My View

Hi, I'm a year 9 student at Mordialloc College. I'm currently in the MEXP program.
So far it's been really fun and interesting. We've just completed our "Local Experience" project. So far we have done some pretty sweet stuff like, exploring Mordialloc street, Beach and Creek, we visited Holmesglen TAFE and adventured around the campus. Soon we will spend two weeks in the City and help out at our community work placements that were selected for us.

What it loks like from where I sit!

a couple of friends of mine.

Mordialloc Creek


Samples being taken

A rubbish trap doing it's job

Into the lab
Last week we spent some time down at the Mordialloc Creek, a famous local waterway with a long history of human use. We collected some water samples from the creek bank and we have kept them in a safe place until today. We have managed to book some time in the senior school labroratory where, with the help of a dedicated lab manager, we were able to mount our spamples and view them under microscopes. The results were amazing! "There was way more stuff in there than I imagined and the little micro things were really energetic." The types of "micro-things" we discovered were paramecium and they were in everyone's samples no matter where the sample was taken. Also the dirtier and smellier the sample the more paramecium there were. This leads us to believe that the presence of paramecium means contaminated water.



Working hard

VIDEO OF MORDI CREEK WATER X 400

This video was captured using our new state of the art microscope software and clearly shows the paramecium swimming around in the sample of creek water.

In the line of Duty
We went down to the creek to collect some water samples but silly me went in the creek. I stood on a large log and grabbed hold of a stick that was sticking out of the mud. I collected my sample and headed back to ground but it was not over. I put my foot down hoping it was safe but when I stood up it sunk ankle deep in the mud. Yuk, my socks were wet and muddy and my shoes were smelling like dead fish. That was my big adventure to the creek- turns out it was a swimming success.

At the Beach

We all wandered down to the beach at Aspendale. There were some graders doing some work building an environment wall to stop the king tides from taking all the sand from the beach. We interviewed one of the operators and he told us that it was to protect the grassed sand dunes from being degraded. The big bags of sand were stacked up 7 high. This system was better than building a rock wall he told us because the rock walls eventually become infested with rats. The operators worked for an environmental engineering company and they expected to be working here for another 6 weeks. What a job!!!





The very helpful and friendly Dominic on the job.
Beachbags full of sand.

Bigger Digger placing the bags.

You can see the wall fore of the grassy area.
Meanwhile, further up the beach.
There was evidence of human impact all over the place from rubbish being washed up, retaining walls built at the creek mouth, playgrounds on the foreshore, the peir and a beach promenade at the back of the sand. From these photos its easy to see how much we love to be at the beach, now if we can just clean up as we leave.............
Rubbish.


A team in action.

Creek mouth Northside


Creek mouth, Southside



A high impact zone.

This is a mural painted on a wall by the creek depicting a scene at the beach from 1934. This shows the long history of human influence on this area.

Another high imact zone.

These girls were very involved with the work they were doing in the field.

An interesting discovery was to find a film crew filming Catronia Rowntree. Possibly for one of those lifestyle shows that are so popular.
Down by the Creek........................


This morning we visited the creek to collect soil and water samples to take back to the science lab to test. We chose 2 sites, one just above the boat ramp and another 200 metres further upstream. Our plan is to analyse the samples to compare turbidity (cloudiness) and to look under microscope power to see if there are any micro-organisms present.

These are samples from 2 sites that we plan to test next week.

Also we noted as many of the examples of flora and fauna that we could gather with plans to try and identify them from resources back at school.


We'll keep you posted8-)

Wednesday 19th February

Let's Go Shopping

We had $250 to spend on weekly groceries. Shopping list was toilet paper, toothpaste, shampoo, fruit and vegies, meat and dairy, luxury items and many other dailynessecities. We've got about 2/3 of the items so far and we've already spent $168. We are quietly confident we'll make the cut.
This was all done in the pouring rain, our sheets were soaked through, but we had hot chips on the way home and it was fun.

Stand back - I'm hungry.

Sampling the local fodder.

Some of the items on our list.

The Local Experience

It's now week 4 and the next phase of the operation is to go out into the local environment and visit sites of interest in the suburb. A number of tasks that will provide an insight in the workings of the suburb have been written up. Some examples of the choices are;

• Eating Out- Write a Good Food Guide for the local area.
  
• Green Wedges- A look at the land set aside for parks, gardens and nature reserves within the suburb.


• Let's go Shopping- A shopping list. $50. Who can hunt down the best value for money in Mordialloc?


• Bay Dredging- Possibly the hottest topic floating around the bayside suburbs at the moment.


• Mordialloc Monopoly- Create a local edition of this much-loved board game.


• Wetlands- A look at these unique wildlife areas.

These and many more tasks are available to complete, it's now just a matter of getting motivated and involved in the ares the appeal to you.

Some action shots from Tuesday of week 4

Doing the prep work before going out in the field.

AT THE WETLANDS

I think I've found something

.

An example of a pristine environment?

These could well be the views that greeted the first settlers over 200 years ago.

Friday 15th February.....The Real Game continues

After two torrid weeks of applying for positions, writing resumes, being terminated, applying for new positions, balancing a budget, playing the stockmarket and generally doing the sorts of things one does when you're out in the workforce earning a living it was time for some relaxation. Here we are after we've balanced our budgets and found a little spare to play with. The games available were designed with a probability focus and boy, we quickly learded how fast that hard earned slipped through your fingers.

Our visit to Holmesglen Tafe...

Today we went to Holmesglen TAFE in East Malvern. We saw students studying different trades. Areas like the different types of carpentry, joinery, flooring, bricklaying, stonemasonry, roof plumbing, roof tiling, wall and floor tiling, glazing, plastering, houseplumbing, painting. All these areas we viewed from a walkway high above the floor. Here's a snippet of the day....

Bobcat Driving Practice

Floor Tiling

Roofing

Guided Tour

We also visited the design section where the students were working on computers designing houses and other sorts of buildings

CAD drawing

Brochure Wall - Very Popular!

Students hard at work watching instructional videos from the College's Clickview library. These videos show insightful glimpses of the state of the jobmarket and how best to negotiate the tricky path to employment.

More of ........The Real Game

Here we are continuing to play the real game. We're up to the part where we've gotten our first job and we are now trying to balance the budget!?????!

The Real Game

The real game is where we are living adult lifes and experiencing real job situations and experiences. We are given a booklet that has real job applications,resumes. We make

Mr E just give us the thumbs up

Ryan is concentrating very well