The Educational Computing Association of WA (Inc.) is very pleased to announce that Ms Michelle Pestel has been named the ECAWA Educator of the Year.
During 2018 Michelle was the Primary School ICT Integration Co-ordinator (0.5FTE) and Numeracy Coordinator (0.1FTE) at Peter Moyes Anglican Community School. As a lead teacher in ICT, Digital Technologies and contemporary pedagogy, her role for the past three years has been to purposefully integrate the use of laptop and ipad devices to enhance teaching and learning.
Michelle’s passion for integrating technology has been consistent throughout her teaching career, and she has presented workshops for staff within her own school, at ECAWA State Conferences, as well as for Scitech and Teachmeet. Michelle has an active presence on many social media forums and regularly collaborates and shares successful ideas with teachers from other schools.
Michelle introduced highly engaging activities such as Greenscreen, Stop Motion Animation, Movie Making, Electronic Board Games, Digital Collaborative Spaces, Multi-media timelines, Multi-media Digital Books, Motorised pin-ball machines, Augmented Reality, Screencasting, Website & App making and 3D design and printing projects.
Michelle offers ongoing support to teachers in her school as they create and organise digital content and assignments as part of the teaching and learning process.
Always when integrating purposeful use of ICT in teaching and learning, Michelle encourages teachers to follow the Blended Learning model that provides a balance between face-to face time and use of ICT devices. This model enables students to practice the transferrable skills they will need for the future; Collaboration, Communication, Creativity and Critical Thinking, and more importantly, it allows for personalised differentiation because explicit teaching is tailored to small groups of students, and digital platforms enable teachers to set individualised tasks at different levels.
Michelle meets regularly with IT support staff and the other sub-school ICT coordinators to contribute towards strategic planning and writing ICT related school policy.
Michelle considers that one of the highlights of her experience with Digital Technology robotics over the past three years has been coaching teams of students to compete in the First Lego League and represent WA in the National Competition in Sydney in 2016.
Congratulations Michelle Pestel – ECAWA Educator of the Year – 2018!
This text was summarized from the award recipient’s nomination documents.
