On Thursday 9th August, I had the pleasure to introduce Peggy Grande to all the Year 11 students at Pymble Ladies College in Sydney.

Peggy was the executive assistant to US President Ronald Reagan after he left office. She has had an amazing experience regularly engaging with world leaders and these days she spends much of her time speaking at conferences and seminars to a wide range of audiences.

I had the great fortune to meet Peggy on a recent flight from the US to Melbourne and was delighted to hear her story. She very generously offered some of her valuable time to engage with some of the teachers and students I work with in Victoria & NSW.

The Principal of Pymble, Mrs Vicki Waters, and members of her executive staff put on a lovely lunch for Peggy and myself before we met with the Year 11s.

Kim Maksimovic, the IT Integrator at Pymble was my main contact at the school. I was so pleased when she was able to organise our visit at such short notice.

Kim took the opportunity to record a podcast interview with Peggy as part of series she is doing on women in leadership.

Some of the key messages shared by Peggy to the Year 11s included the following …

• There is no limit to what can you can achieve as long as you don’t mind who gets the credit
• Don’t give into the drama of challenging situations
• Prioritise people – people are the most important things
• Leadership is a mindset, not a title
• A good leader is always looking forward with optimism & inspiration
• We always have a choice to either be toxic to our environment or optimistically contagious
• You can be strong a successful and also be a good person at the same time

Click here to see my article on a dinner I organised in Victoria with Peggy and some key educators.

Click here to see a video interview I recorded with Peggy when she was in Melbourne.

Planning the school of the future

Adobe was thrilled to be asked to be involved in The Game Changer Challenge, an initiative from the NSW Department of Education for the 2018 Education Week.

Inspired by the need to take learning from the classroom into the real world, the Game Changer Challenge involved connecting primary & secondary schools from across NSW with leading education technology and design thinking professionals to solve the big question – how can tomorrow’s schools help create the future?

100 schools entered the challenge and the 16 finalist were selected to take part in three days of activities and creativity at the brand-new NSW DoE Headquarters in Parramatta.

Check out the recruitment video …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDnZ7KXvzeE

Day 1

For the first day of the Challenge, teachers went through a bootcamp where they learned about, and gain confidence in using the Design Thinking process as a teaching methodology. This was run by Tricky Jigsaw an Innovation Design Consultancy.

The students had a separate program where they listened to panels of industry experts (which were broadcast live on the NSW DoE Facebook site) and enjoyed a set of workshop activities aimed at equipped them with the skills required carry out the Challenge the following day.

I had the pleasure of being on the second panel along with Janne Ryan founder of TEDx Sydney, Rebecca Smallchua from Thankyou & Ben Cooper Managing Director of Tricky Jigsaw.

The workshop sessions I ran along with Jane Chen & Jerry Wong from Adobe were based on Adobe Spark Video. Brett Kent (Adobe Education Leader) is now working full time with the NSW DoE STEMshare program was also a great help.

Day 2

The second day was focused on applying the Design Thinking process to a real world problem and help the students to answer the main Challenge question – How can tomorrow’s school help create the future?

The students also has the wonderful opportunity to do a physical workout on the rooftop  with Ninja Warrior Jack Wilson.

Most of the afternoon, and even up to 8PM, was spent working in teams to plan a pitch about the school of the future to a panel of education and industry experts. Representatives from the NSW DoE STEM team, Microsoft, Amazon, Lego and of course Adobe were all on hand to help the teams build their pitch ideas.

Day 3

The third day was pitch day. The teams added their final touches to their presentation before presenting them to a panel of education and industry experts who were judging them including the department’s Secretary Mr Mark Scott.

It was great to see a number of Adobe applications being used to help the teams pitch their ideas such as Spark Video, Spark Post, Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Character Animator.

The winners

Every team was a winner just by being involved in the event, but the primary school who was judged with the best pitch idea was …

Cudgegong Valley Public School

The winning high school was …

Carenne School (Bathurst)

This image is thanks to the NSW DoE Website

Click here to find out more

A special congratulations to the the NSW Department of Education, Tricky Jigsaw, Microsoft, TEDx, Amazon, Lego, Adobe and the following schools for such an amazing three days of learning, creativity and fun …

PRIMARY SCHOOLS
Lidcombe Public School
Ingleburn Public School
Oakhill Drive Public School
Cherrybrook Public School
Cudgegong Valley Public School Menindee Central School
Alstonville Public School
Thirroul Public School

HIGH SCHOOLS
Chatswood High School
Lurnea High School
Beverly Hills Girls High School
Armidale High School
Campbelltown Performing Arts High School Gloucester High School
Carenne School
Hurlstone Agricultural High School

Adobe’s Creative Cloud and associated software is now available for many Catholics school teachers and students throughout Victoria. Marymede Catholic College in South Morang, Melbourne and St John’s Regional College in Dandenong hosted the first of several planned professional learning events for catholic school teachers.

 The aim of these events is to help Victorian Catholic School teachers understand how and why Adobe tools enhance digital literacy and creativity in the teaching & learning process.

Click here if you are interested in finding out more and possibly taking part in future similar events for Victorian catholic school teachers.

Special thank you to Tanya Moran from Winthrop for helping to put these events together.

On my recent flight from LA to Melbourne I had the pleasure of sitting next to the amazing Peggy Grande who was traveling to Australia to keynote a series of conference events for Executive Assistance. I naturally asked her about her experience as an EA and she started to tell me about her life as the personal assistant to USA President Ronald Reagan during his time as past President from 1989 to 1999.

Peggy has written a book about her time with President Reagan titled The President Will See You Now and she is regularly asked to speak at conferences, seminars and a range of media networks across the globe about her experiences and reflections of the Reagan years.

She was delighted to hear about the Adobe Education Leaders network and was keen to meet some of the members so I organised a very last minute event with the support of YGAP at the Fest of Merit restaurant in Richmond.

This was a wonderful opportunity for these educators and leaders to meet with Peggy and discuss US politics, world politics and the education system in the US and Australia and how we are preparing young people for the future.

Peggy was gracious enough to do a video interview with me prior to the dinner about the importance of encouraging creativity.

I enjoyed working with a group of talented educators at Marymede Catholic College this week, sharing with them some of the recent developments in the world of Adobe in Education.

Most of these teachers were experienced Adobe users so we were able to achieve a lot in a short space of time. I was impressed with their Photoshop & Spark skills and was delighted to introduce them to Character Animator.

This was the first of a series of events I am running this year for Victorian Catholic school with the help of Winthrop Australia.