The Educhange Podcast

Nicole Dyson has lead whole school curriculum change at some of Queensland’s top performing public schools. Passionate about project based learning and student entrepreneurship, she is the founder of Mayd, a curriculum aligned education program for high school students and a co-founder of Future Anything. She also contributes to the Foundation for Young Australians YLab program. Nic now also leads our Future Ready Program at EC, providing teachers with support to deepen engagement and learning.

Lasse is Head of Operations and Partner at HundrED.org. HundrED seeks and shares 100 inspiring innovations in K-12 education worldwide every year through a supportive community. Lasse has worked in education and career-planning since 2003 and beyond his work with HundrED, he has been building Mentors of Finland, a non-profit organisation that mentors unemployed young people to find a job, free-of-charge, that now reaches 100,000 students monthly.

Professor Frank Oberklaid is an internationally recognised researcher, author, lecturer and paediatrician and speaks to us today on the importance of development and learning in the early years of life. He is the Foundation Director of the Centre for Community Child Health at The Royal Children’s Hospital – Melbourne, an Honorary Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne, and continues to advise Governments on how communities can provide the best start to life for children.

Welcome back to Season 2! Today we talk with Kaila Colbin. She is the ANZ ambassador for Singularity University, a movement that seeks to use the power of technology to transform society in positive ways. A serial entrepreneur based in Christchurch, she is also the Curator and Licensee for TEDxChristchurch and TEDxScottBase in Antarctica. In this future focused interview, we discuss the implications of exponential technologies on society, and what this means for students, teachers and schools.

Thanks for listening along to the Educhange Podcast this year. We've loved hearing the stories of change from innovators and educators from all across the globe. We're taking a break until mid January but have some brilliant people lined up to share their insights. Have a happy New Year and see you in 2018!  

Professor Lea Waters is a global expert on helping people to flourish. She is the Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology at the Centre for Positive Psychology at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She is the president of the International Positive Psychology Association and holds affiliate positions at Cambridge University and the University of Michigan. In 2017, she also published a book on the new science of positive parenting entitled The Strength Switch.

We speak with Shane Hancock, Deputy Principal at Woodcrest State College in Springfield, QLD. We were lucky enough to meet Shane during the Ipswich Changemaker program this year and he rolled out an awesome program to bring literacy into the community.  Shane has been working in education for 23 years and has taught in many contexts including urban schools in Brisbane and Ipswich and in remote indigenous communities of Far North QLD. Outside of school, Shane owns and manages QLD's largest llama farm.

Brett Wood is the foundation principal at Music Industry College, an innovative school in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, Australia. Brett opened MIC in 2010 with only 27 students with the vision to give a specialised authentic learning experience to students passionate about music, helping them to forge a career in the music industry. He shares his insights from opening a school and how the team at MIC have transformed the learning for this group of young people.

Peter Hutton is the co-principal of TC, Templestowe College, in Melbourne, Australia. Peter took over the school in 2009 and with the community, revolutionised the educational model that has seen it grow from on the brink of closure to now serving over 1000 students. It is one of the most innovative high schools globally and has student voice, choice and entrepreneurship as the centre of its model, with no year levels, 150 subjects to choose from and 100 students employed by the school to help it run.

We speak with Matt Noffs, the co-founder of the Street Universities and CEO of Noffs Foundation, Australia’s largest drug and alcohol treatment service provider for young people under 25. Noffs Foundation works with young people for up to 5 years after leaving residential treatment. The Street Universities work with over 10,000 young people every year, focusing on issues related to drugs, mental health, employment, education and crime.

Leon Hady is a UK-based educator and entrepreneur. He has been an English teacher and a Head Teacher in some of England’s toughest schools achieving some phenomenal results with students and school communities. He is currently doing some fascinating work with online and just-in-time learning for young people and their teachers, through a platform called TuitionKit. Today, Maddie chats to Leon to dive into his experiences as an educator and now entrepreneur, and what we can learn about learning.

Today we speak with the amazing Jan Owen, CEO of the Foundation for Young Australians and YLab, the global youth futures lab. Jan is a highly regarded social entrepreneur, innovator, influencer and author who has spent the past 25 years growing Australia's youth, social enterprise and innovation sectors. Jan’s lifelong mission is to unleash the potential of young people to lead positive change in the world.

Ashanti Branch is an incredible educator and is the Founder and Executive Director of the Everforward Club. He works to change how men, especially those of colour, interact with their education and how their schools interact with them. Ashanti is an Education Fellow at the Stanford d.School and his transformational work was featured in the powerful documentary, The Mask You Live In. We chat with him about his work in school, the #100kMasks initiative and why we should all take off our masks.

We chat with Laura McBain about her groundbreaking work at High Tech High and discuss how project-based learning with real problems can have some incredible results for kids. Laura has twice been a principal, is a Harvard grad and really is an awesome educator as well as human being. She was recently in Melbourne, Australia where she spoke from the stage at our #Educhange conference and has just begun a new role at the Stanford d.school K12 Lab.

Steve is a leader in the digital learning space and is Director of ICT & eLearning at Ivanhoe Grammar School. We chat with him about how he is using technology and leadership to evolve learning for kids.