Westgarth Primary School prepares students with the skills to succeed in the digital world. Digital technologies are embedded across all curriculum areas and are utilised as both learning and student engagement tools. Teachers use digital technologies to provide students with authentic learning challenges that foster curiosity, creativity and the ability to collaborate with others. 

In a world that is increasingly digitised and automated, it is critical to student well-being that they are taught safe and ethical online behaviours. Westgarth is an eSmart school and follows a framework to ensure that students monitor their digital footprint and exhibit positive online behaviours.

All classes have access to a Smart TV, which are utilised for such learning tasks as engaging students with interactive texts, Literacy and Numeracy activities and when modelling eSmart behaviours. The school aims to provide confidence for students using a range of both Apple and Windows devices, including Google Chromebooks, iPads and desktop PCs.

Students is Year 4 - 6 benefit from a one-to-one Google Chromebook model, with fluid access to Google Workspace for Education. This is a suite of apps, designed by Google, that provide a flexible and secure foundation for learning, collaboration, and communication between students and their teachers. Access to their own device assists students to get tasks completed faster and easier, while improving levels of engagement towards learning.

Applications that students use include Google Classroom, which assists teachers in assigning work, boosts collaboration between students and fosters opportunities for feedback.  Students also experience the convenience of saving documents to their Google Drive, so that they can access them anywhere, even from home!

Westgarth PS have implemented some other exciting initiatives around digital technologies. With the Victorian Curriculum designed to cater for preparing students for the future, many of these have centred on computer programming (coding). Students are supported by teachers to generate basic computer programs in order to create animations, games and even procedures for a robots to move. Two of the main resources that we use to teach visual programming language are the MIT designed Scratch and Microsoft's MakeCode Arcade.

Our Year 3 - 6 students benefit from weekly STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art and Maths) sessions, with our specilaist STEAM teacher. This well-resourced program provides students with tactile and engaging ways to collaborate, problem solve and design solutions for real-world problems. The program utilises such resources as Sphero robotics, LEGO EV3, OSMO and programmable gaming consoles.

Above: Year 6 students share their ideas around improving safety on our roads at the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress with Ng Chee Meng, the former Singaporean Minister of Education.