Grok Academy undertakes joint projects with industry and government. Each project has a particular and current theme and incorporates industry-relevant topics to support the implementation of Digital Technologies in the classroom. This section highlights a selection of the projects that Grok Academy is currently working on.
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The Schools Cyber Security Challenges programme is an industry/Australian government collaboration designed to provide school teachers with resources to support the teaching of cyber security concepts, and to inform students of career opportunities in the field. This is achieved primarily through the development of a series of classroom activities — courses delivered through the Grok platform that focus on specific topics linked to the Australian Curriculum. These activities are designed for students in years 5-12.
The Schools Cyber Security Challenges courses have been available online since early 2019. In the 2020/21 fiscal year, 66,065 unique students enrolled in the Schools Cyber Security Challenges. And 1,551 teachers and 1,541 schools participated in the Schools Cyber Security Challenges.
Cyber Skills Aotearoa is an industry/New Zealand government collaboration that partners closely with CORE Education Tātai Aho Rau, to create unplugged and online resources that provide teachers and students with classroom-ready activities and challenges to develop students’ cyber security skills and dispositions. All resources are being created in both English and te reo Māori. Activities and challenges are aligned with the New Zealand Curriculum and designed to raise awareness of cyber security careers. These activities are intended for students in years 6-13.
The first Cyber Skills Aotearoa online course was released in October 2022.
The Digital Technologies (DT) Applied programme is an industry collaboration designed to provide school teachers with resources to support the teaching of relevant DT skills and dispositions, and to inform students of career opportunities in the technology sector. Working closely with industry, the project is pursuing four skills/dispositions which are in demand in the workplace and have links to the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies. Courses are delivered online via the Grok platform. There are also unplugged resources. The program covers four key applied technology skills—design thinking, user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design, cloud computing and data analytics. The first course will be released in 2022.
The Automation Challenges project is an industry collaboration designed to provide school teachers with resources to support the teaching of digital technologies concepts, specifically automation and data science, using real-world industry examples from the resources/mining sector. The Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA is the principal partner, with:
The project is being delivered through a series of phases, with each introducing different year levels to automation and data science. The target audience is school students in foundation to year 10, as well as their teachers. The project is currently being rolled out in the Pilbara Region.
The Quantum Challenges project is an industry collaboration with an objective to develop intro-level classroom activities for year 9 and 10 students to excite teachers and students about the opportunities in Quantum Computing and for students to consider a career in this field. The classroom activity extensively connects with school STEM topics to demonstrate the link between STEM and computing.
In March 2021, Grok Academy successfully completed the four year, $10m DT Challenges project. The project was funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. The project achieved:
The project was over-proportionally successful in remote and outer regional areas. It released over 65 resources and conducted over 150 teacher professional development events and webinars.