Students to present to international digital leader community at conference
Middle school students will present a keynote speech and Year 10 students will run the cafe at the upcoming TeachTechPlay conference hosted at Ivanhoe Grammar School. Independently run by teachers for teachers, TeachTechPlay will feature international education speakers and local innovators.
The school’s Year 6 and 7 Digital Leaders will show the conference that Design Thinking can help any learner identify which questions to answer and then develop inventive solutions. They will be joined by students from Wirreanda Secondary School south of Adelaide, who have worked with them on the project and will help with the presentation.
,, Ivanhoe Grammar School’s students were introduced to the international Digital Leaders community by Ivanhoe Grammar School Director of ICT & eLearning Steve Brophy.
“Their contribution is not only important, it is necessary and we need to listen,” Steve says. “We need to move past tokenistic student roles in schools and empower students to not only speak up but to take real action.
,, “As Digital Leaders, they meet weekly to develop initiatives such as staff coding sessions, a blog, school tech events, their own TV series and a robot roadshow to other schools.
,, “They provide technical assistance to teachers and fellow students, helped build Prep iBooks and built their own website to manage student borrowing of technology.”
Year 10 students will run the conference café as part of their Commerce Coffee Course, using the school’s coffee cart to professionally produce cappuccinos, lattes and long blacks. The course involves professional training and the students running their own business. All café proceeds will be donated to charity.
TeachTechPlay is a professional learning community run by Steve and fellow Melbourne teachers Eleni Kyritsis and Corey Aylen. It hosts online discussion, a web show and annual conference. Conference topics include coding, children’s entrepreneurship, 3D modelling, empathy, Minecraft in teaching, robotics and carbon-free classrooms. TeachTechPlay will be held on Monday-Tuesday April 3-4 at the school’s Ivanhoe Campus, The Ridgeway, Ivanhoe. It costs just $395 for two days.
Conference details: www.teachtechplay.com/conference
,, Conference bookings: www.trybooking.com/Booking
Nathan Jones Memorial Award: Teachers in their first five years can enter the Nathan Jones memorial award honouring the late education technology pioneer. Entrants must send a video on why they became a teacher and how they are pioneering classroom change, to teachtechplay@gmail.com by March 27.
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