Learning anywhere, any time

ICT & Careers Expo and activities at Federation Square – Meet Myf Warhurst!

VITTA’s annual ICT & Careers Expo is an event designed to present diverse career opportunities in ICT to secondary students. This year the Expo will be held in the central location of Federation Square’s BMW Edge Theatre with an impressive program of seminars and workshops that truly demonstrate the diversity of careers available in ICT. Tertiary institutions will also be on hand to provide information about their wide range of courses in ICT. This event will officially be opened by Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Don’t miss this chance to broaden your career opportunities by attending this free event. Teachers are encouraged to bring students from Years 9 – 12 to this valuable careers expo.

For class bookings contact ictweek@vitta.org.au or register online

When: Thursday 29 July 2010
Where: BMW Edge at Federation Square, Melbourne
Time: 10.00am – 3.00pm
Who: Students of all ages, teachers, parents
Cost: FREE

Games Development – Art – Multimedia – eForensics – Business Analytics – 3D Modelling – Supercomputing – Digital Video Production – Law and ICT and more!

How to register:
Check out the full program and the range of activities available to students and teachers. Note: some workshops and seminars require free online registration.

One of the most interesting workshops I went at the last VITTA Annual Conference and Expo was the one by Armin Kroll on developing educational apps for iPhones. It was a great feeling when I, a real beginner in programming, was able to learn something new and useful (although at a very beginner’s level).

It seems that the ability to make your own apps for the iPhone (and iPod Touch and iPad) is a skill that will only become more and more important. When you add to this the interest there is in games for learning you have a powerful combination: all the benefits of games  which address skills for the future, and and as the US National Summit on Educational Games says: “require players to master skills in demand by today’s employers – strategic and analytical thinking, problem solving, planning and execution, decision-making, and adaptation to rapid change. Games offer attributes that are important for learning – clear goals, lessons that can be practiced repeatedly until mastered, monitoring learner progress and adjusting instruction to learner level of mastery, closing the gap between what is learned and its use, motivation that encourages time on task, personalization of learning, and infinite patience. Today’s students – the so-called digital natives – are poised to take advantage of educational games,” and the growing importance of handheld devices for learning, their mobility and favourable price when compared to labs of desktop computers, it is clear that the future will need us to be prepared.

VITTA is offering a 10 week course in Learning to Create Games for the iPhone and iPad at Strathcona, beginning on May 27th. The sessions will go for 2 hours on Thursday afternoons. The facilitator is Conor O’Kane who teaches at RMIT University. He presented for VITTA at the recent Games4Learning Conference and was extremely well received. This course in creating games for the iPhone will also be very handy for teachers of Year 12 IT who are doing Software Development with their students with the new VCE IT course to be implemented next year. Click here for more information and to book iof you are interested.

One of the pleasures of working in this job as Professional Learning Officer at VITTA is getting the inside knowledge on fabulous courses that are being run by our teachers for the benefit of other teachers. A research report by the New Media Consortium presents the case for Challenge Based Learning as “an approach for our time.”  The report explains the idea further:  “Challenge-based learning builds on the practice of problem-based learning, in which students work on real-world problems in collaborative teams, but with key distinctions that add a great deal of relevancy for students. At the center of challenge-based learning is a call to action that inherently requires students to make something happen. They are compelled to research their topic, brainstorm strategies and solutions that are both credible and realistic in light of time and resources, and then develop and execute one of those solutions that addresses the challenge in ways both they themselves and others can see and measure.” Now VITTA is proud to present: Challenge Based Learning, a six week Professional Learning series for teachers

When:    Thursdays, starting May 13th from 4.30 to 6.30 PM
Where:    Williamstown Primary School, Cecil St, Williamstown
Who:        All teachers, particularly Middle Years teachers (years five to eight)

•    How can we organise authentic 21st century learning environments?
•    How can we design curriculum which engages and challenges students with authentic learning activities?
•    How can we assess such activities (in the light of school, statewide and national testing demands)?
•    How can we assist a process of ongoing curriculum change in our classrooms, learning teams/faculties and schools?

The Challenge Based Learning series is designed to answer these questions over six sessions.

Mark Richardson will be leading this series of Professional Learning. He is well qualified for this, being the ICT Coordinator at Williamstown Primary School. He is interested in teaching multimedia and has worked with students on many digital video, animation and web design projects. He has also run professional development sessions on multimedia and web design in a wide variety of settings. He is interested in the role of ICT in the process of curriculum change and brings this passion to this course.

If you are interested in the course you can find out more here and also book online at the VITTA website. I hope to see some of you there.

Why have we called this blog Learning anywhere, any time? VITTA is all about learning, learning for students and life-long learning for teachers. A blog is a good way of learning, one of the many tools that teachers are learning about and learning through. There are many days that we as educators come across good ideas and one great way to remember them and spread them is by publishing them on a blog.

VITTA is presenting some great ideas for teacher learning this term and you can find out about them here. This will also be a place where we reflect on our learning, where we share other good ideas about digital learning and update the news. There will be opportunities for teachers who are doing interesting things to share their experiences.

Yesterday the Geelong Professional Learning Network met online in Elluminate which was a great learning experience for all of us. Through Steve Hargadon (keynote speaker at VITTA’s 2009 Conference) and Learn Central we were able to book a free Elluminate room and explore in a small group. Elluminate is a great learning tool and we enjoyed playing with it.