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It was such a delight to be back involved with the 2015 DLTV Conference (DigiCon). Digital Learning & Teaching Victoria (DLTV) was a merger of VITTA & ICTEV back in 2013 which I was very involved with as the Vice President of VITTA at the time. I missed last year’s DLTV conference due to overseas commitments so it was great to be involved this year and get Adobe on-board as a sponsor.

Richard Gordon (GM of XCERIO – Adobe Certification partner), Me & Brian Chau at the Adobe stand.

The conference involved about 700 teachers from around the country spending Friday July 24 & Saturday July 25 enjoying a wide range of professional learning at Swinburne University.

Check #digicon15 on Twitter to find out more.

The Maker Movement was a strong focus throughout the conference. Thank you to Gemma Sherwood for posting this image on Twitter via #digicon15

Education consultant Hamish Curry from notosh inspired the day 1 audience with an outstanding keynote address that commenced with the playing of the game duet (which he was very good at). He encouraged us all to look for the educational value of playing games.

He quoted Sir Ken Robinson when he said, The exile of play is one of the greatest tragedies of standardised  education.

He also quoted Jane McGonigal who said … people who continue to write off games will be at a major disadvantage in the coming years.

Some of the other great quotes from Hamish’s talk include:

School is like the ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy because it is a perfect metaphor for how adults entertain themselves by making children compete against each other. (Jiang Xueqin)

Finding out what teachers want to you to know and giving it back to them in assignments and exams is a common key to success. (John Hattie)

Why aren’t we teaching kids to say: this might not work. (Seth Godin)

Once you embrace the spirit of experimentation, the world becomes a sandbox in which to try out new ideas, ask new questions, and challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. (Steven Levitt)

It was great to catch up with Hamish Curry.

Brian Chau (Adobe Solution Consultant) & I presented on both days and enjoyed sharing the value of working with the large range of Adobe software that helps enhance creativity & engagement in the teaching & learning process.

We also promoted the value of the Adobe Education Exchange, free online resources & PD with a membership of over 217,000 educators.

We both enjoyed sharing the new Adobe Character Animator program which is part of the latest version of After Effects on the Adobe Creative Cloud. It tracks movements of you eyes, face and head to animate digital characters – very cool! Click here for a sample.

My friend Roland Gesthuszen & his vodcasting partner Amanda Rablin were working hard during the conference capture interviews and highlights for their show the ACCE Learning Network

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1g2_oTD6fjGkW_55m_fWTq_vjJYakfUi%5D

A special thank you to Mel Cashen (Conference Director and new President of DLTV) and her team for putting on such a great event.