News and Events

Sarah Prior (Smithton High School, Tasmania) is passionate about ensuring students from regional areas have equal opportunities in STEM. In addition to building the robotics program in her own school, she recently organised a pilot robotics competition in her region with the goal of growing local competitions so more students have opportunities in robotics.

LEGO Education Australia, in collaboration with the Australian Computer Society, is pleased to announce that learning expert Professor Mitchel Resnick will be the speaker at the ACS ICT Educators’ Global Leaders’ Series. Mitchel Resnick is an outstanding professional in childhood education—a world leader in developing 21st century skills in primary and secondary school students.

Scratch is the world’s most popular block-based programming language for children. From August 2018, students will be able to program their LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 with Scratch 3.0, the next generation of Scratch.

Mark Lockett has taught Robotics and Engineering to Primary and secondary students for over 20 years. He is a LEGO Education Teacher Award recipient. He has been an Australian FLL Coaches’ Advisor, and the Hardware and Software trainer for the FIRST Tech Challenge in Queensland.

In addition to teaching at The Southport School (Queensland), Mark works part time as a LEGO Education teacher trainer around Australia, and enjoys sharing his passion of LEGO, engineering and all things robotic.

Jess Schofield is a beginning teacher at Injune P-10 State School, a small rural school, 600km north-west of Brisbane. In total, there are 75 students at Injune, with 14 in the secondary school.

During her teacher training at the Queensland University of Technology, Jess was a student ambassador working within the university's LEGO programs, running teacher PD sessions and day-long NXT and EV3 activities for visiting middle-years students.

Milorad Cerovac is a teacher at The King David School in Melbourne. Milorad has been a pioneer of incorporating elements of robotics into the school's curriculum to enhance student engagement and learning.

In 2015, Milorad won FIRST Australia’s Volunteer of the Year Award for his contribution to local and national FIRST robotics competitions.

According to code.org, only 40 per cent of schools teach computer programming. Over the last few years, however, more and more countries have recognised the importance of computing, coding, and the associated skills that help children to develop and prepare for the working world.

How can we improve our knowledge and teach computational thinking in a more inspiring and creative way?

With 54 per cent of teachers in the UK believing their students know more about ICT and computing than they do, it’s almost inevitable for teachers to feel anxious about teaching a subject like computing; after all, it’s reasonably new for them too, plus it’s a topic that can’t be taught solely with a textbook. So, what can teachers do to bring computing lessons to life and achieve success?

Does coding strike you as a daunting subject to teach in school? All the more if you know some of your students are quite technology-proficient. In fact, coding is simply another language and it gives you the power to communicate with technology, asking it to perform various tasks and functions. Read some top tips for teaching computing in this article.

On 15 August 2017, students have the opportunity to use LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 and EV3 to develop code as part of this global challenge.

Last year, 10,207 Australian students participated in this free event – and this year the challenge is on globally to beat this world record.

The FIRST LEGO League competition has been mapped to the Australian Curriculum making it even more relevant for your school.

Shontelle Lewis (Sharon State School, Bundaberg, QLD) is an advocate for primary school students learning to code and was the winner of the LEGO Education Teacher Award for 2017. She has created and run robotics and coding challenges benefiting not only her own students, but also those of other schools.

Jemma White is a primary school teacher at North Sydney Demonstrations School in New South Wales, Australia. Jemma has created a poster showing the links between the WeDo 2.0 projects and learning outcomes in science and technology.

Shontelle Lewis (Sharon State School, Bundaberg, QLD) is the winner of the LEGO Education Teacher Award for 2017. Shontelle will travel to the LEGO Education Symposium 2017 in Billund, Denmark, May 2017.

Internationally recognised education expert Chris Rogers returns to Australia in March 2017 to work with teachers interested using LEGO materials to support learning in STEM subjects.

The LEGO Education Teacher Award recognises innovative classroom teachers who have an interesting story to tell. LEGO Education will provide assistance for the recipient to present their work at the LEGO Education Symposium 2017 in Billund, Denmark.