The Visual Ars and Technology Department offers a diverse curriculum across a variety of subjects areas the Arts and Design fields. Teaching classrooms are located in the purpose built (2022) Ars and Design Centre and include up to date and relevant curriculum topics.
Year 9
Applied Computing
Renewable Technologies
Global renewable technologies are expanding rapidly. This subject connects science and technical application and encourages students to consider the world as it stands and the way in which alternative energy sources will play a part in its future. To understand the complexities of the renewables market, the course investigates traditional energy supplies, as well as alternative fuel sources including wave energy, hydroelectricity, biomass, and solar technology. Practical projects based around electronics, solar panels and power-based activities form the bulk of the coursework.
Robotics and Computing
In this course students are introduced to the thriving and expanding world of robotics and computing. Students will work individually and in ‘start-up squads’ to undertake a variety of projects. For example, they will use the Lego Mindstorms platform to produce a robotic vehicle with a range of capabilities. Following on from the Applied Computing elective at Year 7-8, students further develop their programming skills by designing and constructing a website for the vehicle they created, learning basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the process. There are also opportunities to program drones, a huge part of modern robotics, to undertake a variety of missions. App development, game development, 3D Computer Aided Design tools, 3D printing, and other topical subjects may also be explored.
Art
Art expressionism: Photography, Drawing and Printmaking
In this unit students will be given the tools to utilise visual language, using the studio process to explore the artforms of photography, digital art, drawing, and printmaking. The semester will focus on Expressionism focusing on contemporary self-portraiture and the idea of ‘The Selfie’. Students will be guided through developing aesthetic qualities to convey expression into their artistic practice using contemporary techniques and materials. Additionally, studying the art history of Expressionism and Symbolism as seen in the work of artists such as Edvard Munch and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Using this knowledge and the studio process, students will make an individual response to the thoughts and techniques of expressionist and symbolist ideas and produce a major expressive artwork(s) inspired by a key artist(s). Students are given a choice of topics and mixed media techniques (digital included) in the development of the final artworks for the semester.
Surrealism: Drawing, Painting and Sculpture
In this unit you will be given the tools to utilize visual language, using the studio process to explore the artforms of painting and sculpture. The semester will focus on Surrealism and how it shaped artistic practice in the modern era. You will study the art history of Surrealism as seen in the work of artists such as Salvador Dali, Kay Sage and Rene Magritte. Using this knowledge and the studio process, students will make an individual response to the thoughts and techniques of surrealist ideas and produce a major expressive artwork(s) inspired by a key artist from the era. Students are given a choice of topics and mixed media techniques (digital included) in the development of the final artworks for the semester.
Food
Cake by Design
Students will explore needs or opportunities to develop design briefs and investigate and select an increasingly sophisticated range of materials, components, tools and equipment to develop design ideas and undertake functional, structural and aesthetic analyses and constraints of design ideas. Complex and secondary processes are explored with in the practical component of this subject. Student will follow the design process using the following dimensions: a design brief, investigating, designing, producing, analysing and evaluating. Students in this area of design technology will produce a decorated fruit cake as their main assessment task. environmental, material and tool tasks on VOS.
Food for Home
A range of complex processes, techniques, time management and organisational skills are introduced. In this unit students plan and prepare a range of options for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as nutritious snack options. Students will develop and produce a two-course meal at home, working with in the Australian Dietary Guidelines as their main assessment task. Students will work using the design process using the following dimensions: a design brief, investigating, designing, producing, analysing and evaluating. Care of the kitchen regarding use of equipment and maintaining a clean, safe and hygienic environment are also emphasised in this unit.
Food for Life
This course will give students the foundation life skills involved in cooking and feeding oneself in the future. Students will be able to take the recipes used and reproduce them at home or on future camps. We will investigate eating practices and requirements for individuals as well as for families, using The Australian Dietary Guidelines. The assessment task requires students to design, cost out and produce a menu for their elective camp. There is a strong focus on food safety and personal hygiene within the kitchen. Students will learn foundation base recipes which can be altered and adjusted to aid in adding further variety to their cooking knowledge.
Media
Media Skills
Each day, stories are unfolding all around us, some familiar to us all, but others, to just a select few. In Semester 1, Media Skills, students will have the opportunity to analyse and evaluate a range of films, documentaries, and radio shows/podcasts, including both contemporary and old time, from a range of cultures including Aboriginal and Torre Strait Islander. They will undertake a range of technical-based and research activities to hone their skills, consider how viewpoints and values are expressed and manipulated through editing and examine narrative structure, genre and conventions of media forms, and look at the way media is distributed.
The Documentary
Media: The Documentary, Semester 2, challenges students to examine a part of our school culture with a focus on finding, and then telling, a compelling story. Working in small teams, they will conduct research to plan and pitch an idea for a documentary; the class will then move to creating either one or two collaborative media products, taking on a range of roles throughout the phases of pre-production, production, post- production, and distribution.
