Year one

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

Kevin Rudd: Federal Labor will undertake a ground-breaking reform by providing for every Australian secondary school student in years 9-12 access to their own computer at school.

Geoff Hastings (Principal): This is a pretty exciting evening for all of us, I think. We’re doing this in a staged series of meetings to hand out basically 170 laptops to our year nine students.

Voice Over: This is no ordinary parent information night. Like all year 9 students across New South Wales, these kids are about to get their very own laptop. Will it change the dynamic of their classrooms and the way they learn?

Parent 1: I think it's going to be a very educational tool for them – especially with the amount of software and the new software that's come out.

Parent 2: I'll be able to get my laptop back and she'll be able to get all her homework done without it being affecting the rest of the household.

Voice Over: Denison Secondary College, Bathurst, is one of the first schools to receive the laptops. Like most kids their age, the students here are technologically savvy. They’ve all grown up in a digital era, but having their own laptop brings a new dimension into their lives.

Ruby: I like Bathurst because it's not as isolated as country towns out west, but it's not as polluted and busy and crowded as cities like Sydney or Melbourne so it's kind of got the best of both worlds.

Voice Over: Ruby studies at Denison Secondary College. Music is one of her favourite subjects.

Ruby: I have like a really big family, I have my dad and my step-mum and my baby sister in Sydney and then I have like three siblings in Bathurst, and my mum and my step-dad, and then heaps of other family. It's like a mafia.

Kate (Ruby’s Mum): So which program are you using there?

Ruby: Just the language bar. Before we had the laptops, we used to use the one computer that's in the dining room, at the same time. So that would be my mum, my stepfather and my three siblings, so we'd all have to share the same workspace and even though we'd have our own folders you could still you know see what everyone else is doing, and on iTunes, we'd have all these arguments with everyone stealing each other's music and things. So once I've got the laptop, it's been really good to have it, because that means that I can get my work done at the same time as my siblings and my parents.

Ruby: It will just take a bit longer, you’ve just got to wait because Canberra, the ACT ...

Kate (Ruby’s Mum): The laptop, as the children have become more used to them, you know at first it was very much ‘Let’s use it all the time, let’s be on it all the time, let’s see what this can do’. And it now seems to be fitting in a bit more to the daily routine.

Ruby: Well at school the laptops have been really beneficial to our learning, especially in our music class – so we've been using lots and lots of different programs, such as Audacity, which is really good to record things. The Muse Score means that we can actually make our own pieces of music with our teacher in our class – so then we’ll actually have to compose our own piece of music so they've been really fantastic for that sort of thing.

Nethanel: I know it will help with Japanese, because there's a program on the laptop where you can type Japanese characters instead of English. It's really useful when you have to like hand in like maybe an assignment or something you've got to have it in Japanese.

Nethanel: Konnichiwa. (more Japanese being spoken) Now translate that. That means ‘Hello, I am Nethanel, and I have six people in my family.’ So, that’s the short version of that, yeah. I would be the person who lived the furthest out of town out of the whole of the school I think, about half an hour, I have to like get up every morning about six o'clock, it doesn't bother me though. I have a good breakfast and then get in and do some schoolwork. We have a 412 acre property, a lot of people don’t like visiting because it’s so far away, most of its forest, but it's still really good, like good to walk around in and stuff like that. Yeah, Hanchi, he’s my main karate guy. He’s ...

Voice Over: Nethanel’s two passions are karate, which he practices after school, and Japanese.

Nethanel: So, I consider myself very lucky to have gotten a country name, not just for my first name but my last name as well. I love Japanese. Japanese is the best subject I've got here, and I'm pretty good at it as far as I know. I don't do many things with people from school. Like I said I don’t have many friends. As far as I know I’m not popular, I might be, I’m not sure but honestly I don’t think I’m popular. I think the only thing I do with school apart from going to watch a movie with a friend, or doing karate with Oki, 'cause like we always do karate together. So, we went to Tokyo Tower, that’s like some of the kites they have hanging up on the tower.

Voice Over: Nethanel travelled to Japan on a student exchange. It was a life changing experience where he made quite a few friends.

