There are so many events out there that I’d love to go to if there weren’t two main obstacles – cost and the fact that I have to go to uni! Here are some of the ones that I found and thought could be relevant to my topic of unit planning with VELS.
The MAV annual conference (4th and 5th of December, 2008) will definitely have sessions on VELS – I went last year and they have soooo much happening. A good tip – if you volunteer to help they let you go to some sessions for free. I did this last year and it was great to get involved and feel useful! While I won’t be able to use this directly for my learning around this topic this semester, I definitely plan to keep learning past uni!!!
The MAV also run a public lecture series, but there are no details about this year’s program up yet. I listened to a podcast of one of last years’ sessions, and it seemed like a good forum for learned about maths in the ‘real’ world, which could give you lots of ideas for connected learning in the classroom. I’ve joined their mailing list so that I don’t miss any great sessions on VELS or any other topic.
The Australian Education Union (AEU) have just run a student teacher conference, but I wasn’t able to go 
I will be looking for their events in the future though as the descriptions of the conference sounded highly engaging and useful.
One event that I will be able to attend is the Professional Standards Project for Indonesian teachers on the 8th of May. While also being really useful for learning about teaching, I hope to
get lots of ideas about using VELS both from the actual session and from discussions with other teachers there.
I also have been given free attendance to two interactive whiteboard sessions being run at the Firbank Grammar School, for Indonesian on the 14th of May and for Maths on the 15th of May. While not directly focussed on VELS, I plan to have my VELS radar active for any little tips, and I also think that the resources and ideas presented with the whiteboards might make using VELS easier, especially cross-curricular planning and using ICT.
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