St Pius X Primary School students had a taste of the technology they will use in their future careers at a workshop on Thursday.
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Students participated in hands-on activities around coding, robotics and electronics as part of a visit by Telstra representatives.
St Pius digital technology teacher Rebecca Parkinson said the sessions exposed the children to more concepts and resources than was available to them in their regular digital technologies specialist class.
“It’s all about problem solving and persisting and creative and flexible thinking so it really promotes that and the kids love it, they don’t even know they’re learning,” Ms Parkinson said. “We’re so lucky be given this opportunity.
Telstra community engagement manager Marcus Swinburne said the children were using technology to develop their coding skills.
“It’s really important because a lot of the kids born today won’t actually drive cars,” Mr Swinburne said. “It will be a whole different world with driverless cars. Robotics and coding will be a real central theme to how we live and work in the future.
“Gone are the days where it was all maths and everyone got confused trying to understand those concepts. It’s all hands on and lots of fun.”
He said some of the jobs of the future were yet to be invented and the skills the children have learnt would be useful later on.
“If we can equip the children of the future with the right skills they will be prepared for the future,” Mr Swinburne said. “It’s very exciting and probably a bit daunting to think about for a lot of people so having that skill and that base will go a long way.
Student Matilda Woodward, 10, said the sessions were very fun and it was different to what they usually learned at school.
Aliza Gurney, 11, also enjoyed the workshops. “I’ve liked all of it because it’s really fun and all the kids get to be inspired by all the different robots,” Aliza said.