I hope you have managed to get 2025 off to a great start. It certainly seems that a great deal has been happening, and there are quite a number of things that I need to mention.

1. The ECAWA Annual General Meeting
The ECAWA AGM will take place on the morning of Saturday the 22^nd of February, 2025 at Christ Church Grammar School Preparatory School. We are asking members to arrive from 8.00am to make sure that we can have coffee and a light breakfast, and be ready for a prompt start of the meeting at 8.30am.

Over the next week or so the documents for the meeting will be made available to members, who will be sent information about how to download the documents they need.

2. The #ECAWA2025 State Conference
We are now in the countdown to the #ECAWA2025 State Conference, which will take place on Saturday the 22^nd and Sunday the 23^rd of February, 2025 at Christ Church Grammar School Preparatory School.

We are very excited to be able to welcome back Dr Karsten Schulz of the Digital Technologies Institute to deliver a Keynote Address: Decoding Generative AI: How It Works and What It Teaches Us About Learning. 

We are also thrilled to welcome Dr Damien Kee to an ECAWA Conference for the first time. Damien will deliver a Keynote Address: Tools, not Toys!

There is also a great line up of presentations and workshops, including several by our Keynote Speakers, and far more than I can mention here. I hope that we will see you at the Conference, along with some of your colleagues.

Please look over the Conference information on ECAWeb at https://ecawa.wa.edu.au/conferences/2025-state-conference/ and https://ecawa.wa.edu.au/news/ and follow the link to buy your tickets.

And please… spread the word. Please forward Conference information to colleagues and friends who might otherwise miss out on some brilliant professional learning and a great time.

3.  A Communication Initiative
You would have noticed that the first two items in my message mention the same date – Saturday the 22^nd of February – as both the date of the AGM and the date of the #ECAWA2025 State Conference, and you may be trying to decide if that’s a typo, or if the Committee has made one of those “interesting” decisions.

In fact, that is the date that was chosen by the Committee, although as I see it, there was not really much choice in the matter.

Why?

Well, our AGM is overdue, and once the Committee decided on dates for the Conference, we needed to fit the AGM in first. We were hesitant to ask the members to come to a Friday evening AGM and then come back for the Conference the next morning, so we opted to hold the AGM as a “breakfast session” before the Conference opening, with a light breakfast from 8.00am, before the AGM starts at 8.30am.

I don’t think we have had a planned “breakfast session” at the Conference since we ran the TeachMeet Breakfasts, and I very much hope that you will make the extra effort to be there.

The more difficult issue was that we need to allow time for ECAWA members to look at the various reports, ask the questions they need to ask, and have their questions answered appropriately.

We also need to keep to a schedule, so that the Conference runs to time, and the speakers and presenters who have been so generous with their time and expertise, are not inconvenienced.

I hope that the solution I’m going to offer will work for us all. It is:

Using the same service that we use for our ECAWA Updates and the ECAWA Committee discussion list, a “closed email list” has been set up with the email addresses of financial members of ECAWA and the voting representatives of School / Organisational members.

Members can “unsubscribe” from the forum at any time, or may choose to ask the Secretary to “unsubscribe” them, but I hope that you will choose to be part of the discussions.

As members go through the documents for the AGM during the early part of February, and check things, members will be able to email their query, correction or comment to the forum, so that it can be answered by anyone else in the group.

In this way we should be able to have a discussion that includes all our members who want to participate, and allow those who just want to “listen” to the discussion do so.

When members receive one of these emails, the header will show that it is from the forum.

Please watch your email for the first of these messages.

4. ECAWA Vice President
At the November 2024 meeting of the ECAWA Committee the Committee voted unanimously to co-opt ECAWA Member, Dr David Cook to fill the vacancy for Vice President.

When the late Ian Gaynor was President of ECAWA, David first came onto the ECAWA Committee as the representative of the ACS WA Branch, and later participated in ECAWA events, including as a Keynote Speaker at the #ECAWA2018 State Conference.

David has had a very successful set of roles with the Australian Computer Society as the National Vice President – and before that as the ACS WA Branch Chair.

He is heavily devoted to the mission of extending outcomes for the teaching and learning of computing in WA. David says it remains his great passion.

David works in the School of Science at Edith Cowan University (ECU).

5. Safer Internet Day – Tuesday the 11^th of February
The eSafety Commissioner provides valuable reminders and useful resources all year round, but Safer Internet Day on Tuesday the 11^th of February is a great opportunity to focus attention on this topic. Check the website of the eSafety Commissioner at https://www.esafety.gov.au/educators

6. Principal Consultant – Secondary Curriculum and Assessment (Technologies) Position
We sent a separate email specifically about the position that is being advertised, however I’m mentioning again – just in case the ideal candidate somehow missed the earlier email.

The Principal Consultant – Secondary Curriculum and Assessment (Technologies) position is advertised online at https://search.jobs.wa.gov.au/page.php?pageID=160&windowUID=0&AdvertID=367748

7. Is your ECAWA Membership up to date?
ECAWA memberships become due for renewal on either the 30th of March or the 30th of September each year.

If you are not sure if your membership is financial, or you need a copy of your TAX INVOICE for tax purposes, in the first instance, please search your email inbox /s for the subject line including ECAWeb Tax Invoice. That was the subject of the email that was sent when you paid your membership. Some members have used several different email addresses for ECAWA matters, so perhaps check your secondary address as well.

If you are not still sure of the current status of your ECAWA membership and can’t find a copy of your Tax Invoice in your email, please send an email secretary@ecawa.wa.edu.au and check.

See http://bit.ly/ECAWA-JoinRenew to renew your ECAWA Membership.

Thank you for persevering to the end of this long message.

I hope to see many of you at the breakfast and AGM on Saturday the 22^nd of February and at the #ECAWA2025 State Conference.