Wyndham Tech School reposted this
Yesterday, David Cocks and I went on a (literal) school trip, with a tour of Wyndham Tech School with Sam Nikolsky. The facilities are amazing, and it’s pretty incredible what impact a small team of ten are having on thousands of kids and teachers around Hobson’s Bay and Wyndham. It’s also an outstanding example of; 🖇️ Not scaling 🖇️ 🖇️ Could the 42 schools in the catchment area all have been given a small pot of money to run their own programs, and get a few bits of equipment in their schools? Sure. But would that have had anywhere near the impact that having this purpose built, dedicated campus and specialist faculty? 🖇️ Ecosystem 🖇️ 🖇️ The school is part of Victoria University campus, meaning that VU students get to use the facilities. VU teaching students can come and get extra credentials around teaching the tech school programs. 🖇️ They partner with a range of tech companies, meaning that students get mentoring and exposure to a huge range of people, jobs, and career paths that they wouldn’t otherwise. And the tech companies get to (reasonably) input to the tech skills education of their future workforce. And this isn’t about just creating compliant little future tech drone workers. I loved that the programs and courses that the kids are doing are interdisciplinary and focused on a problem, not a ‘subject’. They layer on topics like ethics, communication, negotiation, cybersecurity, problem solving, data literacy, research, and collaboration as embedded part of the programs, rather than distinct ‘modules’. So yes, the kids have access to and learn with industrial grade software and hardware, but they’re ultimately learning the transferable fundamental skills that will set them up as the tech evolves. ➡️ Side note; I think that a lot more people / leaders / teams should be taking more ‘study tours’ like this to see what’s happening in the world. And you don’t need to (always) go to California to see what’s possible. Huge thanks to Sam for letting David and I come and nerd out for an hour / answering our endless questions. #FutureOfEducation #STEM #tech