Kidz@Conference

Over the last two days in Dunedin we have held our annual Kidz @ Conference. This is the third year this event has been running and we seem to have ironed out a lot of the kinks. One of the aims for this year was to make sure that the students' work made it online, the last two years this has been a bit of a mission but this year I think we cracked it!

The theme for this year was "I have a dream". Students attended four sessions through out the two day conference learning how to use various technologies: I Can Animate, Garage Band, Lego Robotics, Beebots, digital photography, movie making, green screen, Google Sketchup, Scratch and Wikispaces. And making new friends across the various schools attending. The key to the conference is collaboration, communication and technology.

The Kidz @ Conference is a remarkable two day event for those students lucky enough to attend. There are only places for 100 students (year 5 or 6) and teachers can attend with the students to sit in on the sessions as professional development. The buzz of excitement is contagious. On the first day the students arrive and are given their conference packs and a t-shirt. They then file into the lecture theatre at the University of Otago College of Education where the conference is held. One student was heard to exclaim:

Wow! Look at the seats!

Every part of the conference is an event for the students. After rifling through their packs they were entertained by some very cool dudes from the John McGlashan School band .


These young men from the band then spent the day at the conference running sessions called "Jam with the band". Students could learn how to play their instruments and have their jam session recorded. These sessions can be found on the wiki.

The theme of this year's conference was apt. The Kidz @ Conference has been a dream of the organisers for a very long time and was realised in spectacular fashion this year. A big thank you and well done goes to all the session facilitators and conference organisers who come from schools and education institutions around Dunedin and volunteer their time for free to put on this event. It is a privilege to be involved and I look forward to next year's event.

Kids @ Conference in Dunedin

Today was a great day. We have been running a Kids Conference in Dunedin over the last two days. 100 students from all around Otago come to the Otago University College of Education to take part in a two day conference. These students sign up for four different workshops ranging from Google Sketchup, animations, movie making, podcasting, digital photography, microscopic investigations and green screening. It is a fantastic two days with students buzzing with enthusiasm.
But this is the reason why it was so special for me. My students ran a workshop on podcasting. They were the only students to run a workshop in the entire conference. The greatest thing about this is that these students are not the gifted and talented ones, they weren't chosen for their confidence. However, they stepped up and ran the workshop and did an amazing job. This once again shows the value in a podcasting programme. These students had language difficulties ranging from a speech impediment, lack of confidence and lack of volume. This was not an issue though, as they have been practicing using their voice for the last two terms and know how to speak to an audience. These workshops have shown that the skills these students learnt through podcasting are transferred to speaking in front of an audience.

In this image above two of my students are instructing the three teachers who came to their workshop.