Galileo Pieces

A collection of pieces of different students talking about their Galileo Experience

Gina Salloum and Chloe Fox – Term 3 Galileo students – writing on their overall Term 3 experience:

Our time during Term 3 while participating in the Galileo Program was something that we never would have imagined and we are sure that everyone had lots of fun. Unfortunately, we did have to learn over the computer screen because of the pandemic, but nonetheless it was an amazing experience. Galileo was very different to normal classes but in a good way. It was more self-directed, meaning you could choose a topic that interests you, so it was more engaging. One challenging thing that we and many others faced, was just having to adjust, not only because it was through Google meet, but because it was such a different learning style. Having everyone participate during lessons made the whole experience much more rewarding. The teachers, Trent, Matt & Ester, were also a massive part of making this program special especially during this hard time. They were inviting, made the lessons fun, and made everyone feel welcome and comfortable. We had many guest speakers which included the Victorian Women’s Trust, Children’s Ground, Littlefoot and Company, and NGV Virtual Trails who each took us through different presentations covering various topics. The topics discussed related to the potential options for what we could base our research on. These excursions really helped us learn more about the world's problems and to then later come up with an innovation for our main assessment. Having only a couple of major tasks to focus on gave us more time to have interactive sessions like Kahoots and virtual trails. We even had some interesting conversations throughout our lessons and we shared images of our delicious lunches and some of our old baby photos! One highlight from the Galileo Program was the last week, especially as we got to choose what activities we wanted to do. Our favourite lesson from that was the pancake making session with Ester. Everyone turned on their cameras and it was great to see the many pictures of our end results. Overall, Galileo was a fantastic and memorable experience, not even Covid-19 could stop us from having lots of fun!

Galileo having a virtual art therapy session

Xander Keating – current Term 4 Galileo student – writing on his experience so far in Term 4:

My experience so far in Galileo has been pretty good. It is very different from our normal structured classes but it’s good because it challenges our learning in new ways and requires us to be in control of our own research and learning. It's a good program for the students of University High School because it teaches us new techniques and skills for us to use later in our lives such as asking better and more effective questions, becoming better problem solvers and improving our collaboration skills. We also get educated on ethics and the law. Taking part of the Galileo program online was enjoyable. It was very organised and easy to follow along. I found the lessons interesting and engaging as it was refreshing learning about different topics like the global goals. The Galileo teachers are all very very helpful, nice and easy to get along with. They all do a great job and make the experience a lot more enjoyable.

Maddy Gilbo – current Term 4 Galileo student – writing on her research review experience:

For the beginning of Year 9 Galileo this term, we started a project called a Research Review where we were required to choose a research topic and come up with an interesting question to collect resources and try to answer. We learnt how to properly reference sources and assess their credibility so that we could make sure we were using accurate information. The topic I chose was the effect of ocean acidification on coral reefs in Australia. To research I visited the school library website and looked through information databases, newspapers and other suggested sources to find websites and articles which were relevant to my topic. I analysed these sources by comparing them to see some of the similarities and differences between the articles and wrote down some key points I found in each. Something I found challenging about this project was looking through the sources I was provided as there were quite a few of them and something I found rewarding was expanding my knowledge significantly and also gaining some experience researching.