Nethanel: This is the one that asked me, yes, Nasaki Tanagawa, she asked me ... that’s her kanji name with the heart, you know she gave me a heart ...

Voice Over: Nethanel keeps in touch with his Japanese friends via email and Skype. Like most teenagers, friendship is important to him, and having his own laptop makes it easier for him to explore his identity.

Nethanel: For IST I had to – I got all these photos from Japan and had to make a slide show and I used my laptop, so I was really good and I created this thing. I got really good marks for it.

Voice Over: Another student from Denison Secondary College, Rob has been racing cars since he was 12. His family moved to Bathurst from Sydney quite recently. It’s been a bit of a tree change, but a change that Rob has loved.

Rob: We are on a 105 acre block which is excellent for riding cars and motorbikes and getting friends together from school, and lots of scenery, lots of animals and also should say a lot of cars around, cars are good. Cars are involved in my life a lot. I love about the racing mainly, the thrill, like, your first run, like you’re lined up next to somebody you know, the pressure, like hearing he’s starting to rev his engine and your hands start to shake and then when you’re out there the free mind of your head, you’re in your own environment. As you change through the gears, there's another change setting of your mind, 'Oh coming into a corner'. I think about all the stuff like that. Actually you start talking to yourself like you're a mad man.

Voice Over: Rob’s a man of action, but a reluctant learner who isn’t always comfortable with the rigours of schoolwork. But his laptop is helping him with this.

Geoff (Head Teacher, HSIE): Rob had writing difficulties, his writing was extremely messy. He can look at his work now and he takes a lot more pride in the work that he does. Rob has very good computer skills, and he's been able to successfully transfer those into his learning now and make them part of his learning.

Rob: The laptops are really good at school because I can actually keep up with the class. I was a slow writer and a bit messy, and couldn't spell as well – now with the laptops of course you can understand the writing because it's on a computer – the spellcheck on the laptop’s excellent. There is a few classes where the teacher won't let you use them. So even as far as indoor PDHPE, they actually come into that a lot. Woodwork, we do a lot of work in that, where Metalwork the teacher is a bit old-fashioned so he doesn't let us use them.

Victoria: I’m planning on being a teacher either with primary school teaching or with disabled children with special needs. So I'm hoping to go to uni and like finish year 12 and then go to uni and do primary school teaching and then from then I will go on and do if I need to do a special needs course or something like that I’ll do that. I think the feeling would be a really nice job. I love playing AFL. I'm an AFL girl, and I was the captain of the under 14s boys team last year, although half way through the year I snapped a ligament in my knee, so I couldn't play anymore and had to have a knee reconstruction at the start of this year.

Kathleen (Victoria’s Mum): We're Victorians originally, so we're AFL lovers, and the whole family are involved in the local club, the Bathurst Bushrangers. Our house is named Kardinia Park which anyone who’s an AFL supporter would know is the home of Geelong, the Cats. My husband and my son are mad Cats supporters, but Victoria and I go for the Sydney Swans. All the family play, my husband, Sebastian, Victoria played up until this year where she’s now too old. They all referee and Mum and I do the canteen and I’m the publicity officer. Yeah, it’s a family thing, we all go together on a Saturday. We spend all of our Saturday together as a family, and it's something that we've found has been really wonderful for us.

Voice Over: Like many of her friends, Victoria has found that having her own laptop eases the pressure in a family situation where technology is shared.

Victoria: Seeing as the home computer is very slow. It's just really useful to have it with me at all times, and also for homework and stuff. The teachers can just email us the work and assign us the work that we need to do and it's there with us all the time, and it's so small that it's easy to take anywhere with you, and yeah and they're very hardy little things, so yeah that’s really good.

Music

Voice Over: Campbelltown Performing Arts High School is on the southern outskirts of Sydney. Audition students specialise in circus, drama, vocals or music.

Jake: My name is Jake and my Mum is a single parent for me. She came from Italy when she was two years old, my family are all Italian and I was one of the only ones born here out of the four cousins. Life is pretty good, we have a nice house and we’re living in St Helen’s Park at the moment. So, life is pretty good at the moment.

