BLC18

Virtual Reality is fiddly and expensive for many schools. How do we extract the best value from it? Exploring how an effective VR setup can revolutionise how we do excursions, activities and document school events - and bring students into the creation process.

Sometimes when we get learners to choose, they pick the first option, the easy option, or the solution that they know will work. How can we encourage learners to explore dangerous options: ones they may well fail at? We look at ideation, passion and the role of mentors for this process in a case study at Santa Maria College, Western Australia.

Presenter will provide highlights from his career as an educational technologist with a psychology background and a commitment to emotionally intelligent communities and schools, culminating in the development of an online learning platform for the RULER approach to social emotional learning.

The ubiquity of handheld devices and learning media means that every educator (and student) makes daily choices in how to shape content. The prominence of visual stimuli places a heightened emphasis on the design of information. Explore the theories beneath visual scholarship, including illustrative examples and group exercises. Probe how cognition and perception can have real-world impacts on critical thought and creativity.

Sixty-five percent of people identify as visual learners. The brain processes optical inputs 60,000 times faster than text. Amid the contemporary world of smartphones, television, Internet, and video games, visual media undeniably dominate the input stream for life and learning. For teachers, therefore, thinking like a designer can change the way students engage with concepts and retain essential ideas. For students, tapping one's visual imagination to approach educational problems (whether historical, literary, mathematical, or scientific) can yield tremendous dividends in motivation and collaboration. If visual literacy is about learning to look, how to internalize and deconstruct the images that the brain sees (input), then visual thinking is about learning to design, how to imagine graphic representations based on the mind’s creation (output). Elements such as typography, color, layout, and pre-attentive attributes all elevate the value of handouts, charts, infographics, animations, and slides to engage students beyond linear learning. Via today’s technologies and media, the visual image can inspire thought and literacy in a range of design-based investigations.

How do visual thinking and visual literacy represent crucial tools in a contemporary teacher's toolbox? What are hands-on applications of visual design practices to enhance the value of learning materials and student creations? What resources and real-world examples can help educators craft rich learning tools for student engagement?

Whether in social media or toddler books, learning lives in a world of pictures. Most curricula, however, reinforce literacy in words yet seldom emphasize the skill of “reading pictures.” Parsing an image requires discrete analytical steps. Maps, cartoons, infographics and graphs all require training to negotiate subtleties of meaning. This workshop approaches design as a method of problem-solving. When a teacher creates a handout or PowerPoint, he or she makes explicit choices in emphasis, font, hue, layout and balance. He or she needs to consider purpose, audience and format.

Discover Apps that work with Google Drive such as WeVideo, Coggle, PDF Mergy and Lucidpress. We will add and practice some favorites and share how it can be helpful in in your school or daily routine.

The 2017 Horizon report acknowledges that significant challenges in implementing technology adoption in k-12 education is a lack of authentic learning experiences.

“STEM education refers to a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching that increases student interest in STEM related fields and improves students’ problem solving and critical analysis skills.” (National STEM School Education Council Strategy, 2015)

This presentation will discuss the benefits of authentic learning tasks and how Knox Grammar School is using Integrated Learning Tasks (ILAs) and STEAM, to provide students with an opportunity to see the synergy that exists between subjects and to realise their interconnectedness to real life experiences.

We will dive deep into the development and implementation of our Mission to Mars project, where teams developed a Mars sustainable colony. Areas of interest that will be covered include:

Why ILAs and STEM are a perfect fit
NASA video conference interactive session from the Johnson Space Centre
Integration of Mathematics, Science, English Technology (Scratch coding) and Language tasks into the project
Submission of a Mars Mission Entrance Exam (M.E.E.)
Building of the environment using Minecraft
Submission of a 3-minute video walk through of their completed environment. Click link for example of completed task https://youtu.be/Ya9Qlrct71g


Teachers will leave this session with all the resources required to complete or adapt the project for their school. Please note, Minecraft was not mandated for this task, it can ba adapted to other means of presenting your final product

The presentation will also focus briefly on a Year 9 Biomechanics STEM ILA and a Year 7 United Nations Sustainability ILA.

Citizen science provides an authentic, project-based outlet for students to engage in hands-on scientific research. With “citizen engineering”, students become involved in a design thinking process to engineer and develop solutions to real world problems. This session explores how students can build low-tech devices (plankton nets) and high-tech devices (Internet-connected buoys) to contribute to citizen science initiatives.

Creating videos and motion graphics nudges both students and teachers to blend a host of proficiencies. It involves visual design, just as it requires language skills of narration and storytelling. It supports technological skills in manipulating online media, and it reinforces the importance of publishing and sharing student creations. Kids teaching kids is the purest model of learning, and they become the educators of their peers.

Video production allows students to stitch together a narrative and storyboard each moment in the process that combines logical reasoning, cause-and-effect, and content mastery. They also must employ their graphicacy skills to fashion compelling visual displays. These quick-cut movies and short animations combine icons and text to communicate a message. Explainer videos are perfect for the classroom. They blend voice, image, and language into captivating presentations for students to learn. Content created using app editors or motion graphics provides a way for the brain to receive information through both the eyes and ears. Learning tools that can tap into both modalities have greater effectiveness in fostering understanding by adding layers of meaning. Teacher-produced videos can be terrific learning tools, but student-created videos are even richer. Creating multimedia videos and animations combine voice, images, and kinetic typography to internalize authentic understanding.

How does incorporating the use of visual media such as video, motion graphics, and animation promote student voice as activists? In what way does the design of multimedia enable them to develop a deeper understanding of the way media messages are constructed for maximum impact? How does video production empower students to teach others?

Using videos and animations encourage four key proficiencies in the visual design process including: Symbol and visual metaphor - Students choose images to pair with their explanations to foster an understanding of figurative meaning. Narration - They must unite each visual frame with a seamless spoken narrative to relate the core information of the story. Script - Students must select crisp words to highlight vocabulary while avoiding large irrelevant language. Design - As filmmakers, they must combine colors, music, transitions, and layout to clearly convey the content.

Supporting digital learning and innovation in schools is challenging. Join the presenter, a veteran building principal who recently moved into a district technology leadership role, to identify key elements critical to putting innovative leadership into action.

An innovative leader should try to create new ideas, but it is more important that they create a culture of innovation. Explore methods to empower your teachers with a shared vision and a safe and supportive environment of risk taking, trust, and swift implementation.

Innovative leaders not only “think” differently, but they “act” differently. Now is the time to act and put these innovative characteristics into action and create a culture of innovation. Innovative leaders foster a culture that is warm, collaborative, and accessible to all. This culture then can encourage all colleagues to offer ideas and try new initiatives/teaching strategies. By creating this culture, leaders create a safe physical and emotional spaces for teachers to explore and develop innovative learning opportunities. This cultural shift encourages more collaboration and less competition among faculty to use digital tools and become creative in planning and lesson delivery.

School leaders are asking educators to create a classroom culture where students think critically. Then, innovative leaders should also be creating that same culture at the school level. If a leader fosters and embraces a culture of innovation and risk taking, then teachers and students learn to do the same thing. This culture of thinking pushes the school or educator to find better and better ways to meet the needs of students.