Roisin O'Reilly

Program Manager and Captain FAB (Fully Acknowledged & Briefed)

@RoshOR



Roisin is a teacher who has been mobile with technology since she owned a HP95LX in the early 90's, albeit mainly to boast that she had a teeny wee computer that was lighter than the instruction manual. That the instruction manual was the size of a brick and the computer only marginally more functional was beside the point!



She is so enthusiastic about technology that she now only works with technology that can actually support learning. In fact, she believes that not having technology in learning is like a pencil without a sharpener, red wine without chocolate, a morning without coffee, teaching without kids... well I'm sure you get the picture, unless you have both its pretty pointless. She has been a revolutionary since she began in education, always testing the limits and pushing for change. Some have admired this trait and others, well not so much. Contrary to popular belief the heroine in Brave is not modelled on Roisin though there are some similarities in hair and character.

Jenny Lewis

Business Development and Visionary Archer
@JennyLewisAssoc

Jenny is an educator who has taught and led at state, national and international level. Her interest in ICT emerged in the early nineties when she realised that her teachers and admin staff were duplicating processes and wasting precious learning time. She dragged in long suffering technology specialists to interpret what she meant by 'I want the thingy to do the thingy and don't care how it happens'. Apparently Jenny broke a few rules and regulations but figured if you didn't ask permission no one would say no!
Since those early days at Noumea Primary in Mt Druitt, Jenny has chaired the Microsoft International Partners in Learning Board, is an Education Impact and Education Fast Forward Fellow and in her spare time works at a national and international level providing advice on developing teacher and leadership standards.

Jenny believes that her best work is done with lots of 'bubbles', dark chocolate and coffee preferably after shopping!!!

Mark Woolley

Co-Team Leader, Professional Learning and Pedagogical Ninja
@mrwoolley

Mark is a passionate sportsman and educator with an addiction to adrenaline, coffee and anything two wheeled.

As a school student he was disengaged a lot of the time but pretty good at tests, daydreaming and british bulldog. This early disengagement in schooling has driven a professional focus on fun, engagement and relevance.
He loves experiencing and sharing powerful learning and believes teachers have the most important, rewarding and difficult job in the modern world (aside from real Ninja's of course). As a committed life long learner, he can be found filling any downtime with mobile learning and chasing the kids around the skatepark.
Mark is always keen to explore the limits and loves working with teachers to help make their students lives more engaging, relevant and exciting. Vive la Revolution!

Leanne

Co-Leader Professional Learning and pedagogy superhero and fearless learner
@Steedster

Co-Leader Professional Learning and pedagogy superhero and fearless learner, Leanne is a teacher who has a background in the IT industry before it was an industry. Those were the days of mainframe computers that needed their own building and 8 inch floppy disk drives. She believes the use of technology in education is both the catalyst to improve current pedagogies to make learning more relevant, challenging and engaging for students and the enabler to better prepare students for their future. Leanne believes it's the most exciting time in the history of the world to be an educator!!! She loves to work alongside colleagues investigating the use of today's technologies to transform education, ohhh... and to achieve the millennium goal of universal primary education!

Melanie Hughes

Professional Learning Co-Leader & Learning a go-go
@Melanieh

Melanie talks too much, has way too many kooky ideas, and is an eternal tinkerer of technology who is always up for a challenge. She is the proud owner of a lot of old school funkiness and a super pair of boots to dance across teaching and learning boundaries. Melanie's first experience of 'mindblowing teachnology' was with a Microbee computer and an early computer game called Daisy. How teaching and learning happens in virtual environments and collaboratively online, are particular areas of passion these days. Perhaps this is why she is very attached to her avatar. Melanie loves helping others to find meaningful and highly motivating ways to introduce technology into their professional practice, thinks everybody needs a PLN, is not the slightest bit competitive and has a sweet tooth!

