Ryan Evans | Digital Technology Specialist - Teacher
Rangeview Primary School

Ryan is a Primary School Digital Technology Specialist and LEGO enthusiast from Victoria Australia. He has been teaching since 2010, moving from classroom generalist to DigiTech specialist over the last 6 years. From humble beginnings with five EV3 robots and a small lunchtime LEGO club of 50 students, Ryan now leads an extensive program for all students from level 3 to 6 encompassing everything from image editing to robotics, CAD and everything in between. He now has over 220 students attending the school LEGO club.

Ryan has also been heavily involved in the First LEGO League over the last 7 years, taking many teams to State and National levels, including a returning high school team. Ryan is working towards turning his school into a Digitech Hub, where staff and students from neighbouring schools are able to utilise the tech space and equipment as well as share and develop skills.

A dedicated LEGO fan, Ryan was also a finalist in the third season of Channel 9’s popular LEGO Masters program, having won a host of challenges throughout after memorably acquiring the dreaded ‘Brick of Doom’ in episode 1. Despite being eliminated in episode 7, he and build partner Gabby managed to earn their way back into the competition and secure a spot in the Grand Finale, becoming the first team to have been cursed, previously eliminated and then appear in every subsequent episode.

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

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