VISIONS TOMORROW OF

Asmall cohort of students at Oakleigh State School, Brisbane, are participating in a new educational program that will help them, as today’s learners, to dream up a future for tomorrow. ‘First Kids on Mars’ sees students begin mastering the necessary literacies they will need to The Mars 2020 rover mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and will be the most sophisticated of all the rovers to land on Mars. The mission will seek for signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past and search for signs of past microbial life itself. Included onboard is a Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyser known as MEDA. The analyser will take weather measurements including wind speed and direction, temperature and humidity, and also measure the amount and size of dust particles dream up their own jobs, roles and vocations in tomorrow’s post-work, automated world. Developed by local social enterprise Future-U.org ‘First Kids on Mars’ teaches important future literacies. Founder and teacher Jonathan Nalder has constructed the program from the very best elements of what works in education such as personalised learning, design thinking, role-play and digital learning. Nalder is keen to help students think beyond today so that they can truly thrive tomorrow. He has identified the following as essential skills: in the Martian atmosphere. A supercam on the rover will examine rocks and soils with a camera, laser and spectrometers to seek organic compounds that could be related to past life on Mars. It will be able to identify the chemical and mineral makeup of targets as small as a pencil point from a distance of more than 7 metres. The mission is timed for a launch opportunity in July/August 2020. Nalder believes that students “need their creative thinking to be applied and practised via real life learning experiences that also incorporate entrepreneurial opportunities so they can learn how to make projects self-sustaining with a real impact on their communities”. The first local version of this program was recently launched with 20 students who are part of the Young Innovator’s program run by Oakleigh State School Head of Innovation, Nicola Flanagan. Students began week one with the first ‘future literacy’ of Creativity by immersively imagining leaving Earth, as well as by exploring what life might be like in 2035. As part of this session students were able to chat with and quiz Aussie astrobiologist Richard Blake about when people will really get to Mars, and what might be the first things a community will need to thrive there. Blake has worked as a researcher at the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah. He firmly believes that humans will definitely be on Mars within his lifetime. The First Kids on Mars program will continue during Term 2 with the students undertaking investigations that will enable them to develop learnings about community, thinking and planning skills, project delivery and storytelling. They will present their ideas and solutions at the end of the program which is also being run in the USA in June, giving students the chance to collaborate globally.