Six Dominic College teachers and staff were among participants in the first EdTechTeam Summit held in Tasmania, featuring Google for Education.
Over the two days during the term break, Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 September our staff members attended a range of sessions aimed at empowering them with new tools to engage students in the classroom.
Sessions included topics such as using Google maps to tell stories and to analyse data sets, enabling student feedback by use of forms, empowering use of data in the classroom, by both teachers and students, along with an opportunity to be introduced to some amazing online tools to allow students to quickly and easily compose music and create powerful video projects.
We also took part in a Virtual Reality excursion, allowing us to transport ourselves to the cliffs of the Yosemite national park in the comfort of an air conditioned classroom. This experience opened our eyes to possibility and the accessibility of Virtual Reality tools, using hardware as simple as a mobile phone and some cardboard!
Keynote presenters encouraged us to think outside the square, take some risks, allow ourselves to be vulnerable and to learn from our elders, ‘What Gran Has to say’. For those who are interested Gran encourages us to ‘know what’s trending’, ‘learn from someone’, ‘teach someone’ and while doing this always ‘have fun and give it a go!’.
We all left the two days feeling inspired and empowered.
Matthew Taylor - E-Learning Integrator K-10