Nga mihi readers,
Spring is the season of new beginnings and so it is for EdTechNZ too.
Last week at our Annual Meeting we announced EdTechNZ’s new Executive Council (EC), which is a blend of some of the old team alongside a diverse group of newly elected council members.
Five of the current EC have been appointed for another 12 months, at which point those positions will be put up for election:
- Annabel Robertson from Education New Zealand – our current Vice Chair
- Anne Taylor from Microsoft
- David Glover from Unitec
- Truman Pham from The Mind Lab
- Myself (Shane Kerr) from Augen – our current Chair
We also have five elected members (pictured above) who will serve a two year term:
Welcome back to:
- Ed Strafford from the Ministry of Education
Welcome on-board to our four new members:
- Dmitry Belevich from Tambook
- Sakthi Ranganathan from Jix
- Helen Cooper from CORE Education
- Missy Longshore from Fronde
Special thanks go out to our departing members. I can;t thank them enough for their support during our foundation phase and they will all be missed. Farewell to:
- Andrew McPherson – formerly from Industry Connect
- Douglas Harre from REANNZ
- Nick Billowes from CORE Education
- Phil Garing from Synapsys
- Senthil Perumal from Youth Hub
Also, special thanks to our project coordinator Anne Harris who has also just left us – without her our EC simply could not function! Welcome to Paula de Moor who is our new project coordinator.
Over the last 18 or so months we’ve achieved a lot and plan to achieve so much more in the next 12 months. Membership has grown in the last 12 months from 27 to 43 members. As we are solely membership funded, we rely on our continued member support, and of course we exist to promote and advance what’s important to our members.
We’ve kicked-started our Connect events and plan to deliver more over the next year including events for digital identity in education, digital skills, the gamification of education/game-based learning, plus a few more to be agreed on. The Wellington EdTech meetup group is going strong thanks to Dave Moskovitz and Dan Milward, and we have plans for a reboot of the Auckland group and a launch event for the Christchurch group.
Our Digital Skills working group is going strong and we are in the planning stage for our next working group which will focus on EdTech for export.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us in our journey so far and from all of us at EdTechNZ, we are truly looking forward to an exciting next 12 months and beyond.
Haere rā
Shane Kerr
Chair
News and Events
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