Below are Featured Speaker presentations from 2011. We’ll be organising some great Featured Speakers for 2012 – details will appear here as soon as we have them confirmed.
Smarter, simple and social: QR codes and beyond Anne Bartlett-Bragg, MEd (Adult Ed), BEd (Adult Ed), Dip HRM, Dip e-Learning, Cert IV TAA, PhD candidate
QR codes are integrated throughout this conference, but what is the connection to learning and how might you adapt these innovations into your own practice? The presentation will review current examples of QR codes in learning contexts, then explore some newer innovations as we progress to a more mobile-oriented learning future.
Smarter, simple, social: QR codes & beyond
Yesterday, Today & A Better Tomorrow Adrian Camm, Curriculum Innovation, Quantum Victoria
The future is now – the current pace of technological change is so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life is being irreversibly transformed. As industries across the world are being turned upside down by this change, education systems are holding onto romantic notions of nostalgia, clinging to the past, using outdated metrics in the face of mounting evidence that challenges the status quo. The inertia inherent with system-wide reform efforts means that we are wasting valuable time with the continual dialogue about the “schools we need.” Instead of waiting for policy-makers, those involved in education at a local level just need to follow the slogan, “Do it first, make trouble, inspire change.” It is time to redefine teachers as learning designers. Transmedia and Video Games present this opportunity – the opportunity to create deeper, stronger connections between schools, students and learning.
Classroom of the Future Cisco Systems
Brought to you directly from San Jose, US, via Cisco’s life-size and high-definition TelePresence™ video solution, Cisco will offer a demonstration of video and collaboration tools in a classroom setting. This session will present an overview of technologies that present new ways of delivering education to students, aid professional development for educators and provide administrative support for staff.
Anarchy in Learning Stephen Collis, Director of Innovation, Northern Beaches Christian School, Sydney
The great bureaucracies of modern society provided a wonderful illusion of control and a mirage of accountability and quality control. We know better now. We know that control undermines initiative, dampens drive, and reduces motivation to ticking the box, getting the cash, or receiving a grade. We know that, at our best, we can be so much more. A better way involves risks, vulnerability, relationship, and results in a special kind of learning that may be chaotic in appearance, but is organic and blissfully fruitful in substance. Like the emergence of Wikipedia, we rely entirely on good faith, good will, and the sheer love of learning. If you have a culture, you don’t need control. The dominoes simply fall. At Northern Beaches Christian School we’re embracing this journey, knocking down walls and reconfiguring physical spaces (think: huge halls with 180 students) and digital spaces (think: Moodle, Minecraft, Open Sim, blogosphere) to support a hive-mind community-of-learning driven by students. And, lo, it works!
Read more at anarchy in learning. Below is a video Steve made of his school’s learning spaces – with effects added at YouTube.
From the matrix to a process-networks Dean Groom, Head of Educational Development, Macquarie University
“Cyberspace is a consensual hallucination created within the dense matrix of computer networks in a world where people can directly jack their nervous systems into the net, vastly increasing the intimacy of the connection between mind and matrix. “ – McKenzie Wark, 1992.
The application of ICT in education is generally well established, as a principle as well as an evolving practice in which significant issues remain when dealing with schools, teachers and children. The Internet has made singularity of information uncommon and content is no longer scarce when looking for answers. For many, making sense of this creates is a need to develop and apply process-networks to their daily lives, finding answers in people as well as content. This feature explores what successful communities look like, how they work and how the principles of game-theory can be applied in the classroom to create social-emotion learning experiences within the needs of the curricula.
Trends, Tools and Tactics for Powerful Learning Kevin Honeycutt, Technology Integration Specialist at ESSDACK, Kansas USA
This session is a fun look at the exciting things that happen when educators step outside their boxes and try new tools. It reinforces the importance of relationships while encouraging teachers to become learners again through positive examples of student success. Kevin will share the notion of self-directed staff development and delve into what it takes to build your own Personal Learning Network (PLN). We’ll explore powerful tools and the stories that help educators understand the importance of maintaining a willingness to embrace these tools in education.
LifePractice: getting it right Ginger Lewman, Educational Consultant at ESSDACK, Kansas USA
For the past half decade Ginger led a growing team of energetic, determined students, parents, and teachers to create a truly exciting environment for learning: the LifePractice Model, where content and skills harmonize with real-life learning. Ginger will share success and challenge stories, illustrating how the ubiquitous integration of technology was the key that connected her students to their work, their passions, and the world.
Why go to Uni? (Learning what versus learning how) Adrian Miles, Senior Lecturer in Cinema and New Media, RMIT University
In industrial education size and scale matters. The size of classes, the size of your marks, the number of words. Things get measured that can be easily measured and that helps underwrite what teaching learns to value. In industrial education universities mattered because that was where you had to go to find experts, a library of odd books, and equipment. These are quantities of things, but since they used to be all scarce it didn’t really matter about that much else, about what its post industrial reverse might be. If anyone can get these things now without going to a university, then why go? What does, or should, a university do as a place of learning so that it matters? This is a problem about learning as a quality, not a quantity. It is a simple proposition, but one which universities, let alone academics, don’t understand. Oh, and the paradigm shift that is network literacy underwrites all this. Click here for an audio version of the presentation.
Game to Learn? Dr Bronwyn Stuckey, Innovative Educational Ideas & Massively Productive
Games are more than just fun motivators for learning. They offer learners the opportunity to grapple with complex problems and learn about themselves and the impact they as individuals can have on their world. Whether in the River of Justice, Quest Atlantis, Minecraft or World of Warcraft, the virtual world game brings together the power of videogames, academics, and participation in socially-meaningful activities. Playing these games serves to enhance the lives of children while helping them grow into confident, knowledgeable, responsible, and empathetic adults. This session will examine the ways in which these games are truly transformational when learners tinker with, roleplay, design and mod concepts and practices to solve authentic real world problems. We will also look at the role of the educator in this context and why teachers, as learners themselves, need to get back in touch with their own sense of play.
Cultural Bridges – Connecting Students to Students to Increase Cultural Awareness Jan Zanetis, Education Advocate for Cisco Systems in Australia
Developing cultural awareness and global citizenship is critical in today’s classrooms. What better way for students to interact with peers from around the world than with interactive videoconferencing? Hear from students and teachers that have participated in video conversations with students from across the world… to exchange cultural information and practice language skills. Find out how simple it is to identify a collaborative project for your students to participate in or to post your own project ideas. Discover how these cultural exchanges can lead to lasting relationships that span the distance and connect into multiple areas of your curriculum.
