[Year 12 SofDev] ICT Careers Expo Report

[Adrian Janson]

Hi everyone (and apologies for the cross posts),

 

Now that I am (almost) fully recovered from the events of the last couple of
days - it is a good time to give you a report on how the ICT Careers Expo
went.

 

In preparation of the Expo, we invited our exhibitors and presenters to a
special networking event which we held on Friday evening here at MHS during
which the event was officially launched by MP Evan Thornley.

 

The Expo kicked off at 10am and we already had a good number of students at
the registration desk keen to get involved.  Attendance throughout the day
was very steady.  We had over 1000 registrations on the web-site prior to
Saturday - which was great!

 

Most sessions were very well attended - with the most popular ones being
related to the Games Industry, security and sessions given by tertiary
providers.  The day began with the Parents forum - in which a number of
panellists spoke about the state of the ICT job market and were quizzed by
the parents that attended.  The session had about 30 attendees and was
received very well.  A morning tea was provided and there was a separate
prize draw for an iPod Nano.

 

We also had a prize draw at the end of the day, for which many students
stayed for - we gave away 2 USB drives (1 person in attendance and 1 not),
an iPod Nano donated by Computers Now (to a little girl who was thrilled)
and a Nintendo Wii to someone that had come earlier in the day but had left.
Andrew Evans from Monash Uni then did a prize draw for a PSP - and when the
first name drawn was not in attendance decided that he would give another
away to a person that was present (which was very generous and a lovely
gesture).  A student who had only arrived at the Expo 30 minutes before
(missing all of the sessions), was the lucky recipient.

 

Brenda Frisk from NextSpace in NZ conducted a practical workshop to about 20
students in one of our computer labs - and received a very enthusiastic
reception.  Some students wanted to ask her questions - so much so that she
was still in the lab 45 minutes after her session (and going strong!).

 

The Expo wrapped up at 4pm and we had everything packed up within an hour of
this (which was a good effort I thought).

 

Thank-yous!

 

Thank you to all of our sponsors and supporters - in particular - MMV and
ACS who are both long term supporters of both VITTA and the IT education
community as a whole.

 

I would like to thank Lisa Chadderton (our VITTA Project Officer) for all of
her hard work on this event.  Thank you also to Renee Houreau (VITTA EO) and
the VITTA Committee for their support of this event.

 

Thank you to all of you who promoted this event, encouraged your students to
attend and/or brought students along.

 

Events such as these are the way that we can build our subject area up,
raise the profile of IT education and deliver the materials that our
students want and need - without each of us having to reinvent the wheel and
organize numerous guest speakers and uni. visits.  We will put some photos
up on the VITTA site shortly for those that weren't able to attend (and for
those that were!).

 

Cheers,

Adrian

 

Adrian Janson, 

VITTA President

Director of ICT, 

Melbourne High School, 

Forrest Hill, South Yarra 3141 Australia.

Phone: 03 9826 0711 International: +61 3 9826 0711

Fax: 03 9826 8767 International: +61 3 9826 8767

E-mail: janson.adrian.a at edumail.vic.gov.au

Website: http://www.mhs.vic.edu.au

Blog: http://jansona.edublogs.org <http://jansona.edublogs.org/> 

 


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