Over the school holidays a number of teachers attended the annual EdTechSA Conference held at Immanuel College. This conference is designed to support teachers with the most effective use of digital technologies in the classroom. This year, we had the opportunity for five of our student ‘Digital Leader’ team to attend and add a student perspective to teacher learning.

Talking to participants about some of the learning happening in the classroom.

Josh, Mobin, Lachlan, Saij and Toby gave up two days of their holiday time to attend the conference and represented our school brilliantly. They attended keynote speaker sessions and workshops as well as working on current class projects to show teachers what sorts of things they use digital technologies for on a daily basis. They also co-presented a workshop about the use of Google Apps for Education. Having a student presence was a highlight of the conference and all of the feedback was very positive. Our students worked with around 200 teachers over the two days. Being at the conference gave an opportunity for them to connect with ‘outside’ experts with two for the students working directly with an app developer to improve their coding skills.

Working with app developer, Chris Robinson, to advance their learning about coding as they work on building an app for their ‘Genius Project’.

On arriving back at school, the students have been very keen to share their thoughts and new learning with our Woodend teachers. Last week, they prepared a presentation for our staff meeting and they are now in the process of planning fortnightly workshops for teachers that they will present after school once a fortnight. This is a big commitment and shows that giving students an opportunity to be a part of designing learning can be a powerful thing.

Being acknowledged for their work at the conference over the two days.