Sunday, August 12, 2012

Teach Meet Melbourne August 2012

Yesterday I attended my first Teacher Meet at the Immigration Museum and I must say that it was wonderful. Around 60 teachers gave up their Saturday afternoon to join together to share their knowledge and inspire others. 

So many fantastic things were discussed, and I have pages of notes. The highlights for me were firstly Mic Lowne's presentation about KODU which is a visual programming game that teaches creativity, problem solving, and storytelling. It has a 'low entry point', so students in grade 2 and above can start using this program. The only disappointing thing is that its only available on PC, however perhaps in the future this will change.

Another highlight was Edna Sackson who discussed 'concept driven learning' i.e. the big idea. This is something that we have learnt at uni, so it was great to hear about it in practice, here are some images that I took from her presentation that some may find useful



The 'avocado' model - Worth knowing, important to know, enduring understanding



    The big idea - connection, responsibility, reflection, perspective, change, causation, function, form

Bernadette from Xavier College discussed Teachers Across Borders which sounds like a wonderful experience. Teachers travel to countries such as Cambodia and conduct short term workshops for teachers in developing countries. This will be something that I will consider doing in the future. 

One other presentation which really stood out was llja's presentation about Google docs forms, which I have never heard of, even though I am usually pretty up to date with new google features. It sounds wonderful, but is dependent on students have a laptop each in class to utilise it as llja does. Despite this, it is something that I will be using in the future if the resources are available. 

Other presentations worth noting were:
Rebecca Van Den Hoek - Danny deck chair: engaging science/maths lessons
Mark O'Meara - Characters on trial 

I will stop there, even thought there were more presentations that were very informative. So as you can probably tell, I really enjoyed it, so I will hopefully be able to attend the next TeachersMeet in September at Wooranna Park P.S. I highly recommend it, hopefully I will be able to see you there.

Kellie. 


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