March 28, 2024

World, Here I Come!

Downtown Doha from Museum of Islamic Art

I just landed in Doha, Qatar after almost 24 hours of travel. I’m in Doha to be the keynote speaker at the 3rd Annual ICT in Education Conference in Doha, Qatar on March 27th. My address is entitled, “The Best Educational Ideas in the World.: Tickets to Constructing Modern Knowledge”

New Museum of Islamic Art by I.M. Pei

This is my third trip to this amazing country and I am quite honored to share my thoughts on teaching and learning with a young nation eager to create an educational system for the future.

From Doha I travel to Bangkok via Cairo for a few days of exploration. I’ve never been to Thailand before and am glad that the airlines are forcing me to stop there.

From Bangkok I fly to my adopted second home of Melbourne Australia where I’ll be keynoting the Australian Conference on Educational Computing Conference (ACEC). My keynote address is being created especially for this occasion and is called, “So, You Say You Want a Revolution.”

You can also register for a special “Breakfast with Gary Stager” workshop on April 6th.

I’ve keynoted this event a couple of times before, but this year’s biennial conference is quite special.

The first conference I ever keynoted was ACEC 1992 coincidentally in Melbourne and 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of me working with schools and educators across more than 40 trips Downunder. In 1990, I had a paper accepted for the World Conference on Computers in Education in Sydney. I accompanied Seymour Papert to Sydney, where he gave a magnificent keynote address, and I met fantastic educators seriously engaged in changing the world.

Three weeks later, I was invited back to Australia to lead professional development activities in the world’s first two “laptop schools.” That wa followed by work with dozens of schools, plus consultation with state governments and lots of of workshops and keynotes over two decades. I also earned my Ph.D. in science and mathematics education at the University of Melbourne and have been a Visiting Scholar at Trinity College.

Here is the cheeky video I made for ACEC 2010.

The organizers of the conference asked me for a video advertising my participation. It ain’t Scorsese, but here it is.

Gary Stager’s ACEC 2010 Video from Gary Stager on Vimeo.

Description
ACEC Keynote Address: You Say You Want a Revolution?

This keynote will explore the notion of the digital learning revolution and its assumptions while addressing such questions as, “What happened to the last digital revolution in Australia?” Were there lessons learned? If not, why not?

Who are the combatants in this latest revolution? Will children, democracy and creativity be the first casualties.

Gary Stager will reflect upon his experiences of working in Australian schools for the past twenty years and insights gained from similar top-down “reform” efforts being imposed across the United States.

Gary will remind ACEC attendees why he is still excited by the potential of computers in education as intellectual laboratories and vehicles for self-expression and challenge the audience to raise their game in order to realize the opportunities computing affords learners. This of course will be accomplished with humour, candor and provocative examples of student learning.