Students and Teachers share their passion for Making a Difference through STEM at MACS STEM MAD Showcase!
I will start by showing my appreciation to Shelley Waldon for generously extending me an invitation to represent Real Time Learning every year since we first met back in 2019.
It’s just so amazing to see this STEM MAD Showcase go from strength to strength and now adopted by other Catholic schools around the country. STEM MAD National is being hosted in Melbourne on the 9th November!
Tim Dintersmith wrote the book “What School Could Be”. What he noticed, travelling around schools in every state of the US was “students thrive in environments where they develop”:
- Purpose – Students attack challenges they know to be important that make their world better.
- Essentials – Students acquire the skill sets and mind-sets needed in an increasingly innovative world.
- Agency – Students own their learning, becoming self directed, intrinsically motivated adults
- Knowledge – What students learn is deep and retained, enabling them to create, to make and to teach others.
Tim calls these the PEAK principles – Purpose, Essentials, Agency and Knowledge
All of these principles were evidenced on Thursday and seeing students “Thriving” was obvious to all!
These students from St Peter’s Epping made an app they called “Retire Time”. They like many other student teams were recognized for Innovations they collectively worked on to Make a Difference. Their innovation was an app to address loneliness and dementia in the elderly.
Day 2 – Teacher Conference
Once again another day of inspiration with so many workshops to choose from!
Keynotes from Kate Hoy and Ryan Evans were excellent!
Both pursuing their Passion for STEM in different ways – Kate through medicine and more specifically the Bionics Institute. Ryan through Lego!
Dr Peter Ellerton flew down from Brisbane and shared a thought provoking session on Thinking and more specifically Cognitive Skills.
After lunch was a panel discussion on the role “AI can play in the Classroom”. Early days of course and great to hear and discuss different perspectives on how AI can enhance Education.
It was great hearing about “Kids Building Future Healthy” through Minecraft. This has been built in collaboration with Schools and Monash University. I encourage Primary Educators to check this out.
Great to catch up with Mindflight7 and hear their latest developments on VR in education. Great to hear the VR content creation is being embraced by schools adopting their own VR Rooms.
All in all – 2 days of inspiration!
Thank you again Shelley, Patrick and the Team at MACS for hosting both STEM MAD and the Teacher Conference!