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Digital Solutions prepares students for a range of careers in a variety of digital contexts. It develops thinking skills that are relevant for digital and nondigital real world challenges. It prepares students to be successful in a wide range of careers and provides them with skills to engage in and improve the society in which we work and play.

You can add Computer Science (CS) to just about anything. Adding CS to your ‘X’ prepares you for a future where we do not even know what jobs will look like:

CS + Art = Graphic Design CS + Medicine = Remote Healthcare CS + Sports = Better Athlete Performance CS + Music = Streaming Apps CS + Maths = 3D Animation

These are just a few of the areas where Computer Science can be added to increase career opportunities. As careers change, gaining skills in Computer Science has never been more important. It is a field bursting with creative and economic potential. In a future characterised by rapid technological change, it is people with tech skills and the ability to move rapidly across different areas who will take on and create the jobs of the future.

With the constant changes occurring in the world of technology, there has never been a better time to learn how to code. As Steve Jobs (Entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple) states: Everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think. Coding is today’s language of creativity. It is code that powers the digital world that we live in and computer coders are the architects and builders of our digital future. There are many who argue that Australia’s future prosperity relies on digital technologies, and computer programmers are essential to this end.

At Ignatius Park College, we teach coding from Year 8 to Year 12. Students start their coding in a drag and drop environment and progress to writing their own programs using hundreds of lines of code. In Digital Technologies, we do not simply teach students how to program computers, we teach them how to use computational thinking skills - skills that will be vital for tomorrow’s workforce. They are taught skills that are an essential problemsolving tool-set in our knowledge-based society.

In Design and Technologies, students have been learning how to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to ensure that, individually and collaboratively, they develop confidence as critical users of technologies and designers and producers of designed solutions. Some of the challenges that they worked on this year have included designing their own products using Autodesk Fusion 360, creating and programming robots using Arduino microcontrollers, learning how to create 3D models using Blender, an open source 3D creation application and designing environments using Unity 3D.

Despite the challenges 2020 has provided, there are exciting times ahead and we look forward to the challenges these new opportunities offer.

Bruce Denny | Faculty Leader - Digital Technologies