The Big Day In Junior hit Tasmania for the first time with a great day of digital creativity at The Hutchins School in Hobart on Thursday 23rd May.

About 400 Year 5 & 6 students from eight Tasmanian schools visited The Hutchins School for a wide range of hands on activities provided by companies and organisation such as Google, Microsoft, Smart, Technology One, Wise Tech Global, The University of Tasmania and of course Adobe.

I’m quoted in the Big Day In Junior website stating the following …

Digital creativity, digital literacy, ICT skill development, design thinking and computation thinking are all  fundamental aspects of the Australian Curriculum (AC) and are the essence of what is being fostered during each Big Day In Junior (BDIJ) program around Australia.

Within the AC, Critical and Creative Thinking as well as ICT Capability sit alongside Literacy  and Numeracy as core F-10 general capabilities that are expected to be taught and assessed throughout Australia. Central to these general capabilities, is the statement derived from The (2008) Melbourne Declaration on Education Goals for Young Australians, that all young Australians become successful learners – confident and creative individuals – active and informed citizens.

The term multimodal text is found throughout the Australian English Curriculum as well as in other subjects. In the AC, it’s defined as combination of two or more communication modes such as print, image and spoken text, as in film or computer presentations. Examples of multimodal text include slide presentations, animation, book trailers, digital storytelling, live action film making, music videos and various web texts and social media (http://creatingmultimodaltexts.com). The focus of multimodal text in the AC encourages teachers to allow students to use the modern 21st century tools available to them to construct their learning in a multitude of creative ways.

The Digital Technologies Curriculum is based on encouraging students to develop computational thinking skills, a fundamental part of great software development. The BDIJ program provides a number of hands on workshops run by industry and university experts to help students develop their computation thinking skills and learning simple coding operations.

There are also a number of links between the BDIJ and the Media Arts Curriculum. Industry experts from leading digital creativity companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Adobe are proud to be involved with the Australian Computer Society Foundation to help provide opportunities for participants in the BDIJ to enhance their digital media and communication skills.

Here is the link to an article I wrote in 2016 following taking part in a BDIJ program titled What schools should be like every day – https://timkitchen.net/2016/12/19/jbdi/

Here is a link to a more recent BDIJ video I made to help support this amazing program that links so well to the AC and provides teachers and students with valuable connections to industry and universities.