Jessica Davies is enrolled in the Bachelor of Information Technology course at QUT. She is majoring in Computer Science and Mobile Applications. She is very talented and many of her intellectual and personal qualities were evident on this trip.  Here are some of her thoughts about the trip.    

The ten days spent in Malaysia as a part of this project have been one of the highlights of my degree. My particular team focused on teaching the year six students renewable energy concepts in a way that promoted digital literacy and hands-on learning. The day-to-day teaching team consisted of three students from UPM – Hamiza, Zaitun, and Celementina – and three students from QUT – Anthony, Mitchell, and I. Over the three days of teaching, we introduced the students to circuit building using Little Bits, programming using Scratch, and a combination of the two, where Scratch was used to program an Arduino board connected to a Little Bits circuit.

Pleasing to see the change in my students

Our team encountered many challenges throughout our time teaching at SKT, most of which arose from technological issues. We found that the skills and capabilities of the year six students were far better than we had anticipated, with the students picking up concepts much quicker than we had planned. This was a challenge in itself, as it meant that we were having to come up with increasingly challenging tasks that we hadn’t previously prepared. Overall, things went really well, and we all had a lot of fun learning with the year six students.

Planning with my team

For me, the absolute highlight of the experience was seeing the year six girls grow in confidence over the course of the week. On the first day I noticed that the female students were very hesitant to ask questions or engage with the hands-on activities, outside of what they had been instructed to do. By the end of the week, they were laughing and asking questions, and playing with the Little Bits in a much more confident and creative way. Something that I’d also like to mention is that I really appreciated everyone being so lovely and welcoming, especially during the homestay and our arrival at the airport.

Our warm welcome at KL airport