Cyber security. Gaming. Data analysis. Augmented reality. App and website design. Digital industries are firmly embedded in the South Australian landscape – and students at Rostrevor College have their fingers firmly on the keyboards to career success.
Under the tutelage of Vlad Baclagian, senior digital technologies teacher, students are learning the skills that will shape their digital futures: Apache server, Maria SQL, PHP, JavaScript and more. “Digital technologies are everywhere” Mr Baclagian says. “There are computers in everything from your fridge to a rocket.”
But whether it’s a fridge or a rocket, all technology essentially functions in the same way and relies on the same key principles. It’s Baclagian’s job to bestow his students with these principles: younger students gain entry into HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Python, while older students get to grips with the more challenging Java coding that powers global enterprises.
Year 10 student Joshua Polkinghorne’s interest in digital technologies was sparked when he attended his first class in Year 7; since then he has topped the leaderboard in his age group at the international Web.Comp competition with a perfect score in the advanced category, and is embedding what he has learned into his life outside school. “I work at a cafe and they recently asked me to improve their website,” he says.
He intends to extend his learning into tertiary education. “I like coding and want to meld it with engineering,” he says. “I want to hopefully get into a course related to engineering and computer science.”
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