At the beginning of the year, a group of computer coding club students at St Albans’ Catholic Regional College began brainstorming ideas to promote sustainability in the community.
This week they’ll present their solutions to an audience of students and teachers from 56 schools from across the nation at the 11th annual Melbourne Water Kids Teaching Kids Conference.
It’s the first time St Albans students will present at the conference and teacher Hayden O’Doherty said it’s due recognition of their hard work.
“We started the coding club at the beginning of the year and pitched the idea of making games to help communicate ways to sort waste and recycle,” he said.
“It’s taken a lot of work because the students have had to learn the programming and coding and it’s all happened outside of regular class hours.”
The eight year 7 and 9 students from the college will speak at the two-day conference, which begins today and will be attended by more than 500 students from years 5 to 11.
At the conference, students take on a teaching role, explore solutions for global challenges and share sustainability topics that are important to them, their schools and their communities.
“The students have designed a few games. One is a scrunch test where you have to decide whether the object displayed is hard or soft plastic,” Mr O’Doherty said.
“The other is a Tetris-style game where rubbish descends down the screen and you have to work out which bin it goes into.
“After the conference, we plan on introducing aspects of the game into the school.
“Colours and graphics will be taken from the game and placed on various bins around the school, bringing their creation to life.”