Visual Communication Design
Landscape Architecture and Fashion Design
In this subject, you will be given the tools to explore Landscape Architecture (Courtyard Design), Communication Design (Brand Identity logo) and a Fashion Design Folio. Underpinning the design process of each unit of work is ongoing analysis, reflection, and evaluation requiring creative, critical, and reflective thinking, referred to as design thinking. Preferred ideas are developed by digital applications (Adobe Illustrator) to create presentation formats that address components of a brief.
Watch Design and Marketing
In this subject, you will be given the tools to explore Architecture (One–Point Perspective Urban Underground), Industrial Design (Watch Design) and Communication Design (Brand Identity logo, marketing, and Advertising). Underpinning the design process of each unit of work is ongoing analysis, reflection and evaluation requiring creative, critical, and reflective thinking, referred to as design thinking. The study provides students to develop their two and three-dimensional drawing skills, selecting preferred ideas and applying materials, media, and digital applications (Adobe Illustrator) to create presentation formats that address components of a brief.
Wood
Skill Building
Design Technology - Wood in year 9 is a course intended to develop practical skills, terminology and encourage the enjoyment of making small furniture projects. For this reason, it is selected for 1 semester only. The students develop skills in Occupational Health and Safety, research ideas from design briefs, and the significance of digital drawing. They complete a number of tasks on VOS as a portfolio of evidence for design ideas, techniques, drawings and assessments. Students use timber from sustainable forests to produce two projects. They will also spend time learning about jobs within the building industry.
Year 10
Applied Computing
This broad digital technologies and computing course will allow students to gain knowledge and skills in a range of topics such as programming, software development, digital project management, cybersecurity and encryption, micro controllers such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, networking, data visualisation, user experience, as well as any other topical units. Students will develop their knowledge and skills in these topics and then complete projects to provide them with opportunities to develop creative solutions to real-world problems. There is no prerequisite for this elective.
Art
The course offers a range of art experiences aimed at developing a sense of observation. In a contemporary environment, you will engage in art-making processes in traditional and new media which involve exploring, selecting, and manipulating materials, techniques, processes, emerging technologies, and responses to Modern and Contemporary Art practices. A wide range of art forms are explored and interpreted including Drawing, Photography Painting, Printmaking, and 3D Art (Ceramics). Through this course, you will gain knowledge and appreciation of art and culture both in Australia and international contexts. The course will enable you to develop your visual literacy and communications skills enhancing critical thinking which is essential for wide cultural viewpoints.
Importantly excursions to galleries and visits from practicing artists are included in the program to enrich your art experience.
Our Arts and Design team focuses on creating opportunities that meet your learning needs, career choices, and interests. The Arts is a powerful creative outlet and the ideal launching pad for VCE Arts Creative Practice, VCE Arts Making and Exhibiting, VCE Visual Communication Design, and VCE Media.
Visual Communication Design
Designers create and communicate through visual means to shape the quality of our life.
The Design Fields include architecture and the built environment, fashion, product design, graphic design, illustration, urban planning and landscape design, advertising and marketing, engineering, and industrial design. All areas are based on understanding drawing and its conventions including computer-aided design to communicate form in either two – or three-dimensional form. Through the completion of sustained design projects, students are required to demonstrate the design process. The subject also tackles the broader skills and issues driving the multimedia revolution; the importance of Design thinking which is critical in all areas of the curriculum. Creative, critical, and reflective thinking (design thinking) supports students to progress in all subject areas. Methods include, printers, web access, a range of software tools including applications to support the creation and manipulation of text, graphic design, and images and input devices such as scanners, digital cameras, and drawing tablets.
Our Arts and Design team focuses on creating opportunities that meet your learning needs, career choices, and interests. The Arts is a powerful creative outlet and the ideal launching pad for VCE Visual Communication Design, Arts Creative Practice, VCE Arts Making and Exhibiting, and VCE Media.
Wood
Design Technology – Wood in year 10 is a course based on developing skills learnt in earlier years. This course has two major projects that the students need to produce and are developed from design briefs. The students make use of the internet to explore ideas and materials and then design each project, complete CAD drawings then accurate costing and cutting lists for their individual needs. The students also complete tasks based on environmental and political issues within the furnishing industry. All students complete a comprehensive review including rubric assessments for each task.
VCE
Applied Computing
This study equips students with a broad range of knowledge and skills that are required to adapt to a dynamic technological landscape, including the ability to identify emerging technologies, envisage new uses for digital technologies and consider the benefits that these technologies can bring to society at a local and at a global level.
VCE Applied Computing provides a pathway to further studies in areas such as business analysis, computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, data analytics and data science, data management, games development, ICT, networks, robotics, software engineering and telecommunications, and other careers relating to digital technologies.
