.

Jake: So when we have Y equals box X, the box determines the angle of the slope.

Victoria: We’ve been using GeoGebra a fair bit. We did coordinate geometry. It definitely helped a lot with like the formulas and that kind of stuff because you could just put them into the computer and then it would just change it for itself.

Rob: Also I’ve been using it with my racing. I upload videos to it, edit a couple, upload them to YouTube, try and hope that’ll boost my name a bit, putting it out there on the web.

Gemma: We use it heaps in English. There’s a thing called Live Sharing on OneNote which is everybody can log onto the sharing and so it’s one page and like say I type and the person on the other side of the room will come up on their screen and so everyone gets to have a say and so when we’re editing a piece of script or like if we’re learning to analyse something, we can all input.

Shy people in the classroom are people that are not confident in their work. With Live Sharing they don’t have to put their hand up, and things like that, which is really convenient rather than him just like having to wait for all of us to speak kind of thing, we can just type.

Ramese:

In English they’re trying to do different stuff with us. They’ve taught us how to peer mark and stuff like that using OneNote. It’s good in a way because they’re really honest about it and then they’ll even give you pointers after they’ve marked your work. It’s sort of easier coming from another student than a teacher, and you can talk about it more.

Jake: In the IT exam we had for computer skills we had to study a lot of the programs that we needed to use in the exam, so we needed to make sure we could use it freely without any problems. So having the laptop allowed me to study a bit easier. My Mum has always said try and do the best you can, just do whatever you can to get into that field of work or at school she said with this program it’d really help me to understand the technology and appreciate it a bit better.

Teacher: Quickly read through the writing that’s on the screen at the moment, just the first paragraph ...

Ramese: I think the laptops help us focus more. Like everyone is fascinated by this laptop and everyone actually works on the work instead of just sitting there listening to the teacher and then everyone falls asleep. I think I find myself like more awake now because I’m pressing like this laptop and I am working with people and I am actually working on the work, instead of just like dazing off half way through the lesson.

Teacher: The middle one, this one. That allows you to paint yourself if you need to at some stage.

Victoria: It’s helped a fair bit with my assignments and stuff. I went out to Condobolin just to see my Nan and Pop and I had some assignments that I really needed to get done and because the laptops are so small and light it was really easy I brought it with me. I couldn’t get Internet out there but I had the Microsoft Word and everything to help me and it was so much easier.

Ramese: Half my sisters don’t know even know to use a laptop. But my younger sister, she’s about 22, she’s pretty technology savvy. She likes to take my laptop every now and then and mess around with it. She takes all my stuff. No, it’s good like at the same time I get to teach them how to use software and stuff like that.

Teacher: I want you to establish a password, because I don’t want other groups to be able ...

Voice Over: How have teachers responded to change?

Gemma: Some teachers are great with them, and some teachers are like ‘So what happens if I press this button?’ A lot of them are really up for learning how to do it. Like my science teacher you know like will ‘If you do this you can do that’ and she’ll be really full letting us help her as well and so it’s just a nice relationship where you can give each other feedback. It’s a learning curve! It’s really easy to learn together and I know that sounds really you know ‘peace and love’ but it’s easier, it’s more relaxed in the classroom because you know the teacher isn’t going to snap at you ‘Why aren’t you doing it?’ It’s like, well, you know, let’s help me help you, kind of situation.

Teacher: In the performance section, for homework I have emailed you the safe dance booklet. So can you make sure now when you go into your OneNotes ...

Gemma: I guess it’s not that the learning space has been changed it’s just used more. Because you get up out of your seat you go sit somewhere on the floor or you can bunch a group of tables together and things like that because every classroom is set up differently according to how the teacher likes to teach. It’s just we’re given the option to use what’s there.

Tylar: When I’m at school if you have like the wireless, everyone’s got their own little thing they can look up. Science, like my teacher emails the work. We do it whether it’s a slideshow or if it’s a PowerPoint, WordArt, OneNote, we do it and then we either email it back or we save it and then it’s there if we ever need it.

Voice Over: Being online has offered opportunity as well as distraction. What are the challenges of establishing this new identity?

Victoria: Oh, I use Facebook a lot. I would admit I’m kind of like an addict.

Tylar: Yeah, well, I have Facebook on my phone.

Nethanel: Facebook has become a very big social-networking site, there are millions of members, or billions, I don’t know.

Jake: A few of my friends have fallen victim to cyber-bullying.

Ramese: It’s a bit frightening knowing that someone could someone could look into your details and find out where you live and stuff like that. But I know I’m pretty safe online though.

Tylar: My profile is set as private because for security and safety reasons. If I don’t know anyone I don’t accept them.

