Mordialloc College's Tech Teaching Solution

The Digital Technologies Curriculum is vital in developing a future workforce, there are jobs a plenty in engineering and IT waiting for appropriately skilled people, but a pathway for students to gain those skills is less clear.

We are now on version 8.4 of the Digital Technologies Curriculum and finding Digital Technologies teachers or upskilling staff so they can contribute is a task largely left to schools.

Mordialloc College in bayside Melbourne has been fortunate to have found its own way forward and Digital Technologies lead teacher Simon Belluzzo has played a large part in resolving how the school teaches the subject.

Belluzzo is a rare find, a previous life in biomedical research left him well versed in programming and saw him routinely work with high performance computing. Luckily for Mordialloc College, when Belluzzo lost enthusiasm for his PhD he decided to pursue a Masters of Teaching.

“I was involved in teaching undergraduate students, which I enjoyed, and that led me to become a teacher,” he says.

He is kept very busy at Mordialloc College, on top of his teaching load Belluzzo helps to manage the school’s IT.  However, there is only so much one person can do and the school has been training up other staff members to teach Digital Technologies, finding help through Grok Academy and its online platform.

Mordialloc College has come to find the year level, curriculum aligned resources and the teacher professional development programme on Grok’s platform to be essential in delivering Digital Technologies.

“We have a mix of experience in our Digital Technologies teaching team, for instance myself and one of my colleagues are experienced in industry and we know what we’re talking about in terms of coding.

“But for a while we have had maths and science teachers attempting to teach coding and Digital Technologies and we have a couple of new teachers who are keen to start teaching coding but don't have the background. We found Grok is really helpful for them because it means they don't have to start learning from scratch.

“Grok has a lot of resources for staff, which is actually where they started from, unpacking the curriculum.

“Teachers are able to get up and running pretty quickly, as long as they are a lesson or two in front of the students, they’re able to work through subject matter. Grok has teacher notes running during the activities so if they’re not quite sure of something because they’re not so experienced in coding, it’s able to give them hints and solutions,” Belluzzo says.

Mordialloc College’s students work on an array of devices and Grok Academy’s platform performs well in that environment.

“We’re a BYOD school so we have a wide range of devices and we’ve had Grok work on everything from iPads to laptops with no issues whatsoever. We have many year levels and one computer room so not being tied to that space to learn coding is fantastic.”

The school started off using Grok’s Digital Technologies challenges and came to use Grok more heavily during Melbourne’s near two-year lockdown.

“When we were teaching remotely, we found Grok had some great tools for teachers to see what students are up to,” he says.

“We’re quite happy with how the resources are constructed, they go through a lot of different areas depending on which lesson you choose to do. There is a lot of scope for differentiation, students can work in pairs and really challenge themselves or teachers can work with students who need a little bit more support.

“We have some students who, because of their literacy or other needs, are unable to grasp a text-based programming language. There is an equivalent visual programming language (Blockly) they can use and do something which is very similar to what the rest of the class is doing.

“We have a small group of kids who are very motivated and engaged who have gone on and done many different activities. The kids like it because they’re able to move at their own pace and because they’re able get feedback from the system, they can work through tasks easily.”

The platform has interactive activities outside of coding that explore ideas around physical computing, music, art or security and Belluzzo says, “there are couple of privacy resources that students really engage with.”

Mordialloc College has become increasingly invested in Grok Academy’s platform and it has found its way into the teaching of all age groups at the school.

“We actually don't teach Digital Technologies in Year 8 because of our curriculum layout so we use it in Year 7, Year 9 and Year 10 and we’ve been teaching VCE Applied Computing with Grok for the past couple of years, so it’s actually being used all the way through. We like that we can give the 9s and 10s harder stuff and push them a bit.

“I’ve had some students who have no digital technologies knowledge after Year 7 and others who go and do computer competitions. They can all find activities that suit their ability and complete them in their own time.”

The collaboration and brainstorming skills that accompany the development of a tech product are applicable to other kinds of group work which makes technology a good cross curricular activity.

Grok has released a structure for brainstorming sessions that encourages students to speak up and contribute to a conversation and outside of digital technologies it is helping to usher in a shift in the school’s culture.

“I’ve been speaking to our Director of Student Voice, trying to get students involved in solving problems to make the school better, so we’re actually using a lot of these resources to improve the school.”

While Grok Academy is a big part of how Mordialloc operates now, Belluzzo says he liked that they were able to test the waters with the platform before the school went all in.

“Grok does a trial which works really well, we utilised that before we jumped into paying for a subscription for it. Teachers get a free subscription so they can have a look and a bit of an explore so you can find out where your school is at in terms of digital technologies and where your staff is at as well.”

Grok Academy has won the backing of industry heavyweights like Telstra, Commonwealth Bank, Accenture and Amazon Web Services who are all crying out for a pipeline of workers who have the skills to run their systems. All these corporations foresee a future where there is no distinct tech area as technology intersects with every part of their businesses and data inform everything they do.