Already we are at Week 5 of Term 1 and the students have been immersed in new learning opportunities and ideas. The focus of this article is on our Year 7 and 8 students who are studying Geography this semester. We are hoping to inspire them to consider potential pathways in this field one day and by exposure to the latest technologies and application of new skills, we are confident that this will become a growth area for Humanities at the College. 

Geography

Year 7

Our Year 7 students are beginning their journey into Geospatial Technologies, exploring place and liveability. The focus of this study is on the concept of place through an investigation of liveability. Students will examine factors that influence liveability and how it is perceived, the idea that places provided us with the services and facilities needed to support and enhance our lives and that spaces are planned and managed by people. They are using new online programs at school such as ArcGIS, to increase their exposure to new methods in mapping and to apply this to activities in our curriculum.

Students will be creating their own ‘Story Map’, reflective of the place where they live. They will be adding digital layers and focal points to an existing map and offering their thoughts about the opportunities for local councils to improve on existing facilities and infrastructure for young people in their areas. This will then form the basis for a more detailed plan to be submitted later in the semester, to a competition created by the Geography Teachers Association of Victoria, which champions the use of geospatial technologies in the classroom.  In this competition, students are asked to redesign their local area to include better designs for livebility within a 20-minute neighborhood. Students are encouraged to be creative, but at the same time, apply knowledge about liveability design in relation to where they live.

Year 8 

Our Year 8 students are doing the same in terms of learning how to use new Geospatial skills and are busily preparing for their Field Trip to Mordialloc Beach in the next few weeks. They will be working through a day of activities and skills work, building on skills taught at the College. They will be walking and learning with the Coty of Kingston rangers, examining the coastal landscape of the foreshore and reviewing the impact of human intervention in the area. They will also be learning about the Indigenous connection of the Boon Wurrung people to this region and considering how that is represented around the foreshore. All this learning will be consolidated into an Annotated Visual Display representing their learning on the day. 

As a faculty, we are excited about these new opportunities and hope that our students will be able to use these new skills on their journey to lifelong learning. The opportunities for application of  skills are growing rapidly as many of the jobs of the future in this field have yet to be created. We are doing our best to future equip our students for whatever may come their way.  

Carolyn Callaghan
Learning Leader: Humanities