VAGTC Conference 21-22 May 2015

Last week I was very fortunate to be able to attend the VAGTC Gifted Education Essentials Tools for Putting Theory into Practice conference which was held at CQ Function Centre Queens St Melbourne on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 May 2015 http://www.vagtc.asn.au/vagtc-conference-2015

Some of the presentations can be read at http://www.vagtc.asn.au/conference-2015-presentations

The conference was officially opened by Judith Graley Member for Narre Warren Sth and Parliamentary Secretary to Hon. James Merlino, the Victorian Deputy Premier and Minister for Education who spoke of collaborating with the VAGTC to make Victoria ‘the Education State’ by acting on the accepted recommendations from the report into the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students
https://giftedresources.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/victorian-parliamentary-inquiry-into-the-education-of-gifted-and-talented-students/
Funding has been allocated for increasing opportunities for rural and outer suburban students, Koori students, ESL students and low socio economic group students.
The VAGTC has been contracted by DET to deliver teacher and parent half day seminars in 5 country towns in Victoria. VAGTC are writing an online resource for teachers to be placed on the DET website.
DET were the major sponsor for the conference.

Day 2 was opened by Judy Connell from Catholic Education Office, also sponsors of the conference.

Conference participants were treated to musical performances by Sadie Mustoe 2014 from The Patch Primary School winner of The Maldon Minstrel Award for country music singer-songwriters on Thursday http://www.maldonfolkfestival.com/maldon-minstrel-award.htm  
and Alby Sands, a young jazz musician and composer from St Leonards College on Friday.

Photo Jo Freitag

The excellent opening Keynote address presented by Dr Katherine Hoekman, the Consultant: Academic performance at the Association of Independent Schools NSW was titled Play, Passion and Performance.

Dr Hoekman also presented two mini keynote sessions Creating Agile Learning Spaces to Connect and Support the Community of Learners
and Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles: Creating Opportunities for Depth and Complexity

The Keynote address on Friday 22 May given by Manoj Chandra Handa, a Gifted Education Consultant at Oceans of Excellence http://www.oceansofexcellence.com/ Sydney NSW was titled Building Differentiated Schools of Curious Delight.
He also presented an inspiring session titled Strategies for Identifying and Addressing Underachievement among Gifted Learners

There was a great selection of presentations and workshops.
I enjoyed attending these sessions

Andrea Blake It All Starts with Identification
http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Copy%20for%20website%20Subjective%20identification%20presentation_0.pdf

http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Andrea%20Blake%20Resource%20list%20for%20Subjective%20Identification%20VAGTC%20Conf%20presentation%202015.pdf

Christine Ireland Tools, Practical Examples and Important Considerations for Teaching Creatively across Domains
http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Christine%20Ireland%20creativity%20and%20innovation%20presentation%20%20.pdf

Michele Juratowitch “Boring!” Understanding and Alleviating Tedium
http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/VAGTC%20Conf%2015%20Boring%20HO.pdf 
PARENTS SEMINAR
A Parent Seminar was run in conjunction with the conference on Thursday 21 May
At this seminar Jenny Gotz Papillo spoke about her experiences in an excellent presentation titled One journey http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Jenny%20Gotz%20Papillo%20Parent%20Seminar.pdf

Next a panel of experts moderated by Paul Double answered the parents’ questions on issues and concerns relating to parenting and educating gifted children.
The panel comprised Dr Gail Byrne, Andrea Blake, Kate Mitchell Dr Anne Grant and Jenny Gotz Papillo

Photo Jo Freitag

After lunch the parents were addressed by Derek McCormack of Raising Children Network http://raisingchildren.net.au/

Then Michele Juratowitch of Clearing Skies Brisbane http://www.clearingskies.com.au/index.html presented ‘Gifted and Happy?’
Michele observed that whenever she speaks to parents the thing they most often say to her is “I just want my child to be happy!” Her own research influenced by the work of Dr Martin Seligman, Prof Miraca Gross, Dr Linda Silverman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi showed that students who were suitably placed in terms of educational challenge and true peers could be happy and did not have to make a forced choice.
I really enjoyed the experience of participating in the conference which ran very smoothly and catching up with friends and colleagues, especially the members of the VAGTC Committee, and also meeting and learning from so many people who are passionate about the education of gifted students.

Twitterati Challenge

I am taking up the Twitterati Challenge to name my favourite Top 5 of ‘Go to’ Educators

The conditions of the challenge are posted on Mary Myatt’s bog at

http://marymyatt.com/blog/2015-05-03/the-twitterati-challenge

Here they are:

Started by by Ross (never known to nap) @TeacherToolkit – “In the spirit of social-media-educator friendships, this summer it is time to recognise your most supportive colleagues in a simple blogpost shout-out. Whatever your reason, these 5 educators should be your 5 go-to people in times of challenge and critique, or for verification and support”

There are only 3 rules.

1. You cannot knowingly include someone you work with in real life.
   2. You cannot list somebody that has already been named if you are already made aware of them being listed on#TwitteratiChallenge.
   3. You will need to copy and paste the title of this blogpost and (the rules and what to do) information into your own blog post.
   What to do?
   This what to do:
   1. Within 7 days of being nominated by somebody else, you need to identify colleagues that you rely regularly go-to for support and challenge. They have now been challenged and must act and must act as participants of the #TwitteratiChallenge.
2. If you’ve been nominated, please write your own #TwitteratiChallenge blogpost within 7 days. If you do not have your own blog, try @staffrm.
   5. The educator that is now (newly) nominated, has 7 days to compose their own #TwitteratiChallenge blogpost and identify who their top 5 go-to educators are.

So here are my choices

@cybraryman1  Jerry Cybraryman Blumengarten “I’ve got a page for that.”
Connected Educator-Speaker-Writer
Cataloging for education   #edchat moderator
Technology gives even the quietest student a global voice.
Jerry does indeed have a page of links for every educational situation.
Particularly useful are his pages about Twitter chats
http://www.cybraryman.com/ 

@gtchatmod Lisa Conrad Moderator of #gtchat
Lisa Conrad is the moderator and hostess for my favourite education chat #gtchat powered by Texas Association for Gifted &Talented.
Lisa conducts a poll to choose the topic for the chat or invites a guest expert, compiles a list of questions for the session and a collection of related links. After the chat she publishes a transcript using Storify and a blog post about the session which gives all the useful links which were shared.
http://globalgtchatpoweredbytagt.wordpress.com/

@GiftedHF Gifted Homeschoolers
Gifted Homeschoolers Forum supports families of gifted homeschoolers around the world through education, advocacy & community.
GHF not only support homeschoolers but also provide useful information about gifted and 2E student, online courses and conduct blog hops which provide great information and support.
http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/
http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/blogs/blog-hop/

@murcha Anne Mirtschin
Teacher of ICT accounting & business studies Hawkesdale P12 College. Passionate about virtual classrooms, online learning, rural education and global education
Anne connects teachers and students from all around the world by participating in global education projects, Twitter and Skype classroom connections. She also is the moderator and hostess of the Australia e-Series Tech Talk Tuesdays webinars using Blackboard Collaborate
https://murcha.wordpress.com/

@JoHart
Lecturer in VET (Lit, Num, IT) interested in all e-learning, virtual classroom lover Often delivering entirely online
Have also run e-learning projects
Jo provides great PD for teachers and everyone interested in education. She develops and presents e-learning projects and webinars which are great for building confidence and enthusiasm.
http://johart1.edublogs.org/

Thank you all for being great sources of information, support and encouragement!