Located on the outskirts of Darwin (NT), Ludmilla Primary is a small school of 94 students, more than half of which Indigenous or have a language background other than English. The past decade has been difficult for the school as they have struggled to attract students from their local community, resulting in a steady decline of student numbers.

To demonstrate to their local community that the school is the choice for their children, the Digital Literacy Project was established. The project focused on building teacher capacity to integrate digital technology in their practice and building the essential learner attributes that students need for the work of the future. Students are developing higher order thinking, creativity, curiosity, problem solving skills, as well as communication and collaboration skills.

All students have weekly Digital Literacy lessons and all teachers engage weekly with a Digital Literacy Coach. One day per term is put aside for planning and programming.

Funded through Schools Plus, this project has transformed the school’s reputation in the local community. Project leaders reported that:

1. The school is now recognised as a leader in robotics.
2. A Kids as Teachers event showcased the program to the local community.
3. The school is starting to receive more enquiries for enrolments. Enrolments have improved by 24%
4. The students are a great help to teaching staff and are co-teachers for each digital literacy session
5. The school is now supporting another school to get its Digital Literacy Program off the ground

“Students will often encourage each other to ‘Stick to it and not give up’ or when something is not working, they can be heard saying ‘let’s see what else we can think of to solve this problem. I wonder if we have had a similar problem before.” – Ludmilla Teacher

“It has really helped me get better at technology because our teacher, Mr Tom, helps us with the programming of the BeeBots, Spheros and EV3 robots.”  – Year 5 Ludmilla Student

“There’s always a different type of robot that we are working on each term. I know that we’re not going to do the coda-pillars or BeeBots because we have moved ahead, and I think we are now up to Dash & Dot and other robots. I also like when in Tournament of Minds we were able to use what we learnt in robotics.” – Year 3 Ludmilla Student

“My 8-year-old son has benefitted tremendously from the technology and online learning resources at Ludmilla Primary School, where he has been a student for the past 2.5 years. In early 2020, due to being in a high-risk category for COVID, my son also utilised these online resources to supplement his learning during 3 weeks of home school.” – Ludmilla Parent