Wesley takes science to new heights
Wesley College will spend $8 million to turn its science block into a building that more closely resembles Scitech than traditional school classrooms.
The revolutionary design includes a built-in beehive, ants nest and three-storey "living wall" of plants with an aquaponics system.
A two-storey "drop zone" will allow students to experiment with gravity and will include a wind turbine to send objects back up against the gravitational pull.
Headmaster David Gee said the South Perth school spent 18 months visiting and consulting leading scientific institutions and experts such as Perth's Scitech discovery centre, John Monash Science School in Melbourne, Google creative director Lee Hunter and British technology guru Stephen Heppell.
"The idea is to engage and excite boys to think scientifically," Mr Gee said.
"Having them engaged in experiential learning where they actually do something with principles - like Bernoulli's principles of wind resistance - leads to a much deeper understanding of it than if you teach it and they can answer a question in a test."
Science was already popular at Wesley, so the new building was not about getting more boys to study science or to improve their marks.
It was just as important to inspire creativity in science as in the arts.
"Most inventions come from scientific creative thinking," Mr Gee, who trained as a science teacher, said. The refurbished building would itself be a giant science experiment, with sensors in the walls to collect data, he said. Other walls would be interactive screens.
Instead of rows of desks and bunsen burners in classrooms, the building would be divided into multidisciplinary learning spaces.
Science teachers supplied a wish list of gadgets, including parabolic dishes, molecular microscopes, telescopes and a mass spectrometer and internal architecture and services would be exposed to reveal the science behind a building.
Construction is due to start in October and take a year.
State education ministers will meet today to discuss a proposal to make science and maths compulsory for students in Years 11 and 12.
