DigIT Residential Camp 2019

During the Christmas holidays Riley Keating (Current Year 9) attended a camp at the University of Western Australia. Students that performed well in the Australian Mathematics Competition were invited to apply for a place on the course. Only 50% of those that applied were accepted. We were very proud to have a representative from Holy Cross College.

Students broke the ice at this year’s summer camp with a circus workshop, building new friendships and then building towers with new friends.

While at camp students participated in practical tutorials that broadened their skills in coding, web-design, gaming and robotics. They also participated in seminars on algorithmic and computational thinking and received motivational talks delivered by ICT experts. Students were also introduced to  Programming (Python) and Introduction to HTML/CSS, with many students making tremendous progress and already completing some courses. The robotics workshop was a student favourite, with campers programming MakerBots (mBots) using mBlock software to control different components to achieve specific tasks.

Riley’s favourite was the website workshop and he chose to specialise in this area on his last day. This included designing web pages and some coding for styling. He also enjoyed designing robots to be entered for a competition by the university. The camp involved sixty students from across Western Australia and South Australia. Moving forward, students have been paired with an ICT mentor and they will work together over the coming months. The mentors will support students with their ICT learning and help encourage the students to complete a project. Riley will return back to The University of Western Australia in July for the second part of the program. Good luck Riley and Congratulations!

Mrs Sam Thompson

Learning Area Coordinator – Mathematics