MacEwan University Childcare Conference 3 May 2014

Keynote Speaker:

Robbin L Gibb, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience
University of Lethbridge

Dr. Robbin Gibb is based at the University of Lethbridge’s Department of Neuroscience. She is an associate professor and the first PhD graduate from the university’s Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience. The focus of Dr. Gibb’s research is to determine how early experience influences brain development and overall physical and behavioural outcomes, and what effects those changes have on subsequent experience. Dr. Gibb has made several presentations to parent education groups, judicial organizations, and international audiences.

You might be interested in this video she played for us....

This key note was really interesting and made some strong points about the developing brain and how there are many things that impact from both mother and father, preconception, gestation and postnatal. I will share some of the main points over the next day or two when I have listened to the recording and have some main points to share. I wish she would come to New Zealand....

And then there was me...workshop with 80 teachers and leaders in the sector. Alberta is developing a new curriculum and have made a decision to include Learning Stories as an assessment tool. I shared the success we are having in New Zealand as well as some of the things we have learnt along the way. I was really excited to share some our stories and our thinking at Massey University about learning stories as being more than about a moment that happened and the critical importance of interpretation. The teachers here are at the very beginning stages of thinking about learning stories and I hope I have contributed something to their ongoing thinking. I shared our tool for bringing elements of a narrative assessment together to support the writing - the participants really liked it