Monthly Archives: August 2014

Tim Kitchen 10:34 am on August 31, 2014
Tags: Maria Russell   

NSW Premier’s Premier’s Adobe ICT Scholarship – 2014

Tim’s Website

Congratulations to Maria Russell – winner of the 2014 NSW Premier’s Adobe ICT Scholarship.

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Maria Russell – winner of the 2014 NSW Premier’s Adobe ICT Scholarship.

On Saturday 30th August, NSW Premier Mike Baird MP and the NSW Minister of Education Adrian Piccoli MP handed out the annual NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarships at a special reception event held at the NSW Parliament House.

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Maria Russell receiving her NSW Premier’s Adobe ICT Scholarship from NSW Premier Mike Baird & NSW Minister of Education Adrian Piccoli

Maria Russell, a Primary Teacher at Armidale City Public School, was nominated, along with dozens of other passionate educators, for this year’s Adobe Information and Communications Technologies Scholarship. I had the pleasure of reading through all the nominations and being part of the judging panel.

The Adobe scholarship was one of a range of the Premier’s scholarship awards. Each scholarship provided funding for a study tour with an aim to gather information and experiences from experts around the world and bring that knowledge back to enhance teaching and learning in NSW and across Australia.

Maria3Maria has a passion for teaching gifted and talented students in rural NSW and aims to use this scholarship to enhance her knowledge and develop programs where students can interconnect and engage with each other through quality learning experiences online with Adobe products. Her study tours aims to look at gifted education and online education in a number of locations to determine practices that may be transferable to the Australian regional and rural context.

Premier Baird made special mention of Maria’s intention during the afternoon reception at the NSW Parliament House.

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NSW Premier Mike Baird

I’m looking forward to supporting Maria with this endeavor that will provide rich learning experiences for talented students in rural NSW and will also be a model for rural education throughout Australia and New Zealand.

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Maria & Tim with two previous Adobe Scholarship winners Daniel Rattigan (AEL) and Katy Lumkin (AEL)

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Part of the Adobe Education team with the NSW Minister of Education

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Daniel Rattigan (AEL) with Premier Mike Baird

           IMG_8558NSW Teachers are encouraged to apply for the 2015 scholarships

 

 

 

 

Tim Kitchen 9:39 am on August 31, 2014
Tags: Nick Wakeling, Ron Wilson, Victorian Government Learn Local Awards   

Victorian Government – Learn Local Awards 2014

Tim’s Website

image1On Thursday 28th August I had the pleasure of attending the 2014 Victorian Government Learn Local Awards Dinner at the St Kilda Town Hall.

Learn Local is an initiative of the Victorian Government’s Adult Community Further Education Board (ACFE) of which my Uncle Ron Wilson is the Deputy Chair.

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Ron Wilson – Deputy Chair of ACFE

The Victorian Minister for Higher Education and Skills, The Hon Nick Wakeling MP handed out a number of awards to the very worthy educators and trainers who were nominated by their peers for their outstanding community work.

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The Hon Nick Wakeling MP – Minister for Higher Education and Skills

The MC for the night was the very funny and entertaining comedian/actor/musician/trainer (and hypnotherapist) Adam ‘Chicken’ Palmer. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Adam, when he wasn’t on stage, and finding out more about is amazing work and life.

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Adam ‘Chicken’ Palmer was the very entertaining MC for the night.

This is the second time I have attended this event and met a number of Victoria’s local education & training heroes who have dedicated much of their time to furthering the opportunities of adults throughout Victoria.

Tim Kitchen 5:06 pm on August 26, 2014
Tags: , Beth O'Malley, Forest Lake State School   

Forest Lake QLD Students developing creative thinking

Tim’s Website

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Beth O’Malley (AEL) and three Forest Lake Year 11 Photo-Imaging Studies students.

Enhancing creativity in education is fun and easy with the wide variety of Adobe software available to teachers and students.

Beth O’Malley (Adobe Education Leader) and teacher at Forest Lake State School in Queensland explains what has been happening recently at her school …

As part of our agreement with software company Adobe, Forest Lake students have been part of some fabulous learning opportunities to develop creative thinking in and outside of the classroom.  Our pathway night showcased some of the talented Photoshop skills our Year 11 Photo-Imaging Studies students have gained.  As part of the Adobe Creatives campaign students took portrait photos of our guests at the pathways night and decorated their face with some creative digital artworks.