Brendan Jones

Co Leader (Professional Learning)
Magister of Marvellousnessness
@jonesytheteacher

The story is about an awestruck teacher who is in love with an obedient computer programmer. It starts in a tourist town in South America. The story begins with a sport being played, climaxes with someone visiting a doctor, and ends with an unveiling.
That's the last time Jonesy uses a random story generator to create a bio.

Gadgets, play, tinkering and laughing - it's a fair bet that if you've met Jonesy at some stage since his spawning, he'd be involved in one, or a combination, of these things at any one time. He attributes his rise in the world to balancing hedonism, winging it and a champagne taste for change on a beer budget. If he could have a personal motto it would be "Strike Early, Strike Hard with Nerf". He currently resides on the sunny Costa Centrale, happily satisfying his penchant for cycling and avoiding Muggles.

Michael Welsh

Learning Designer and "The Hunter"
@weswick

A long time ago, in a faraway land, there lived a Hunter who used his trusty bow and arrow as his tool of choice. One day the Hunter fell into a deep sleep and awoke in a new age known as the 21st century. His beloved bow and arrow had been replaced with a smart device and his friends now followed him with something called Twitter. The Hunter would be known amongst his peers as Michael. The Hunter found himself in a new world of diverse technology which was rich and engaging. He felt a need and desire to share these new learned skills through teaching. The forest which was once his classroom, had suddenly been replaced with a room of tablets, laptops and IWBs. The Hunter had found his calling. No longer did he yearn to hear the noises of the forest but the graceful laughs and awe of his students. The Hunter, now known by his students as Mr. Welsh, had found a place in the world where the tablet and the web had become mightier than the sword!

Jim McAlpine

Jim is PLANE's Frontier Negotiator with responsibility for National Liaison. He brings the skills of retirement to this position as well as many years of experience as a History Teacher, Head Teacher, Board Liaison Officer, High School Principal (twice) and President of the NSW Secondary Principals' Council. He has been found in all corners of the real and virtual world. He is networked to many educators around the world, having presented on the Digital Education Revolution (NSW) to distinguished principals in such disparate places as Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Singapore and China (Chengdu and Changchun), as well as being in regular virtual contact with education leaders in England, South Africa, the USA and Finland. As a moving target, he was finally run to ground and awarded with Membership of the Order of Australia (2012) and his old Department gave him the Meritorious Service to Public Education Award in 2010. His grandfatherly visage is testimony to his role with two granddaughters, and alpine skiing is an aspect of his nominative determinism!

Lorence Issa

Project Manager, Juggling Ninja
@lorenceissa

Using his Ninja training Lorence works closely with the PLANE team in Project Managing the development of PLANE. He has worked in education for 10+ years and is well experienced in the development of technology to meet the needs of the educational communities in NSW. He is passionate about emerging technologies in areas of mobile computing, social media, augmented reality and online gaming and is very interested in how technology can be harnessed to support teachers and students. Loves coffee!

Mark Focas

Senior Technical and Business Analyst
Requirements Raconteur
@markfocas

Mark has worked with new technologies for 30 years with extended travelling bouts around the world in between. He has experimented with more applications and open source projects than you can poke a stick at. Having worked with and programmed for mainframe computers, mini computers, desktops, servers and mobiles He has an in-depth, inside-out architectural knowledge of IT. He is bilingual and his incredible talents are only eclipsed by his earnest modesty. There are not many programming languages that Mark hasn't dabbled in and there are some that he acquired expert knowledge in. In the last number of years Mark has focased his energies on translating the thoughts and desires of learning designers into a language that software developers can understand. But this is only a part of Mark's story, He likes to generate new ideas, find new ways of using technology and play the jester to conventional wisdom to bring new technologies to the table, suggesting novel ways these technologies can be used. Mark is described equally as brilliant and a pain in the butt.

