mini-conference

The mini-conference went extremely well I thought. First of all the Leaders (Bob, Gillian and David S) met with me on the Wednesday and we did some productive planning around our next training session - confirmed as February 25-27.

Then the mini-conference on the Thursday and Friday. About 20 TROPIC Mentors attended. We had a session from Laurie Kelly with loads of useful stuff for teaching and learning - understanding learning styles, left brain - right brain, global learners, teaching to multiple intelligences, change of state, brain gym. Then Jeannie gave us a great session on understanding anxiety which ended with hands down the best relaxation session I've ever had. Later on conference dinner with John Moodie talking about leadership. Friday morning Mark Davidson gave us a session on tips and trends which I think really reinforced understanding of the teaching strategies on the observation sheets for everyone. And before lunch we managed to pack in a network mapping session. I have posted some photos on flickr. (Just opened an account so I hope I've linked to it correctly).

October update

Well time got away from me and I never even posted in September. It was a busy month which for me ended with a brief and wonderful holiday at Wallaby Creek with my family - shots above of son Isaac at the magnificent waterfall and me and kids at the lighthouse on top of Grassy Hill in Cooktown.

It hasn't all been fun and play for me though - we do now have a policy document and a set of criteria for Mentors and Leaders in TROPIC (many thanks to Neva for her support in putting those together, and to Deb F as well). These documents can be viewed in the wiki.

We decided not to run a training session in November but to leave it until January - still need to confirm dates. Will be meeting up with the Leaders on October 10th (next week!) to plan this - followed by the TROPIC mini-conference which is going to be a great event. Deb F in particular has put in a mammoth effort organising it. Laurie Kelly and two of his compatriots will be running workshops and Mark Davidson is also going to do his 'tips and trends' presentation. I'm going to run a session on the TROPIC network, following on from an activity we did at the Reframing the Future workshop in Sydney a couple of weeks ago - which leads me to putting in one more photo, from the mini-holiday I built around attending that workshop: