Yidarra Catholic Primary School Year 6 students have been busy improving their digital technology knowledge via a special hands-on project during terms 3 and 4. 

As part of those studies, students have built robots and, using mBlock on their iPads, developed the code to bring them to life. 

Assistant principal Nik Hofmeester said the program involved a lot of hard work, but had been well received.

“We have used Keynote scaffolds to guide coding development and record their results, Clips and iMovie to create movies about the experience, and documented the process on their iPads,” he said.

“In conjunction with what the students have been completing in Digital Technologies, I developed Keynote scaffolds for their in-class teachers to use during the design process for the obstacles.

“Our students have also been working with Year 10 engineering students from Corpus Christi to build peer relationships and strengthen their design process skills.” 

Those skills were extended at the school’s Robot Olympics on 20 November, when the students engaged in five concurrent sessions: the mBot obstacle course, Codekey Rocky challenges, Dash creative lab, Buzz bots battle, and conductive art.

The event was open to students from other CEWA schools in the area, and was supported by Corpus Christi College students on hand to troubleshoot and offer technical help, with staff from Orana Catholic Primary School facilitating the Dash creative lab session.

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