How Ruyton Girls’ School in Melbourne is connecting with Bay Primary School in South Africa

ruyton girls nuturing

Nurturing Global Relationships

This year our Year 4 girls became only the second school of students in Australia to become involved in the international program Level Up Village. The mission of Level Up Village is to globalise the classroom and facilitate seamless collaboration between students from around the world via pioneering Global STEAM (STEM + Arts) enrichment courses. We became digital pen-pals with classes at Bay Primary School in South Africa, some 40 km outside of Cape Town. Our girls were paired or grouped with students from that school and while the STEM focus for both schools was the Global Water Crisis, our girls gained much more than the experience of building aquifers and water filters. Our Year 4s made videos to share with their buddies, undertook joint project tasks and learnt a great deal about the impending and looming fear in South Africa that is Day Zero, a predicted day postponed in 2018, where the taps in homes throughout Cape Town would not turn on due to a generational drought. While our girls had to reflect on their family’s own current water use, they learnt a whole lot more. We set time each week to make video entries for our buddies in South Africa to read. While these revolved around the Global Water Crisis there were also times when joint questions were posed, such as ‘If you came to my country where would I take you?’ It was great relationship-building, with some of the South African children wanting to take our girls to wildlife parks and some of our girls wanting them to visit the MCG and Great Barrier Reef. Some students at Bay Primary in Kalk Bay don’t have internet or technology at home and sometimes their exposure to suitable technology occurs only once a week at school. Lessons in sympathy and empathy were highlights of our learning journey, as was working collaboratively with classmates and students half a world away and experiencing the foibles often associated with technology being managed and stored in different parts of the word. Mr Tony Doyle, Teacher of STEM and Green Team Leader ‘You would have to use your water reasonably. You have to use the water to brush your teeth, flush the toilet, showers, washing dishes, clothes and to drink. My buddy in LUV has to take two-minute showers to save water. I am worried that my buddy who doesn’t live right in Cape Town will go through Day Zero.’  Grace A

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