Victoria: Personally, I think it would be a massive distraction for anybody if laptops had Facebook.

Gemma: I think it could work. It just depends how much self-discipline people have.

Nethanel: I find how they’re putting in and giving us classes to understand all about this social networking, so as to manage our social lives and not get bullied and so on and so forth is quite good for our learning.

Ruby: I think YouTube should be unblocked and that would be cool.

Ramese: I reckon, like, it would be a fun thing, I love it but I think when it comes down to it I wouldn’t use it properly and I just .... I don’t know. I’d fall behind.

Victoria: I think YouTube would help, if we had YouTube on the internet. I don’t think many kids would use that as a distraction because it actually does have some good demonstrations of things.

Rob: You’re looking up something for English, you’re looking up a person and sometimes the website’s blocked on that. That gets very annoying if you’re trying to do something at school then you have to try and complete it at home.

Ruby: I think adults forget what high school is like a lot and like you know they still try and kind of baby you into stuff like ‘Are you sure that you should be looking at this’? ‘Yes, I’m sure I should be looking at this. Yes I know how to make a choice. I’m fifteen. Yes, I’m nearly an adult’.

Voice Over: And so we move on to senior school. New hopes. New dreams. What does the future hold?

Rob: The biggest thing is knowing that I’ve got a number of five weeks left of schooling for me before I step into the big world of outside school where things can be cruel and nasty, or they can either be happy. Yeah, I’ll be going to TAFE for my apprenticeship for a mechanic. I went for an interview with Central West Group Apprentices, a place that find employers for young apprentices around town. The local people, I went down, they were quite pleased with my interview.

Tylar: In Year 9 I did want to be a maths teacher, and then within the twelve months I’ve changed to nursing and midwifery. I’ve been told that I would suit that sort of field. You know, having family go through hospital, in and out, bad situations, good situations, it makes you want to help other people. That’s the way I look at it myself.

Gemma: Yesterday my English teacher took six students including myself to a young writer’s day run by UWS. I now have the opportunity to write a feature article and send it to them and go for a scholarship at UWS, a five year scholarship. But, in saying that, dancing is the best thing that I could do. Like, you know, as cheesy as it sounds, I don’t know what I would do, I’ve done it for so long. And so to have done dancing for 11 years and still not get sick of it, there’s obviously something right there.

Ramese: Football’s a dream, I guess. If I want to succeed in like my ATAR subjects including legal studies and stuff and I want to see how I do through Year 11 and 12 and maybe go to university for law. I chose legal studies because, I don’t know, it seemed like a good thing to fall back on. If I study hard in that class and then like, I had something I could do after school instead of finishing Year 12 and having nothing to do, I could try, have a go at it.

Jake: Could I please get someone to set up a microphone centre stage. Originally after school I wanted to get into the acting scene, the drama/arts but I figure now that I have to buckle down and actually think about achievable goals. I thought maybe getting certificates in school instead of going for an ATAR would be better for me because it would be a lot less pressure after school having more options instead of studying for the one subject. So, I’ll get a Retail Certificate II, Entertainment Certificate II and Information Technology Certificate II which will give me a head start when I go to TAFE after school.

Ruby: I’d love to go to Melbourne and the University of Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts to do acting and to do theatre acting. So I’d do a Bachelor of Drama and if I didn’t get into that I’d like to do a Bachelor of Arts, which is an ATAR of 83 about, I think.

Victoria: My birthday’s in December, so about two months and I get my Ls. I’m very nervous; I don’t think I’ll be that great of a driver. I can’t wait to get them though. Freedom. And I really want to get a mini, really bad, a mini car like the car; yeah I really want to get one.

Nethanel: I’m thinking Asian Studies with a double with something either between criminology and a forensic psychology, of sorts. Yes, I think I will go to Japan, I don’t know if it will be permanent, well before I thought it would be. It might be a one-year thing, a five-year thing. And it might be permanent, I don’t know.

Tylar: They are years that are going to be more eventful than this year. They will be more jam packed, they will be more time consuming. But I got to say, you’ve got to do it. If you want to do what you want to do, you’ve got to do it.

Final sequence: Credits

Thanks to the staff and students of Denison Secondary College, Bathurst High Campus and Campbelltown Performing Arts High School.

Thanks to the family and friends of Nethanel, Ruby, Victoria, Oki, Gemma, Ramese, Jake and Tylar.

Title music composed by H. Kemp. Performed by H. Kemp and T. Symes from Winmalee High School.

Additional music composed by Rhys D. Webb.

Produced by the NSW Curriculum and Learning Innovation Centre as part of the Digital Education Revolution – NSW.