Unit 1: Applied Computing
In this study you will study data visualisation by taking raw data through a transformation into information with meaning.
Areas of Study
- Data analysis
- Programming
Unit 2: Applied Computing
In this unit, students focus on developing innovative solutions to needs or opportunities that they have identified, and are given time to develop a product, prototype or proof-of-concept. They also develop important cybersecurity skills by proposing strategies for reducing security risks to data and information in our global networked environment.
Areas of Study
- Innovative solutions
- Network security
Applied Computing - Data Analytics
“Big data” is going to be one of the most important resources in this century. This study focuses on the nature of data and how it can be acquired, analysed to identify patterns or trends, structured efficiently, represented visually, and interpreted to extract meaning to produce information.
In this study students learn to identify and extract data using software tools such as online databases, spreadsheets, and data visualisation software. This data is then analysed and used to create attractive and meaningful data visualisations or infographics. These skills are vital for allowing modern businesses and organisations to make effective decisions.
Unit 3: Data Analytics
In this unit, students identify and extract large authentic datasets using online data repositories for patter and trend identification and analysis. After validation and testing techniques are applied to ensure the completeness and reasonableness of the data set, they create data visualisations or infographics according to given design principles and formats. They also apply the problem-solving methodology to commence their long-term School Assessed Task, creating a research question on a topic of their choosing for further study.
Areas of Study
- Data analytics
- Data analytics: analysis and design
Unit 4: Data Analytics
In this unit, students focus on determining the findings of a research question by developing infographics or dynamic data visualisations based on large complex data sets. An emphasis is placed on effective designs and clarity of message when communicating their findings to a target audience. Students apply computational thinking skills when developing their design ideas into infographics or dynamic data visualisations. They also investigate the current security strategies used by an organisation to protect data and information from accidental, event-based and deliberate threats, and make recommendations on how to improve current cybersecurity practices.
Areas of Study
- Data analytics: development and evaluation
- Cybersecurity: data and information security
Applied Computing - Software Development
In VCE Software Development students are given numerous opportunities to develop their computational, problem-solving, project planning, critical and creative thinking skills.
Unit 3: Software development
In this unit students develop an understanding of the analysis, design and development stages of the problem-solving methodology, applying this knowledge to develop working software modules using a programming language. For their School Assessed Task, students then go on to identify a need or opportunity in an area of their choosing. They select an appropriate development model, prepare a project plan, develop a software requirements specification and design their own software solution.
Areas of Study
- Software development: programming
- Software development: analysis and design
Unit 4: Software Development
In this unit students develop the design they prepared in Unit 3, Area of Study 2, into a software solution that meets an identified need or opportunity by applying the problem-solving stages of development and evaluation. They focus on how the information needs of individuals and organisations are met through the creation of software solutions. Students also consider the accidental, deliberate and event-based cybersecurity risks to software and data during the software development process, as well as throughout the use of the software solution by an organisation.
Areas of Study
- Software development: development and evaluation
- Cybersecurity: software security
Media
VCE Media supports students to develop and refine their planning and analytical skills, critical and creative thinking and expression, and to strengthen their communication skills and technical knowledge. Students gain knowledge and skills in planning and expression valuable for participation in and contribution to contemporary society. This study leads to pathways for further theoretical and/or practical study at tertiary level or in vocational education and training settings; including screen and media, marketing and advertising, games and interactive media, communication and writing, graphic and communication design, photography and animation.
Unit 1: Media forms, representation and Australian stories
In this unit students develop an understanding of audiences and the core concepts underpinning the construction of representations and meaning in different media forms.
Areas of Study
- Media Representations
- Media forms in productions
- Australian stories
Unit 2: Narrative across media forms
In this unit students further develop an understanding of the concept of narrative in media products and forms in different contexts. Narratives in both traditional and newer forms include film, television, sound, news, print, photography, games, and interactive digital forms.
Areas of Study
- Narrative, style and genre
- Narratives in production
- Media and change
Unit 3: Media narratives, contexts and pre-production
In this unit students explore stories that circulate in society through media narratives. They consider the use of media codes and conventions to structure meaning and explore the roles these play in media narratives. They investigate a media form that aligns with interest and intent, then use the pre-production stage to design the production of a media product for a specified audience.
Areas of Study
- Narrative and their contexts
- Research development and experimentation
- Pre-production planning
Unit 4: Media production, agency and control in and of the media
In this unit students focus on the production and post-production stages of the media production process, bringing the media production design created in Unit 3 to its realisation. The view a range of media products that demonstrate a range of views and values and they analyse the role the media products, and their creators, play.
