Our public presentation Reimagining early childhood for the 21st century: one year on, findings from the Conceptual PlayLab was a great success, and last month we welcomed another PhD student to our team. We keep developing new ways to embrace technology for learning.
Our team is growing
We are thrilled to welcome our new PhD student Sharon McCormack to the Conceptual PlayLab team. Sharon is a committed and experienced educator, with a passion for learning and teaching. Sharon’s experience stems from educational leadership roles across various sectors, including a wide range of diverse Melbourne school communities over the past four decades. We look forward to seeing the results of her research on STEM learning and development in family settings.
Public presentation: Reimagining early childhood for the 21st century: one year on, findings from the Conceptual PlayLab
We celebrated online, the outcomes of Australia’s first Programmatic Study about STEM concept formation in homes and play-based settings, one year on from its inception. Important topics and take away messages were discussed such as: Gender justice in STEM, “STEM is for me” identity, the STEM pipeline begins during infancy, supporting families in challenging times, research synergies with the discipline of engineering, VR, and AR innovations.
The presentation was facilitated by Professor Amanda Berry - Monash Education Associate Dean of Research, and featured:
Marilyn Fleer, Tanya Stephenson, Glykeria Fragkiadaki, Prabhat Rai, from the Faculty of Education and Jonathan Li and Ha Dang from the Faculty of Engineering
On May 13th, 560 viewers out of 758 live stream registrations watched the live public lecture followed by an online Q&A, on YouTube and via ongoing discussions on Twitter.
To date there have been more than 4,880 views on YouTube. Geographic data from YouTube scopes participants from all over the world. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, academics, early childhood educators, parents, practitioners, and other participants, gained access from the comfort of home to important worldwide research outcomes that are changing the way young children learn and develop in STEM while playing and imagining. Watch the event here.
Exciting Virtual Reality (VR) app
We are super excited to be developing VR apps as educational tools for families, early childhood education and primary school teachers, to learn about Conceptual PlayWorlds and how to implement one in their classroom or family home. Developed by the outstanding Monash University, Faculty of Engineering student Abbey McLean, this VR app allows the user to feel as though they are entering the space of a Conceptual PlayWorld of adults and children based on the children’s book, Rosie’s Walk. Within the 3D environment, videos appear on a TV screen to guide through the five steps of creating your own Conceptual PlayWorld. This is coming soon!
Our newsletter contains further details.
We would love to hear from you about what this research means to you and if you would like to get involved.
If you are an early childhood educator who would like to have an opportunity to participate in the Conceptual PlayLab research activities in the future, you can register your interest and join our private Facebook group - Conceptual PlayWorlds for Educators. You can also access free resources for educators, including our STEM PlayWorlds for Infants and Toddlers video.
If you are a parent who would like to have an opportunity to participate in the Conceptual PlayLab research activities in the future, you can register your interest. You can also access free resources for families.
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