AISWA Speaker Series Part 1: Virtual Classrooms, More Than a COVID Response

Michael is a former Head of Junior School,  Head of Middle School and currently the Director of Distance Learning at Hale School. He has an impressive track record of designing innovative, interdisciplinary online projects whilst fulfilling all of these roles and presenting his work in forums nationally and internationally.  He has spent the past 8 years designing four highly innovative online programmes for students across Western Australia and around the world. His Hale@home, Hale(stuck)@home (a Covid response initiative) and BridgetoBoarding@Hale pre-boarding programmes have transformed the transition to boarding school for students in rural communities and overseas. His Hale Future School outreach programmes provide remote rural school students and teachers with the transformative opportunity to connect with one another, with schools in the city, and across the world.

It is Michael’s conviction that Distance/Online Learning can transform teaching and learning in all classrooms. Michael has designed a presentation which demonstrates how his teaching and learning model inspires richly interactive virtual-sessions where students showcase their collaborative project work with audiences across the world in lively, collaborative teaching moments. The programmes embed the critical competencies of creativity, collaboration, ICT and communication in the teaching and learning model. The programmes are examples of how we can make the 21C competencies intrinsic to our daily teaching and our students' learning.

The future of school is out there….building dynamic online communities in all classrooms for transformative 21C teaching and learning.

• Michael demonstrates how online learning can be collaborative, richly interactive and can enable the intrinsic development of 21C skills and capabilities in an intellectually engaging context.

• Connecting students to a global, virtual-workspace is simple, innovative and free of traditional bureaucratic boundaries…it can be the positive disruptive-future for innovative teachers and their schools! 

• Michael’s compelling presentation introduces his global network of online classrooms and communities, where collaborative problem-solving across distance is at the heart of every session. His work has transformed the transition to boarding at Hale School; and connected students from remote Western Australian schools with students in Russia, Spain and Ireland as well as with Hale School.

Tina has spent the last 25 years working as an early childhood educator in both public, independent and child care education settings. Since early in her career, she has strived to provide relevant and meaningful communication to parents about their child’s learning and achievements. Before the advent of education blogs and sites such as Pinterest, Tina developed her own webpage designed to network with other educators around the world to share her practice and philosophies, regularly providing support to teachers learning to use formats such as journals to record children’s learning. Since that time, she has further developed methods of assessment, recording and communication through inquiry journals, learning journeys and the use of digital technologies such as QR codes and Seesaw. Tina has been using Seesaw daily in her classroom since 2017, developing its use as a tool to record and report on each child’s interests, learning goals and achievements, as well as a teaching tool. She strongly believes in the importance of staying connected to families, using Seesaw as a method of encouraging open communication, interaction and partnership.

As Head of Swanonline Marion Poynton has an extensive background and career in Online Education and is passionate about growing and extending quality Christian Education courses to develop high-caliber students Australia wide.

She directs strong emphasis towards fostering the potential in teachers to ensure quality delivery of courses and enjoys coaching, mentoring and grading pre-service teachers.

Having recently completed a Master in Christian Education Leadership, she has a particular interest in Christian Education and in her spare time works with a team writing curriculum for an International Distance Education dance course.