An Inspiring Start to 2011

What an incredible start to the year, two days in Auckland running workshops at Colab followed by the Inspired Impact education conference. I flew up on Sunday to be hit with a wall of heat, after a year in windy Wellington I had forgotten just how steamy Auckland can get in the summer.

I was staying at the Vice Chancellors apartment at AUT, which is on the top floor of the halls of residence. It was quiet for the first night before excited packs of freshers arrived all wide eyed with the prospect of living away from home for the first time. My first workshop was on Publishing with Wordpress followed by a Social Media Masterclass, where half of the attendees were from a well known major record label. They must have liked what they heard as they all then signed up for the Mobile Media workshop I was running the following morning.

Later that evening I went to the opening of the Diana Eng show with wearable electronics, and inflatable garments made during Colab Summer School workshops. I found out later Diana was on the second series of Project Runway and you can see an interview with some of her work in Beauty and the Geek. I'm keen to get my craft station set up in the studio soon so that I can start to make some smart clothing and maybe a robot or two.

It was back to Wellington for a night at home before I jumped on a tiny 19 seater plane to Palmerston North for the Inspired Impact education conference. I was staying at the Hotel Coachman which is lovely, with super deep spa baths you can float in and ....drum roll.. free Wifi. It was wonderful to be able to check my mail, the twitterverse and do a final run through of my keynote from the comfort of my room without having to ask for a LAN cable or pay an exorbitant connection charge.

The conference kicked off with a thought provoking and hugely enjoyable speech from Sir Ken Robinson, who unfortunately could not make it in person but instead beamed in from LA via satellite connection. After watching both of his inspiring speeches from TED Talks, it was thrill to be hearing him speak live and also rather terrifying as I was going to have to follow his polished performance with my own keynote the next morning.

The day was filled by two more excellent speeches from Kath Murdoch and Bruce Hammonds, with breakout workshops in between on topics like the art of teaching science, the magic of visual arts and using open source tools to promote achievement. I enjoyed an excellent meal back at the hotel that night before retiring early as I was opening the conference the next morning.

My keynote on Engaging Digital Natives seemed to go down well, I shared my own unique learning pathway and talked about creative attitudes, space and time. The challenges we face educating New Leonardos for jobs that haven't been invented yet, and the flexible minds we need to develop in an attempt to future-proof our thinking.

I finished the day off by running a couple of workshops on mobile, streaming and remixable media. It was an honour to be invited to speak at such an amazing event, and I am always filled with such hope for the future when I go to education conferences. With over 1400 passionate teachers and over 80 workshops for exchanging knowledge and ideas, it was a wonderful gathering of awe-inspiring people.

If you want to view the mindmap of the speech I gave you can view it here:
http://www.mindmeister.com/73517382 / Password: mohawkmedia

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