An inspiring partnership with the CSIRO provides girls with twice-weekly access to some of Australia’s best scientific minds at Ravenswood School for Girls, where almost 50 per cent of graduates from the Class of 2018 are now studying towards Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degrees.
Developing a love of STEM in girls is crucial to increasing female representation in STEM related fields.
But, can a machine learn? Can a robot be called intelligent? And, what is artificial intelligence? These are just a few of the questions posed to Year 6 students at Ravenswood School for Girls in their compulsory STEM lessons.
The school has been in partnership with the CSIRO through its STEM Professionals in Schools program, for almost six years.
“Our teachers work alongside professional scientists, mathematicians and engineers to bring real STEM projects into the classroom,” says Ravenswood Principal, Mrs Anne Johnstone. “This exceptional range of scientific experts, passionate about their field and committed to providing a quality education to young minds, bring enormous benefit to our girls.”
One such professional is Dr Joshua Ho, an expert in bioinformatics at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. Bioinformatics uses programming to study and understand biological data.
Dr Ho uses his skills to help solve the problem of heart defects in babies. Through his lessons he introduces students to some challenging concepts including machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).
Why teach 12 year olds such concepts? Well, big ideas such as AI are changing the way we live and are helping shape a new future where many of today’s jobs will be lost to automation and robots.
Young minds are the perfect audience to tackle such topics because they ask questions, they wonder, and are not afraid to try new things.
Dr Ho uses his expertise in cardiac health and computer programming to teach students how to make a heart rate monitor and used facial recognition technology as an example of how AI is used in the real world.
Students even made a human facial recognition algorithm that could identify a Disney princess through pattern recognition and matching characteristics like hair colour.
By posing challenging and open-ended questions, students are asked to think deeply about the role and impact of technology in society. Thinking about these big questions means thinking about the relationship between humans and machines.
Students studied a robot that learnt to flip pancakes, to determine exactly how it could master a new skill. As it happens, robots learn the same way humans do, through guessing, making mistakes and receiving feedback.
Through this knowledge, students were then able to build a robot that could learn and master a new skill, and coded a robot to play a game where it had to guess a number between 1 and 100.
Through trial, error, and feedback the robot was able to learn from its mistakes and correctly guess the students’ number after just a few tries. Students also designed a bowling robot that could learn how to bowl the perfect ball every time.
Students loved these challenges as they allowed them to work collaboratively on hands-on projects that are playful and creative.
STEM learning can begin in kindergarten, where students start to develop a ‘maker’ mindset and develop coding skills using creative ‘playground’ style resources such as Scratch Jr.
In Year 5, Ravenswood students used the design thinking framework to design and make something useful for astronauts on the International Space Station. European Space Agency engineer Andrea Boyd helped the girls develop empathy for the astronauts and answered their searching space questions.
Students worked in small groups to identify a problem, design and then make a prototype solution. Through this student-centred approach to learning, students were empowered to pursue their own ideas, work collaboratively and use a range of skills to develop a meaningful artefact with a real-world purpose.
“The aim is to develop the girls into natural inquirers, who are curious about their world and can confidently manipulate technology rather than merely consume it,” says Ravenswood’s ICT Integrator, Matt Scadding.
50 per cent of Ravenswood’s 2018 cohort are now completing STEM related degrees. Among them is the school’s 2018 Dux Tess Webster, who won a Chancellor’s Scholarship and entry to the tightly contested Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine degree at Sydney University. Her aim is to work with premature babies in neonatal intensive care and volunteer with Doctors Without Borders in Cambodia. Women in Engineering scholarship recipient, Ashleigh Nicholls, aims to contribute to reducing Australia’s greenhouse emissions. “I would like to work with an innovative, creative renewable energy company one day,” she says.
As Mr Scadding adds, “Through passionate and skilled scientists and teachers, schools can engage their students in new and innovative ways that foster a love of science and encourage the pursuit of STEM subjects into the high school and beyond. As an educator, I believe we should be challenging students through real-world, meaningful, human-centred projects that allow students to collaborate, think critically and be creative.”
