Rambling Teacher's Blog

For the second year running, I had the privilege of taking three students to the VITTA annual conference to present a workshop on developing APPs using Corona SDK. This year, I took Ally from year 8, Yara from year 9 and Ping from year 11 (not their real names!). All three are members of the Avila College APP Group.  Preparation In  my reflection on last year's experience , I wrote that 5 weeks would be needed to prepare the students. Unfortunately, this year's conference was at the start of week 4 of the school term. Starting at the end of the last semester would have been impractical as it would have clashed with exams and report-writing. Still, we met twice a week and the girls ran one of the APP Group meetings as a rehearsal.

On Monday, August 29th, I was joined by three of my students in presenting a workshop at the Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association conference: Leading and Learning from the Edge. We ran a workshop entitled: "Building mobile Apps for iOS and Android Devices using Corona SDK." I was very proud of the three girls (I work at a girls' school) and I wanted to write this blogpost in their honour. Context At our school, an Apps programming club has been running for a term and a half. When I received the "call for papers" from VITTA, I thought it would be a good idea to involve some students as this would motivate them and give them a special experience. As we came closer to the conference, I realised that we had covered less ground in the App Club than I had anticipated. The student presenters and I were not as confident anymore.

Today was the first day of the VITTA (Victorian IT Teachers' Association) conference. It is the only day I am attending and, as always, I have learned a lot! Here is my summary of the first session of today: Keynote 1: Roger Larsen, Pearson Platforms Roger's speech was very engaging. In it, he emphasised 21st Century skills. In particular, he noted critical thinking and entrepreneurship as key among those skills. Roger emphasised that digital content must not be a mere digitisation of paper. He wanted digital content to be changeable and interactive.

Yesterday, I attended the second day of the conference of the Victorian Information Technology Teachers' Association - VITTA. I could not attend both days because of other commitments I had at school. My impression was beyond good! Here are some details: Keynote: Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia. Reverend Costello (he's an ordained minister) spoke about leadership. He spoke about leaders, and by extension teachers, tapping into people's needs and curiosities. He gave examples from the story of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Clinton and others. Leaders, he argued, knew how to honour people's negative energies and then reframe them to create a positive outcome. One of the things he said was that a great force in the world is parents making sacrifices for their children. He wondered why our leaders didn't tap into that to make education, and the status of teachers, their highest priority. Give GameMaking a Go. Three students from Mount Waverley Primary school, a...