Jake: Out of all the topics in Circus I enjoy doing poi. It’s basically two balls on the end of chains or string that you swing beside your body. There are many tricks you can do that would be really challenging with fire and really dangerous but we’ve done it before and it comes natural to us now. I also like to do aerial. That’s really challenging and a lot of fun to do, just to get up on the bars and hang upside down. I’d like to pursue a career in football. I’d like to one day be up there, be able to play State Of Origin, represent my country in Australia. It’d be very, very good. It’s a dream that I’m hoping to one day fulfill.

Voice Over: Jake may enjoy being in the spotlight, but he also has a very practical interest in technology, and for this his laptop is indispensable.

Jake: I at one stage was interested in becoming an actor, but I don't think that’s the right career path for me to choose. I would like to stick to my football and computing. I'd like to get into the IT industry and this school offers a lot of courses available for computers, so it would be a good opportunity. We use a few programs in the computer class that I'm in. We use the program called Free Mind, like a mind mapping program. It's pretty easy to use, and easy to catch along with. I love my laptop. I cherish my laptop. There’s just so many things you can do with it, it’s beyond description.

Lorien (Maths Teacher): Jake’s participation and engagement really increases with a laptop, it’s something that motivates him. He’s not keen on maths, I think compared to a lot of his other subjects but being able to use a laptop certainly helps to keep him on task and help keep him motivated doing his work. The laptops have really helped, they’ve enabled me to do much more interesting things, take investigations further and actually get the kids to discover things on their own that might have taken hours to do before when we had to plot graphs by hand for example. So, I’ve been able to do a lot of stuff that’s just more interesting and get them to do investigations and discover things for themselves.

Tylar: Hello, my name is Tylar, I’m fourteen years old, I would like to finish year 12, go to university and I’d love to be a maths teacher. I currently live with my aunt and uncle; I’ve been living there for about five years local to Campbelltown. My dad lives in Victoria, he’s going back to Tonga where he lives and I won’t be seeing him for a few years and my brother has gone through brain damage because he had a motorbike accident and I haven’t seen him since Christmas but it was good that I actually spent Christmas day with him and my mum passed away a few years ago so that’s why I’m in this situation. I live with two of my auntie’s sons because she has six sons and no girls unfortunately. It’s okay but sometimes I feel like I just want another girl around or you know tell secrets or find out information about getting older and stuff.

Voice Over: Although she has experienced loss in her family life, Tylar remains resilient.

Belinda (Tylar’s Aunt): She never thinks of the past, it’s always in the future, it’s always ahead, sometimes I wish she would talk more to me about how she’s feeling or you know different things but overall she’s coped really well. Tylar’s a scholar, she’s always done her homework, she’s always tried to do her best. She helps Jack out who is not a scholar.

Tylar: Me and my cousin we’re in the same year, we each have our own laptop and if we have homework or anything we go on that. When all the boys are here, the TV will be on, my cousin Jack will have his music on but if it’s like just the four of us home the house is actually quiet where I can have my own space. But in most occasions I do have to go to my room in my own space and do my own thing with my laptop.

Voice Over: Gemma’s dream is to be a dancer. She’s been training since she was 5 years old.

Gemma: I'm Gemma, I come from a family of five. I have two older sisters and they're both musicians. My father is a musician as well and I do dance. It’s my eleventh year of dancing, and my Mum is a vet nurse, so we're all very creative. My best friend, her name is Annie, she goes to this school and we go to the same dance studio. We hang out all the time. We always dance, like always forever dancing like we danced on the way to school this morning and which is good fun. And like her family is my family kind of thing.

Voice Over: The laptop has definitely changed Gemma’s approach to her schoolwork.

Gemma: With that lesson when we videoed ourselves with the webcam, we got this table and we had to go through and watch the video over and over again, and critique every little part of what's in that table and stuff.

Teacher: And the first part is what Gem?

Gemma: Alignment.

Teacher: Alignment, yeah.

Gemma: For the feet and the ankles.

Teacher: The feet and the ankles and the knees.

