By Casey Neill
A Dandenong North student will soon star on TV in Singapore.
Computer whiz Seth is excelling at Wooranna Park Primary and sharing knowledge with his peers.
His father relocated from Singapore to Australia last year after finding the school during a world-wide online search.
Kaylee Soh from Singapore’s Media Corp read about the move and asked the family to join her documentary series.
“It’s for one episode of a series about four talented kids in different fields,” she said.
“Seth codes, he can do amazing things with Minecraft, he’s learning how to do block chain…
“It’s really interesting and really relevant to the technology landscape at the moment.”
Ms Soh flew to Melbourne with a cameraman, added a local crew member and joined Seth and his family in Dandenong North.
Her focus is on how his parents chose the school and how Wooranna Park has helped him blossom.
She said he wasn’t getting the right kind of education in Singapore so she wanted to find out what was different about the system at Wooranna Park.
His family told Ms Soh that he’d grown more confident and made friends and they were glad they made the sacrifice of moving countries.
“They think it’s worth it,” she said.
Seth was playing building and adventure game Minecraft when the Journal stopped by the school on Tuesday 30 January.
He then ran to the school’s virtual reality room, donned goggles to immerse himself in an online sphere and searched for cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
“He’s interest in so many things and he’s going a mile an hour,” Ms Soh said.
She’s also explored the wider Dandenong North community and spoken to Seth’s teachers.
On Wednesday 31 January the film crew flew Seth to Sydney to meet Professor Andrea Morello at the University of New South Wales.
He’ll answer Seth’s questions and show him a quantum computer.
“Seth’s father said he was really interested in seeing it,” Ms Soh said.
“We wanted to give him a surprise.”
Seth said the computer “uses atoms to make kilobits” and he was excited to see the “really new technology”.
“Soon it will be our everyday thing,” he said.
Principal Ray Trotter explained that normal computers worked vertically but the quantum computer could also work horizontally.
He said a standard computer could handle a zero or a one at any given time, but a quantum machine could handle both simultaneously.
“They can solve problems so much faster,” Mr Trotter said.
The half-hour program on Seth will screen on Channel 5 in Singapore in March.
