“It Takes a Spark STEM Conference” – Fun and Inspiring – Great to see Students and Teachers learning at a conference alongside one another!

A huge thank you to Dr Adrian Bertolini and Rachel Manneke-Jones for hosting such an event at John Paul College! (Students from JPC who acted as guides were invaluable – Thanks you!)

Love the emphasis on “Learning by Doing”. Also a huge Thank you to the platinum sponsor – Grok Academy! They provide a suite of free learning resources to enhance STEM Learning. Check them out at https://groklearning.com/

It was great meeting representatives of all the sponsors that included:

Grok Academy

Edunet

Academy for Enterprising Girls

Worley

Elastik

Pakronics

The opening keynote, Dr Elahe Abdi delivered, was a great way to kick off this STEM Conference. A very inspiring career shared with both Teachers and Students. Her work has taken her to many parts of the world. Monash University are very lucky to have Dr Elahe Abdi leading a research team active in human-robot interaction, shared autonomy and haptic, with application in medicine, construction and service robotics.

There were many break out workshops for Teachers, Students and combined workshops.

I was lucky enough to join Bill Collis and Sally Gridley from Grok Academy that focused on “Using AI Tools in the classroom” So many ideas and links to explore!

After morning tea was a great Networking session facilitated by Adrian Bertolini. This was a great inclusion to have Teachers be provided with this opportunity to capitalize on the “Collective Genius” in the room.

It was great to meet some passionate “edu” providers through the Expo. Lots of great connections established. Thank you again to sponsors mentioned above.

A special mention – Pat McMahon, I loved seeing your obvious passion for projects that build on the Arduino platform. Do check out Pat’s website https://www.patsrobots.com/

Now looking forward to catching up and collaborating with old and new friends made on the day!