Pixeled Multimedia Teachers Association

I was at the recent Go Girl Go for IT conference held at Deakin University earlier this week. The aim of the conference was to give girls an insight into the IT industry and diffuse the myth that only geeks love computer careers. For this reason a collection of mainly female speakers were called upon to talk about their careers and to encourage girls to pursue IT.

As usual there was a mixed bag of speakers - which really just reinforces the notion that public speaking is a skill that few people have - who did their best to make their work sound glamorous and exciting. Sure a few of the speakers were inspiring, one woman called Pia, a self confessed Linux freak, said she wanted to save the world with Linux and her computer skills. She seemed to be doing a good job by the look of it, working in places like Mongolia and with Indiginous communities. Her passion and energy was a real inspiration and a great role model for either gender.


Another speaker was from the media industry who called herself an IT girl (it as in Paris Hilton type of IT girl) with the pun being Information Technology IT rather than party girl it. Anyway, she fired up the girls with her stories of how you can make online documentaries and network through myspace and assorted chat facilities. She was enthusiastic and fun and the girls responded well to her talk.


Unfortunately though there were quite a few dreary speakers who spent the first 15 minutes talking about their lives and how they got into IT when really they weren't all that interesting. Whenever I heard a speaker say that they wanted to explain how they got into IT, I felt like screaming "you're really not that interesting, I don't want to hear your life story." However, it goes to show that most people think they are more interesting than they really are, including me.

There was a fashion show for the girls at lunchtime and the loudest live band in Melbourne entertaining the girls as well. The two day conference was well organised with the general consensus from organisers that the Tuesday was better than the Wednesday. Unfortunately, I was there on the Wednesday in the blue stream when the red stream was meant to be the go!


I believe overall though that many of the girls, from all sorts of schools and from all over the State, will at least go away from the conference, with a more positive attitude to IT.

Yay, year 12's have gone and now we await the final exam. I've told my students to read through past exams, try the short answer and multiple choice questions and to attempt the animation and web site tasks. This seems to be the only way to help prepare them for an exam that is anyone's guess. Lets hope that the positive response by students and teachers from last years exam will continue into a common sense exam this year. All the best for your students.

ACEC 2006

I went to the recent ACEC conference held up in Cairns from the 1st to the 3rd of October (see photostory)). I'd never been to Cairns before so when I got the opportunity to present a pre-conference workshop, I jumped at the chance. Cairns itself is just like a thriving country town - think the size of Bendigo but a really great atmosphere. The ACEC conference had more delegates this year than previously and most people suspected it was because of the location. I mean who'd turn down a fully paid trip to Cairns.

The conference was packed full of seminars and discussion panels with some events only having a half an hour. I've never actually been to a conference anywhere where some speakers had only literally started their discussion before they were rushed off to make way for the next speaker. I don't think half an hour is long enough, it merely acts as an introduction.

Generally though the message that came across all the time was that teachers need more training on how to implement ICT in the classroom and how far Australia was falling behind Asian countries in its use of technology in education. We need to get a move on if things are going to improve, particularly in the delivery and planning of ICT rich environments.

There wasn't enough hands on workshops, apart from some pre-conference workshops (one of which I was running) I didn't get a chance to get my hands on anything practical to use in the classroom. This is a shame because all the research on teacher expectations at conferences is that they want more workshops - however, these are always in short supply.

The next ACEC conference will be in Canberra in 2008 and if you get the chance to go it is good for networking and speaking with teachers from around Australia. Also, try and offer a workshop, it will make the conference so much more worthwhile. short photostory.

Pixeled Multimedia Teachers Association: October 2006
Meet the Examiner Lecture
Congratulations to around 100 VET MM students and their teachers, who gave up a morning of their holidays to Meet the Examiner at Melbourne University last Thursday.
Ex-chief Examiner, Graeme Luck presented a very thorough run down on the exam and how students could maximise their performance. Hopefully, the podcast of Graeme's lecture will soon be available on the pixelED site.
In summary, Graeme's take-away messages included:

• be very careful with time management,
• save practical tasks in the right place and with the right file name,
• maintain a client focus (eg in prac tasks only do what is requested) and
• answer questions with specifics NOT generalised comments.

Graeme used some past questions to illustrate ways to approach answers. Although Graeme could only guess at what we might expect on this year's exam, he certainly gave us a very practical and helpful presentation!

Following Graeme's talk, Rachelle Mclean, gave a very detailed discussion on scripting, reinforcing basic terms and concepts as well as challenging students with more advanced examples. Sue Bell, presented a slideshow prepared by one of her high achieving ex-students. Although he was unable to attend the lecture, his slideshow provided some practical advice from a student perspective.
A big thanks to all involved!