Workshop 1: Using AI in Games through Unity
Target Audience: Teachers of Years 7-12
Artificial Intelligence algorithms sit behind the behaviours of non-player characters (NPCs) in all modern games. In this workshop, we’ll explore the Unity game development engine, and look at how students can make use of existing AI algorithms to bring their games to life. We’ll do some programming in this session, and while familiarity with C# will be an advantage, it won’t be necessary.
Workshop 2: Developing simple AI algorithms
Target Audience: Teachers of Years 10-12
Using existing AI tools in games and projects is great for seeing how powerful AI can be, but more advanced machine learning techniques can also be demonstrated. In this workshop, we’ll demonstrate one such technique. This session will involve programming in C# – knowledge of the language will be an advantage, but programming experience with other languages will be sufficient to participate effectively.
Workshop 3: Australian Computing Academy Challenges
Target Audience: Teachers of K-10, especially 5-8
The Australian Computing Academy has received funding through the Australian Government National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) to develop resources to assist with the implementation of the Digital Technologies curriculum in Years K-10. Part of this includes the development of a series of coding challenges targeting the Years 5-8 bands of the curriculum that are freely available to all teachers and students in Australia. In this workshop, learn a little bit more about the ACA Challenges, and get hands on with the classroom and online activities designed by computing education specialists to help you implement the Digital Technologies successfully.
Workshop 4: The CSER F-6 and 7-8 Digital Technologies MOOCs
Target Audience: Teachers of Years K-8
This workshop will introduce participants to the CSER MOOC content and allow time to register for the course and then explore hands on activities that are aligned to the Digital Technologies Curriculum.
Activities will include Bee-bots, Probots, Ozobots, Spheros, Edison Robots, Makey Makey and Scratch, Pencil code as well as opportunity to explore unplugged resources.
Participants are requested to bring a device such as a laptop, tablet or iPad.
Workshop 5: Easing into Arduino
Target Audience: Teachers of Years 5-8, or anyone wanting an introduction to Arduino
In this workshop you will learn the basics of building and programming a simple Arduino project and how to find and modify code you get from the Internet. Participants will need to bring a laptop with the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) downloaded from the Arduino website prior to the workshop.
Workshop 6: Questacon – Picture Happiness on Earth
Target Audience: Teachers of Years 7-8
Are you looking for something that brings many outcomes from the Digital Technologies Curriculum together for project-based learning? The Picture Happiness on Earth Project is a series of workshops run in conjunction with Miraikan in Tokyo and Questacon in Canberra.
Students use digital technologies to acquire, analyse and visualise data. They create videos to express their knowledge by storyboarding, scripting, filming and editing footage for a worldwide competition. In doing so they investigate how digital systems work, how audio and video data is compressed and stored and how they can communicate online using technology. Combining unplugged activities and digital methods teachers are supported by Questacon staff to deliver the workshops and assist their students in a highly engaging project.
Workshop 7: Everyone Can Code – Swift Playgrounds
Target Audience: Teachers of Years 5-8
Learning to code in the classroom teaches students how to solve problems and work together in creative ways. We believe coding is an essential skill. So we’ve designed a new approach to coding that lets anyone learn, write and teach it.
Join us for a workshop where you will:
- Learn why Swift is a great language for teaching and learning coding, and for app development
- Explore how the Swift Playgrounds app for iPad can make learning to code fun and interactive for your students
- Explore how the Teacher Guides for App Development with Swift and Swift Playgrounds can help expand your understanding of coding with Swift