Speakers
Marie Brennan
Marie Brennan is Professor of Education at the University of South Australia, where she completed a five year term as Dean of Education and Head of School from 2002-2007. Her previous academic jobs were at the University of Canberra, Central Queensland and Deakin Universities. Prior to being an academic, Marie worked for almost twenty years in the Victorian Education Department in a range of positions.
Marie is active nationally in promoting the education sector, as well as conducting research, supervising doctoral students and providing leadership in the School of Education. Her research interests cover all sectors of education, with a particular focus on injustice.
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Peter Garrigan
Peter Garrigan is President of the Australian Council of State School Organisations.
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Angelo Gavrielatos
Angelo Gavrielatos is the Federal President of the Australian Education Union (AEU). Prior to this, Angelo was a Presidential officer of the NSW Teachers Federation between 2002-2008 and an Organiser for the NSWTF in Western Sydney between 1992- 2002. He was previously a secondary teacher in Green Valley in South West Sydney.
His commitment to social justice unionism is at the heart of his work. His areas of primary responsibility have included the development and implementation of campaigns in a range of social justice areas within the Australian context and beyond. They include campaigns aimed at addressing the rights of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) students and their communities; the educational well being of students from the lowest socioeconomic status communities; the development of sound policy in the area of multiculturalism and multicultural education; and the rights of asylum seekers and refugee children and their families.
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Elizabeth Handsley
Elizabeth Handsley joined the staff at Flinders in 1996, and has taught also at law schools in Sydney and Perth. She teaches constitutional law, tort law and aspects of media law. In 2010 Elizabeth is the Co-convenor, with Dr Michael Rich of the Children's Hospital, Boston, of the Harvard-Australia Symposium on Media Use and Children's Well-Being.
In 2007 she was awarded a Carrick Citation for Excellence in Teaching, for the collaborative learning program she designed and implemented in Constitutional Law. In 2008 she took on the role of Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) in the School, and was the Faculty Scholar for Education, Law and Humanities, completing a project on the alignment of assessment and learning outcomes. In 2009 she undertook the Flinders Leadership Training Program, with a project that led to the adoption of a new policy on the moderation of marks in the School.
Since 2004 Elizabeth has been Vice President of the Australian Council on Children and the Media, a national community organisation that collects and disseminates information on children and the media, as well as bringing a child development perspective to bear on all debates on children and the media, including and especially violence, commercial exploitation and premature sexualisation. In this capacity she has contributed to numerous submissions to reviews and inquiries, and given interviews in newspapers and on radio and television.
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Kym Nadebaum
Kym Nadebaum has worked as an educator in South Australia for the past 30 years and for the past 10 years he has worked in a variety of roles at the Technology School of the Future and the DECS Learning Technologies Branch. He is passionate about engaging young people in creative ways with digital media. Kym has a media background and has worked extensively in film making projects with teachers and students. His expertise is in digital literacy and digital media curriculum integration strategies.
He is the project manager for the New Media Awards, a film making program and competition for student teams in South Australian government schools in years 3 through to 12. The program is designed to enhance the capacity of students to develop understandings, skills and literacies relating to digital media. It also offers students an opportunity to raise and discuss issues in their local community through documentary film. The theme for 2010 is Think Global Act Local.
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Gavin Wanganeen
Gavin Wanganeen is the SA State Government’s Ambassador for Youth Opportunity. In this role, the former Port Adelaide Football Club captain and Brownlow Medalist promotes healthy and positive lifestyle choices for young South Australians. Gavin works closely with SA's Commissioner for Social Inclusion and Commissioner for Aboriginal Engagement and across government departments and agencies. Gavin Wanganeen started in this position on October 13 2008. He was born at Mt Gambier, 18 June 1973 and lived at Port Lincoln before moving to Adelaide, aged five. He attended Salisbury East High School.
Football history
- Played 127 games for the Essendon Bombers between 1991 and 1996
- Played 173 games for Port Adelaide between 1997 (when the club began in the AFL) and 2006 when he retired
- 138 goals for Port Adelaide (AFL)
- 64 goals for Essendon Bombers
- Played 16 A.F.L. seasons
- 1991 Best First Year player
- 1992, 1993, 1995, 2001, 2003 All-Australian Team
- 1993 Essendon Premiership team
- 1993 Brownlow Medallist
- 1997 – 2000 Port Adelaide captain
- 2003 Browlow Medal runner-up
- 2003 Port Adelaide Best and Fairest
- 2004 Port Adelaide Premiership team (AFL)
- 2004 Deadly Awards - Most Outstanding achievement in the AFL
- 2006 First Aboriginal player to play 300 AFL games
- Member of Essendon ‘Team of the Century’
- Member of Indigenous ‘Team of the Century’
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Jay Weatherill
Jay Weatherill is South Australia's Minister for Education and Minister for Early Childhood Development. Jay was born and educated in Adelaide's western suburbs, completing his secondary education at Henley High School. He is a lawyer with an economics degree, establishing his own law firm in 1995 and practicing until he was elected as the Member for Cheltenham in 2002.
Jay was subsequently re-elected as Member for Cheltenham in 2006 and in 2010. He has held a range of portfolios including Environment and Conservation, Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister Assisting the Premier in Cabinet Business and Public Sector Management, Families and Communities, Housing, Ageing, Disability, Urban Development and Planning, Administrative Services, Local Government and Gambling. He is a member of the South Australian Executive Council.
Jay and his wife Melissa have two young daughters, Lucinda and Alice
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Martin Westwell
Professor Martin Westwell is the first Director of the Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st century and brings a scientist's view to learning, science education, policy and industry engagement. The Centre, formally launched by the SA Premier in January 2008, supports the decision making of policy makers, leaders in education, teachers, parents and young people to help shape the future of science education. After completing his degree and PhD at Cambridge University, Martin moved to Oxford University as a Research Fellow in Biological and Medical Sciences at Lincoln College.
While at Oxford, Martin undertook a number of research projects from producing artificial DNA, to drug discovery for tropical diseases and neurodegeneration. He also began a program of work in science education and public-engagement-with-science. Martin left academia to work in the biotechnology industry and then with a number of science education organisations returning to Oxford in 2005 as the Deputy Director of the Institute for the Future of the Mind. Here he ran the research program on the influence of modern lifestyles and technologies on the minds of the young and the old.
Throughout all of the work at the Institute for the Future of the Mind, Martin worked with government, teachers, parents and others to provide access to scientific evidence to help inform their decision making about the learning and education of young people. Martin has won a number of awards for communicating science to non-scientists including, in 1999, being named by The Times newspaper as Scientist of the New Century.
Martin and his family moved to Adelaide in September 2007. His wife Val is a maths teacher and their two boys attend Bridgewater Primary School in the Adelaide Hills.
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For further information, contact ACSSO by phone on 1800 183 066 or by email at admin@acsso.org.au.