Gemma: Last year when we first got our laptops we had this project where we had to make a dance video and every night I'd come home, I'd chuck on my music and I made a dance video, kind of thing, using like Premiere and it was so cool.

I worry about losing the technique of writing – because a lot of teachers go 'You can use your Lenovo’s, or you can use your book' – and it's always Lenovo for me. I use my laptop like every night kind of thing, I'm always on it, and you know my sister uses it as well for year 12, and like Mum and Dad will be like 'Okay dinnertime, put down your computer, come and eat some food'.

Gemma: I sing with my family as well, we always jam when making dinner and all that kind of stuff. So it's good, we're a very close family, a lot of music.

Ramese: My name is Ramese, I'm 15 years old, and I'm the youngest of five children. My family is Samoan, and they came over here in about 1983. I play football on the weekend for Campbelltown Harlequins, and I like to hang out with my friends in my spare time.

Ramese: I'm an audition student here at Campbelltown and I got in for vocal, so I do a lot of things with music, I love my music. I sing for my school and I sing on the weekend. I sing in the church choir and things like that. I like to try and make my own music sometimes. Yeah, me and my friends get together and we jam, we sing, and my friend Archie that just came in, plays guitar and we sing all together.

Voice Over: Ramese combines his love of music with the suite of programs available on his laptop. He’s beginning to see lots of new options.

Ramese: I use iTunes to store all my music, all my backing tracks for my performances, and we sort of muck around with Audacity, see what we can do with it, 'cause there's a microphone jack in the side of the laptop and there's another microphone, a small one and you can get a decent recording out of it, using your laptop. We can record ourselves and see what we can do with it.

Voice Over: Like Ramese, many students are finding that a laptop at their fingertips opens up new approaches to learning.

Victoria: The laptops have helped a lot with the computer study, and in computers at the moment we're doing scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking and because I love scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking is just ... it’s so much fun, and with the laptop it's so easy, you've got all the files there. Our teacher downloaded a lot of files off the internet and she gave us a lot of them. So, we all have a lot of files and we’ve made a nice whole scrapbook with pictures of whatever we want and pages of whatever we want. I love it, it's so much fun.

Voice Over: Already the students are thinking and planning ahead for their careers. Will having a laptop transform their future?

Ruby: When I was younger I thought I wanted to be a writer because I really love English but – whereas now I'm not so sure because I think I'll definitely have to do something in the creative arts, so something either like art or drama or music.

Nethanel: I have a goal, like it's not really a hope or anything, but it's my goal, I'm going to do it. I like setting my mind on things like that. I'm gonna go to Japan and teach English, that's my goal. I'm gonna do that. All I have to do is do university for a few years, and I'm right. Then I'll go on to Japan, visit the folks every now for holidays and stuff like that, and say g’day to a few of me girlfriends over there. I was popular ... made me feel special, yeah.

Gemma: I would love to dance professionally. It would, you know, my heart’s desire. But the problem is, it’s an average of a 4 year career and that’s if you get into a company. It would be amazing to be able to dance professionally like every day wake up and go, you know, chuck on my point shoes and, you know, get on my stockings and just be a dancer, all the time. And I think that would be an amazing life story.

Voice Over: Rob knows that not everyone can be a champion rally driver. And that getting sponsorship as a 14 year old isn’t easy.

Rob: There’s also a lot of people that put a lot more money into the clubs and they have faster cars than me which I can still sometimes end up beating them, but it’s getting hard to compete with them. So that’s my main priority. People in the club who aren’t as good drivers…but they’ve got better cars than me. So, they beat me because they’re faster they’ll end up getting somewhere in life.

Ramese: I have dreams, but no real jobs. I'm not really sure what I want to do, but like I have dreams to be like a basketball player and things like that and like a football player, but no real profession, that's what I'm worried about.

Voice Over: While Ramese is yet to formulate a plan for his future, Gemma is working towards her goals.

Gemma: I will achieve it one day – and you guys will see me ... Broadway, Gemma performs tonight! So yeah.

Final sequence:

Music

Credits

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

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

Title music composed by H. Kemp.

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

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