Kia ora Apple Whānau,
I wanted to share the presentation and resources from the unconference session I am giving tommorow (July 9th, 2026) at the Apple Education ANZ Summit, hosted at the RACV Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast.
The session sparked some fantastic, passionate conversations among primary educators around the challenges of parental engagement with digital learning.
When kids use iPads at home, parents often view them strictly through the lens of recreational "screen time." They default to monitoring usage rather than celebrating creation. This session focused on how we can intentionally shift that parent mindset by making digital learning tangible, visible and deeply community-driven.
We will explore several ideas to help get parents invested. Here are some examples:
- The Classroom "Radio Station": Broadcasting 5-minute student-led podcasts using GarageBand directly to parents' car radios and phones during the afternoon school pickup.
- The "Couch-Cinema" Film Festival: Moving our student showcase out of busy school hours and hosting it as a synchronized family movie night using scheduled YouTube Instant Premieres.
- The Classroom Publishing House: Bridging the gap between the digital canvas and the physical world by printing self-authored student e-books from Pages, turning the iPad into a modern printing press that results in an artifact students and parents can physically hold.
We will also have discussion from those attending about their innovative ideas to show how ipad and mac can be used to create new ways to share learning with our communities.
Here are some the discussion questions we will discuss:
What are some interesting and engaging ways that you school is celebrating students’ work?
What are some ideas you have that has hit you during this discussion?
What are some challenges you may face with your ideas? What are some solutions?
What is one take away that you can take back to your school?
Ngā Mihi,
Daniel
Attach up to 5 files which will be available for other members to download.