During Semester 2 the UWA Graduate School of Education hosted a conference entitled Bringing learning to life with digital technologies – A conference by teachers for teachers.  This was a one-day hands-on conference for educators to meet to share and explore Digital Technologies Curriculum innovative practice.

The conference was a great success with 130 educators attending from across WA and from all sectors and year levels. Even though it was our inaugural conference, we had a number of very highly regarded invited speakers involved and 6 concurrent sessions running throughout the day to satisfy all interests. Hosting the conference at the impressive Centre for Education Futures helped to raise the profile of the Graduate School of Education within the teaching community.

One of the highlights of the conference was the attendance of several virtual primary-aged students and their parents as part of the mixed reality TeachLivE system currently being researched at UWA as part of an Education Futures Scholarship.

A virtual mother came to the conference to express her concern about her daughter’s grades and conference attendees interacted with her to help address the issues she raised.

The TeachLivE team, who included myself – Dr Fiona Mayne, Ezrina Fewings and Murdoch University Associate Dean of Engagement & Partnerships and initiator of TeachLivE in Australia, Dr Susan Ledger – facilitated some excellent interactions between the virtual students and parents, and the conference audience.

One school leader commented after the session that this was his favourite session of the entire day, as the TeachLivE (now also called SimLab) technology was completely new to him. He explained that the other sessions had been valuable, but having the virtual students and parents at the conference opened his eyes to ideas and technology that he did not know existed. He was most enthusiastic about potential uses in his school and beyond. Many others – educational leaders, teachers and students indicated that they would like more information about the platform and made a number of valuable suggestions about how the system could be integrated into teaching and learning at UWA in the future. This session was definitely one of the standout moments of the conference.