Areas of Study
- Media production
- Agency and control in and of the media
Art Making and Exhibiting (Studio Arts)
VCE Art Making and Exhibiting provides students with opportunities to recognise their individual potential as artists, encourages self-expression and creativity, and can build confidence and a sense of individual identity. The study allows students to explore and experiment in creating, developing and engaging with the visual arts and helps build a strong skill set. Learning through, about and in the visual arts develops students’ critical thinking skills and their ability to interpret the worlds they live in. Students are encouraged to work both independently and collaboratively.
By engaging with artworks in different galleries, museums, other exhibition spaces and site-specific spaces, (in person or online), students view and research artworks and artists from local, national and international contexts. They also gain an understanding of how institutions present and display artworks and how they work with artists.
Looking at the artworks of a range of artists encourages students to become aware of difference and diversity in the views of others working in the arts industry, giving students a stronger understanding of the various forms that art may take. Importantly, students also gain an understanding of how their own and others’ artworks are curated, displayed and conserved.
Unit 1: Explore, expand and investigate
In this unit students explore materials, techniques and processes in a range of art forms. They expand their knowledge and understanding of the characteristics, properties and application of materials used in art making.
Areas of Study
- Explore – materials, techniques and art forms
- Expand – make, present and reflect
- Investigate – research and present
Unit 2: Design Explorations and Concepts
In Unit 2 students continue to research how artworks are made by investigating how artists use aesthetic qualities to represent ideas in artworks.
Areas of Study
- Understand – ideas, artworks and exhibition
- Develop – theme, aesthetic qualities and style
- Resolve – ideas, subject matter and style
Unit 3: Collect, extend and connect
In this unit students are actively engaged in art making using materials, techniques and processes. They explore contexts, subject matter and ideas to develop artworks in imaginative and creative ways.
Areas of Study
- Collect – inspirations, influences and images
- Extent – make, critique and reflect
- Connect – curate, design and propose
Unit 4: Consolidate, present and conserve
In Unit 4 students make connections to the artworks they have made in Unit 3, consolidating and extending their ideas and art making to further refine and resolve artworks in -specific art forms.
Areas of Study
- Consolidate – refine and resolve
- Present – plan and critique
- Conserve – present and care
Visual Communication Design
Visual communication design can inform people’s decisions about where and how they live and what they buy and consume. The visual presentation of information influences people’s choices about what they think, what they need or want. The study provides students with the opportunity to develop informed, critical and discriminating approaches to understanding and using visual communications and nurtures their ability to think creatively about design solutions. Design thinking, which involves the application of creative, critical and reflective techniques, supports skill development in areas beyond design, including science, business, marketing and management.
Unit 1: Introduction to visual communication design
This unit focuses on using visual language to communicate messages, ideas and concepts.
Areas of Study
- Drawing as a means of communication
- Design elements and design principles
- Visual communication in context
Unit 2: Applications of visual communication design within design fields
This unit focuses on the application of visual communication design knowledge, design thinking and drawing methods to create visual communications to meet specific purposes in designated design fields.
Areas of Study
- Technical drawing in context
- Type and imagery in context
- Applying the design process
Unit 3: Visual communication design practices
In this unit students gain an understanding of the process designers employ to structure their thinking and communicate ideas with clients, target audiences, other designers and specialists.
Areas of Study
- Analysis and practice in context
- Design industry practice
- Developing a brief and generating ideas
Unit 4: Visual communication design development, evaluation and presentation
The focus of this unit is on the development of design concepts and two final presentations of visual communications to meet the requirements of the brief.
Areas of Study
- Development, refinement and evaluation
- Final presentations
VET VCE Certificate II in Cookery
The VET VCE: Certificate II in Cookery program is nationally accredited program which is designed to provide students with training and skill development in basic food preparation and cookery skills. It also aims to provide students with access to a range of career paths within the hospitality industry. This program consists of Thirteen units, nine are covered with the first year. All units of competence are interwoven over approximately 185 hours of class time each year.
Pathways
This qualification may prepare individuals with limited range of food preparation and cookery skills to prepare food and menu items in a kitchen. Graduates typically provide routine and repetitive tasks and are directly supervised. This qualification does not meet requirements for trade recognition as a cook but can provide a pathway towards achieving that. Pathways may include employment into various workplaces within the hospitality industry such as restaurants, hotels, catering operations, clubs, cafes, coffee shops, institutions, ages care facilities, hospitals, prisons and schools. Typical roles include breakfast cook, catering assistant, fast food cook, sandwich hand and takeaway cook.
VET VCE Certificate II in Furniture Making Pathway
The VCE VET furnishing program covers a wide range of design and production skills, culminating in the construction of two substantial pieces of handcrafted furniture. Students completing the program will have the skills and knowledge required to work in a production environment in both the manufacture of free-standing furniture or built in cabinets and provide onsite assistance in the installation of these items.
