Let’s start with the basics. Born in Bendigo, Australia, I grew up in an outer Eastern suburb of Melbourne and went to school at the same school I now teach in (and have been teaching in since 1986), Yarra Hills Secondary College. I graduated from Monash University with a degree in biochemistry & microbiology followed by a Dip.Ed., B.Ed. and finally a Masters in Educational Studies. I teach mathematics, science, senior biology and IT. I am an Adobe Campus Leader and Adobe Education Trainer and I have qualified for the Flipped Learning 3.0 Certificates I and II. I was also recognised as one of the top 50 Tech Coaches in Flipped Learning Worldwide in April 2018.
I married a girl from my high school days and we have one daughter. Outside of school I spend my time flying a Connie in Microsoft’s FSX flight simulator, playing organ, searching through family trees and being an active member at my local church.
I was fortunate to have had Charles Lovitt for my maths teacher in HSC and I have tried to emulate his style of hands-on, student-focussed, discovery learning. As a result my teaching has involved television production, use of flight sims in science, web design by student teams for real clients and an award-winning animal studies program based on amphibians and reptiles.
For the technically interested, my first exposure to a computer was a PDP-11 which arrived at my high school for a student project in 1974. No monitor, mouse or keyboard, it used mark-sense cards with a dot matrix printer. From there I progressed to a TRS-80 before landing my first teaching position where I was handed a box containing a brand new Apple ][. Over the years I have worked with BBC microcomputers, Archimedes, along with various incarnations of Windows and Apple based machines and more recently, the Raspberry Pi.