Forest Lake State School is part of the Schools of Creative Excellence program. More information in this program can be found at

https://timkitchen.net/2014/02/21/qld-soce-launch/

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Tim Kitchen 9:29 pm on August 24, 2014  

Young ICT Explorers – hits Victoria for the first time

Tim’s Website

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Last Saturday, students from all over Victoria visited the SAP Melbourne office on StKilda Rd to have their ICT projects judged at the Young ICT Explorers competition.

It was a pleasure to be on a judging panel with Justin Williams (General Manager, SAP) and Therese Keane (Swinburne University). Together we were delighted to hear from a wide range of students and see the amazing ICT projects they produced for this outstanding competition.

Young ICT Explorers is a non-profit competition, which has been created by SAP to encourage school students to create their best Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related projects.

http://www.youngictexplorers.net.au

It was so great to see these young people learning how to code and use the great creativity software available to them to produce so many innovative projects.

 

 

 

Tim Kitchen 11:33 pm on August 18, 2014  

ELH Conference 2014

It has been a pleasure to catch up with the ELH (Expanding Learning Horizons) regulars and the many new to this outstanding education conference experience organised so professionally by Computelec for so many years.

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http://www2.computelec.com.au/elhschooltech2014

I recall my first ever experience talking to a large group of educators was at ELH 1999 when I was a primary teacher at Carey Baptist Grammar School and a self confessed guru with PowerPoint. How things have changed.

It is always great to hear from Dr Gary Stager (Seymour Papert disciple and internationally recognised ICT in Education guru).

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Interesting quotes from Gary’s keyote

“When ideas come to school they seem to loose their power” Seymour Papert

Schools should be in the business of solving problems they don’t know are problems.

Making should permeate the entire school day.

It’s a powerful learning experience to make things, even more powerful to make things work

Computers have been in schools for 35 year, it’s time to take advantage of them

Programming is a really rich thing for kids to learn

 

The breakout sessions are always high quality at ELH. The contribution from Stephen Harris’ Norther Beaches Christian School team was outstanding.

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Steve Collis (Northern Beaches Christian School, NSW ) ‘When Culture Tips’

Gala Dinner – Great Gatsby Theme

 

 

Tim Kitchen 11:47 pm on August 15, 2014
Tags: Chris Betcher, INNOVATE, Kingswood Primary School, Leio Oshima McLaren, Nathan Jones   

IGNITE, INNOVATE, INTEGRATE ICT Conference 2014

Tim’s Website

It was a pleasure to be involved with the 2014 IGNITE, INNOVATE, INTEGRATE ICT Conference at Kingswood Primary School in Melbourne.

Kingswood350 passionate educators sharing how they can do the best possible for their students with today’s amazing communications technologies.

A highlight for me was meeting and sharing some time with young entrepreneur Leio Oshima McLaren, CEO & Founder of AppAppAway (and he is only 15 years old). Just a talented young man from Queensland and a great example of what is possible when education doesn’t get in the way of creativity.

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Chris Betcher (Adobe Education Leader & Google Educator from PLC in Sydney) and Nathan Jones (Apple Distinguished Educator from Carey in Melbourne) also keynoted this event.

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Chris Betcher (AEL)

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Nathan Jones (ADE)

Congratulations to all the staff of Kingswood Primary for hosting and managing  such an amazing event for Victorian educators.

Resources from my sessions at this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via this link …

http://bit.ly/kwoodknote14

 

Tim Kitchen 2:04 pm on August 5, 2014
Tags:   

Swinburne Open Day

Tim’ Website

Thank you to everyone at Swinburne University (Melbourne) for such a successful open day last Sunday. Special thanks to Cat Leonard, Swinburne’s Adobe Student Rep who did such a great job engaging with so many perspective Swinburne students and parents.

SwinOpenDay2014Also thanks to Matt Davis & Brian Chau, two of Adobe’s finest Solution Consultants, for taking time out of their Sunday to support this day.

It is a pleasure for the Adobe Education team to support such a dynamic place of education and learning.

Swinburne University is one of only a few universities in the southern hemisphere to be selected as part of the prestigious Adobe Partners by Design program.