Science teachers at Melbourne's Glen Waverley Secondary College don't need to get out a big ruler and protractor to teach students about refraction and reflection in physics. They just open up their school's intranet on the interactive whiteboard, use their index finger like a mouse to select the right Java application and up pops a digital tool to show the effect of light through convex and concave lenses.
When a humanities teacher starts a debate about the controversy surrounding the 'stolen generation' of aboriginal children, who were taken from their families by the Australian authorities and church missions, instead of asking pupils to write a dry essay, he sets them working in teams to make YouTube videos. And when English teachers want to demonstrate how a story pivots on choice, not character, they ask an audiovisual assistant to prepare a clip from last night's Home and Away, the TV soap opera, and flash it up on screen.
'We are catering for the screen generation,' said humanities teacher Daniel Strauss. 'I think we are brave to say this, but kids today get bored just looking at their teachers. What they like is for their lesson to be broken up with multimodal text, video and audio, and we do that using interactive screens.'
But it is not all about having fun. It is part of a long-term strategy to encourage pupils to become independent active learners who think about how they are learning.
In some ways, Glen Waverley is an unremarkable school. Situated in a comfortable but not wealthy east Melbourne suburb, its 2,000 pupils come from a wide range of backgrounds, although about half are from Chinese, Indian and Sri Lankan immigrant families.
But it is highly innovative in the way it has relentlessly reconfigured itself into a school where the walls are movable, the lessons are rich in resources and students are trusted to go off during lessons and work independently in foyers, on pods of computers dotted around the building.