Allen Dickson | Enrichment Program, Robotics and Curriculum
Belgrave Heights Christian School

Allen is an educator & speaker with a passion for ensuring learning is innovative, practical and enjoyable. For nearly 30 years he has combined classroom teaching with consultancy in various extra-curricular organisations where he uses his diverse range of unique skills to instil confidence in young people, extend gifted learners, and initiate change in classroom practice. With a focus on engagement and the sort of ‘hands on’ technology that LEGO intuitively provides, Allen runs his own educational consultancy – RethinkPD – where he presents and teaches on a range of specialist issues both in schools and at conferences around the country. He specialises in getting schools started on their STEM journey, integrating robotics into classroom programs, and rebooting whole school DigiTech programs.

Appearances:

Day 1 @ 15:40

The LEGO Learning System: Problem-Solving through Play

How do you prepare a student for a world where the Digital Technology landscape is still being invented? How do you ensure that transferable skills (such as computational thinking, problem-solving, logical deduction and even lateral thinking and creativity) can be nurtured and extended with both the head and the hands? Using the interconnected and scalable LEGO Learning System – like LEGO Education Spike Essential (for GrK-5) and Spike Prime (for Yr6-8) – this presentation will see a practical demonstration of how to engage students in a ‘hands on’ reverse engineering lesson. By harnessing the students’ past experience with the familiar LEGO brick, pairing it with the intuitive Spike coding and automation, and packaged into a learning activity by two teachers with 40 years’ experience between them, this session will have you redesigning the way you approach problem-solving through play.

Ryan Evans, Digital Technology Specialist - Teacher, Rangeview Primary School