I don’t want to worry you, but in the not so distant future the machines will rise up and replace us! You’d have to have been hiding in a cave to have not heard about the way technology is going to replace us in the workforce. Some research estimates that around 40% of the jobs we have today in Australia will be lost to automation within the next 10 to 15 years. Already robots make cars, cars can drive themselves, trucks are already autonomous, plows use gps to plow fields…  However, we have to plan for such a future and what better way than to provide students with the skills which they may need in our ever increasingly technological world.

This week we started working with Dot and Dash. We’ve already used coding in other activities but working with the robots has a little more appeal for the students. They are able to construct blockly style code in order to make the robots move, light up, speak and even communicate. We’ll be doing this for a number of weeks throughout the term. You never know, your child may just be the one who programmes the machines that put the rest of us out of a job. Not to worry, though, I always fancied having more leisure time – I seriously need to work on my tan.