Steven Kolber, curriculum writer at Ngarrngga, University of Melbourne, shares his perspective on attending the National Education Summit at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in June.
For those who spend much of their time attending education spaces, the National Education Summit always holds the potential to be a good one. Participants get the sense of being a part of the community, not just amid a stream of vendors selling their wares. A real sense of shared camaraderie permeates the lofty roofed spaces.
As the MC of the ‘Classroom of the Future’ stream, two days of professional learning rolled forth, notably provided for free for registrants of the Summit. As the teaching crisis continues to worsen within schools, the availability of free, face-to-face and community-minded professional learning is notable, and worthy of applause. Seeing teachers again returning to face-to-face professional learning after the COVID years was genuinely heartening and teachers and leaders left with their heads brimming with new ideas and things to explore further upon returning to schools.
Day 1
Dr Marijne Medhurst from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) explored a framework for considering inclusion within school settings – touching on a broad range of topics that lay a solid foundation for the sessions that followed throughout the day, including assessment, pedagogy, classroom climate and curriculum.
She was followed by Dr Shyam Barr and Louise Wallace-Richards who explored the topic of self-regulated learning (SRL). Shyam provided the conceptual framework noting setting, exchanges and events as possible areas to focus upon. Louise provided a number of clear examples from her school site, Radford College, that showed how SRL was being promoted there, including a classroom poster that outlined different classroom arrangements that could be used to suggest certain pedagogies and allowing students different spaces within the classroom, which had everyone in the audience taking photos.
Associate Professor Ben Cleveland from the Faculty of Architecture within the University of Melbourne outlined an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project that involved developing learning spaces for diversity and inclusion that had the audience ‘oohing and aahing’ about possible classroom spaces and how universal design would apply here. His presentation included an exploration of universal design principles unmoored to learning, in the way that most practitioners would consider this.
Lottie Dowling led an impressive session, with a group of students, that showcased the ongoing design work of two schools, one primary, and one secondary. This session explored ways to tackle littering and waste management in fun and engaging ways that involved powerful illustrations of student voice and advocacy in action.
Julian Ridden explored the app Quizziz and had many teachers excited to explore the ways that this tool is becoming more Australian specific and the way that AI can be used within the tool to make quiz creation easier.
Lisa Kelliher from Be Challenged delivered an impassioned talk about the ways that human dignity and a constant consideration of it is key to leadership. She had the audience thrilled as she interspersed the approach taken by her organisation with personal reflections and stories from her leadership career.
Day 1 also included presentations by Sandra Boicis, Tim Hawden, and Kelly Hollis.
Day 2
Samitha Embuldeniya from EdMinds and colleagues kicked off Day 2 by providing a clear insight into different off-the-shelf robotics solutions schools might adopt to implicate a clear pathway of learning from physical interaction towards block coding all the way through to more complex coding.
Dr Mark Williams from Macquarie University provided a clear exploration of what we know from existing and emerging brain science, debunking many myths that no doubt rule our lives as teachers including multi-tasking, the negative impacts phones and mobile devices have upon attention, and other important reminders or revelations for teachers who work with young people.
David Gall explained the roll-out of an online learning strand within his organisation, exploring the where and how of this roll-out and implementation.
Dr Robert Williams from Rembiont explained the new concept (at least to me!) of Automated Essay Grading (AEG) and the ways that this technology and future iterations of it might be useful for teachers of English. Notably, it is not possible to be applied to creative writing. Further exploration of the narrow uses of this approach within schools was considered.
James Forscutt from Banqer explored financial literacy and how we might bring programs in place to make this important content engaging and exciting for students.
Andrea Engler from Concord explored the way that learning management software is not sufficient but that schools should also implement a content management software that can minimise the complexity of online interactions for students. She showed ways that mega trends and further exploration of the online world can be adapted to and managed by students.
Lora Blackman from Datacom explored the SAMR model providing a rich visual metaphor for the way that Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition (SAMR) might look within a school of the future.
Jaclyn Lees from enrich360 co-hosted with her young daughter who provided an exploration of a tool that rendered a large quantity of plant matter into something that looked like coffee grounds and could be used as fertiliser.
Lena Cirillo ended the day by exploring the nature of creativity and art, posing the question of why art and creativity is perhaps not as valued within our schools as we might like.
Across the two days of the Summit, with headphones on, we listened to a range of experts speak about their passion and special projects and topics. For a rank-and-file teacher or leader, the sessions provided unique and expansive touch points that gave real insights into different ways to extend and expand the work that we do.
Surprisingly, and rather refreshingly, there was minimal coverage of AI, that topic that has encroached upon so many of our teaching conversations – mostly to the detriment of those conversations. By providing tightly focussed streams of professional learning around key themes – diverse learners summit; wellbeing for future focussed schools; capacity building school libraries; and sustainability in schools – the Summit delivers laser- focussed sessions for those streams and a broad and engaging expiration of a range of topics within the free streams.
In short, a very solid two days of learning at the National Education Summit, Melbourne for 2024. Stay up-to-date so you too can book a free ticket in 2025 by subscribing to their mailing list at https://www.nationaleducationsummit.com.au/ > Subscribe. I hope to see you there!