Lisa Belfield

Teacher Coordinator and Defender of Standards

Lisa is always exploring new teaching ground, whatever it is, wherever it is, pushing boundaries, defending standards and showing teachers how they can add quivers to their own bows along the way. She is also known for popping her students into the "cannon of learning" and firing them off into a bright technology-rich future. Lisa speaks many languages including DOS, HTML, robot and Japanese, she is not afraid of anything, especially those who say "it cannot be done".

Dr Bronwyn Stuckey

Leader, Gameplay & Learning Communities (Xena, Warrior Princess)

Bronwyn plays roles (AKA Xena) and games for a living but manages to squeeze in time to consult on gameful design in professional learning communities. While it might not be immediately evident how fighting off creepers in Minecraft can relate to rallying classroom teachers to explore new ways of learning, they do have a lot in common. We will all be on a heroic journey together trying to excel individually in our battles and needing each other to fight the biggest battles as much an Alliance raid in WOW. No, it's not likely that anyone will perish and have to respawn in PLANE, but we will have to defend ourselves from bands of pedagogical monsters armed with dreaded worksheets, drill and kill games and typing tutorials. Even Xena Warrior Princess can't fight this battle alone, so hurry to join her!

Tal Greengard

Professional Learning Co-Leader and Eternal Optimist
@TalGreengard

Tal is a dedicated classroom teacher who loves creating rich learning experiences for students. Tal is also quite a paradox. He was writing computer programs in primary school, yet some of today's wiz-bangery still eludes him. For this reason, Tal empathises with teachers who find the use of ICT in the classroom challenging. He is obsessive about several things, including emphasising learning outcomes, respecting the professional knowledge of all educators and eating chocolate muesli bars. Tal really enjoys helping other educators see the potential for new technologies and ideas in their teaching. He is always ready for a lengthy philosophical discussion about any aspect of teaching and learning and loves putting ideas into practice.

Stanley Yip

Learning Media Developer Gameplay and Infinite Game Player
@stanley_yip

Stanley plays with boundaries. You'll find him either creating something in LEGO, kicking a soccer ball around or storyboarding his next game to use in teaching and in life. His infinite quest follows his passion about education and technology and the essence of games are a big part of his work and personal life. In his teaching and learning, technology is just a natural part of the journey. Stan loves and has been developing multimedia for a while now and it is his favourite medium for creative expression. He constantly thinks of different ways to think, to be creative, to hack the system and to play with boundaries. His life philosophy is based on the core values of wellbeing, life-long learning and fun. The physical and virtual worlds are his playgrounds.

Sophie Grieve

Senior Project Officer and "Goddess of Governance"

Sophie uses her 7 years of project management, legal and communication experience to make sure PLANE has a smooth take-off and landing. She loves making projects happen and felt pretty happy when PLANE was accredited at Professional Accomplishment level with the NSW Institute of Teachers. She is very passionate about getting the PLANE word out there, and can often be seen madly typing communications for teachers or talking to people about being involved in engaging ICT teaching! She is also a little bit obsessed with glamour and fashion which makes her hassle the PLANE illustration expert a little bit too much!

Kristina Hollis

Learning Designer

school led her to train as a secondary Music teacher. Enthusiastic about providing equal opportunities for all students to develop new knowledge and meaning, and a drive to always develop her own new skills, she soon embraced technology in education. Taking part in training for Microsoft Expression Web, Slow-motion animation, Web 2.0 tools and more, led to the completion of a Masters in Education (Information Technology for Education and Training) degree and training as an Intel Teach Essentials Online Course Master Trainer. A year later she was employed at Macquarie University as an Online Educational Designer with roles including: Moodle course design and development, training course and resource development, mobile technology workshop delivery, national conference presentations, design consultations with academics and many other challenging projects. But then PLANE lured her away to be part of their flight crew.
Kristina is extremely excited about the opportunities technology provides educators and the innovations that are being pioneered by PLANE. She is passionate about seeing all teachers have the opportunity to build collaborative networks and to extend their own education knowledge and skills.