Design & Technology

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AND MEDIA ARTS

Mr Adam Gage

This year, students in Digital Technologies and Media Arts have worked with the new curriculum from Year 4 through to Year 10. Innovative programs have been written, trialled and adjusted – with much success.

Year 7 Digital Technologies focused on robotics, bringing the Edison Mark II robots to life. Thank you to Mr Paul Bolton for pushing creativity and innovation in his classes. The students in his classes created an imperial march of the robots complete with Star Wars theme music. The Year 7 Game Design students experimented with Gamestar Mechanic, Scratch and Makey Makey to program some imaginative games and controllers. We will keep a keen eye on Gabriel Masbate (7.4) and Jack Tanner (7.4) as they progress through the years as both boys programmed some very challenging games. I thank Miss Claire Wilson, Mr Peter Harper, Mr Kenny Chan (’91) and Mr Paul Bolton for their dedication and input to these stimulating courses.

Our Year 7 Media Arts students were introduced to storyboards, photo-stories, film making and animation techniques this year. Special mention should go to Domenic Lamattina (7.6), Branson May (7.7) and Bon Nastasi (7.1) for their outstanding effort in this class and enthusiasm for Media. I thank Ms Danielle Pieraccini for her brilliant work with these students and for preparing this creative course of study for the boys.

Years 7 and 9 Digital Technologies students entered the Scitech RoboCup Search and Rescue Competition at Curtin Stadium on Friday 3 August. The boys entered two teams in the Secondary Rescue Challenge, where their autonomous robots navigated various field maps to rescue a victim from a chemical spill. Isaac Heald (7.3), Matthew Koetser (7.1), Sebastian Kelleher (7.1) and Izak Margaretic (7.5) entered a team for the first time and enjoyed the competitive challenges. Aaron Seth (9.5), Rafael Sitorus (9.8) and Benjamin Oatham (9.7) worked extremely hard over the two days of ongoing challenges and showed true team spirit in the RoboCup, placing fifth overall in the Western Australian finals.

Senior Media classes have enjoyed a varied and creative program under the guidance of Ms Danielle Pieraccini, with excursions to Channel Nine studios on St Georges Terrace and engaged in a radio workshop at RTRFM in Mount Lawley. Here students learnt about the craft of creating the news and airing within a public domain. Furthermore, these students created short films and documentaries to publish on the Trinity College Media YouTube Channel and the Year 12 class worked on the Leavers’ video, which was presented at Graduation Dinner. Media Production and Analysis ATAR was offered for the first time this year – congratulations to Callum Reader (11.8) and Tim Kelly (11.2) for their excellent results.

Years 10 and 11 Computer Science students competed in the annual National Computer Science School Python Programming Challenge. This year, the Challenge was open to thousands of students across Australia and Asia. Congratulations to Zane Meleca (10.5) who received a Distinction certificate and Benjamin Jasper (10.5) who received a High Distinction.

Senior Game Design students benefited from the Virtual Reality (VR) Lab this year. Year 11 Game Design students brought to life their Unity 3D Games in the VR Lab. They investigated how to become content creators and develop their own simulated real-world environments. Lachlan Hadwen (’13), who is currently studying a Masters of Media and Communications at Curtin University, assisted our students with this innovative project.

The inaugural Trinity College CoderDojo Club ran during Terms 2 and 3, with approximately 20 enthusiastic students from across the year levels who were all involved in coding projects of their own choice. Some of the projects underway include SciTech Robo Challenge; coding languages like python, JavaScript and Lua; games creation using Gamemaker, Javascript, Roblox and Lua; and the use of open-source electronic prototyping platforms such as Microbits, Raspberry Pi and Arduino. These boys were self-motivated and worked collaboratively on these projects.

Some keen students have created Trinity’s first FPV (first person view) drone racing league. We look forward to them running their first all-schools event in 2019 – certainly an innovative project to be involved in.

We welcomed Mr Peter Harper to the department at the start of 2018, who joins us from All Saints’ College. We thank him for his dedication to Computer Science and the Certificate II Information, Digital Media and Technology courses this year.

Mr Adam Gage

Head of Learning Area (Digital Technologies and Media Arts)