Keynotes

ULearn08 features four internationally renowned keynote speakers as well as two panels of educational leaders from around New Zealand.

Here comes learning!

Will Richardson (USA) and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (USA)

We live in a world where the fabric of many of our traditional institutions are unravelling and re-ravelling as the disruptive nature of social technologies on the web foster new ways to communicate and collaborate. While political, media, and business models are evolving under the pressures of these shifts, education systems are lagging in their understanding and response.

This moment presents us with difficult challenges and huge opportunities. And the opportunities go far beyond the simple ability to publish to the web, far beyond the simple use of tools. They revolve around connecting, forming groups, creating personal classrooms and networks in which we can learn and do good work together and create change. But that process requires a deep understanding of these shifts on a practical level, especially for the educators who must prepare students for this new reality.

So how do we do that? How do we reconfigure our systems to embrace social web tools and the literacies required to use them to leverage these powerful potentials for participation? How do we begin on that journey not just to create and share but to connect and collaborate? And what does that new reality look like in practice?

Join Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson in an exploration of what's changing, who's implementing that change, and what it means for the rest of us.

Will Richardson is known internationally for his work with educators and students to understand and implement instructional technologies. A former public school educator for 22 years, Will’s own blog is a leading resource for the creation and implementation of Web 2.0 technologies at the K-12 level, and his is a leading voice for school reform in the context of the fundamental changes these new technologies are bringing to all aspects of life.

Will’s presentations communicate a fresh and inspiring vision of what schools can and must become. Through the Powerful Learning Practice Network, which he co-founded with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Will works with schools and teachers around the world to re-envision their learning cultures and communities.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, a 17-year educator, has been a classroom teacher, charter school principal, district administrator, and digital learning consultant. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member teaching graduate and undergraduate pre-service teachers at The College of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), where she is also completing her doctorate in educational planning, policy and leadership.

Sheryl has published journal articles, book chapters and magazine pieces, been featured on public broadcasting television and radio shows, frequently facilitates online seminars and workshops, and is a regular presenter at local, state, national and international conferences speaking on topics of homelessness, teacher leadership, virtual community building, and 21st Century learning initiatives. Sheryl also maintains a blog about 21st century learning.

Business sector response

Bruce McIntyre (New Zealand)

Bruce McIntyre is known for starting Macpac at age 19 in 1973. Macpac became one of New Zealand's early export success stories. Today, its innovative, high quality products can also be found in shops and mountains around Australia, UK, Europe, Scandinavia, USA, Japan and Asia.

In the late 1980s, disullusioned with traditional business culture, Bruce instigated a prolonged cultural and organisational reform project which transformed the workplace into an open, highly participative, team-based, human-oriented environment. These reforms were presented at the two Workplace NZ conferences.

Currently, Bruce is working on education reform, developing a model school, which has the intention of developing the innate, holistic potential of every student. Bruce comments that, "current education is openly focused on providing workers for the economy. But the base cause of our social, environmental and economic woes is that our society limits human potential to an estimated 10% of its capacity - the other 90% of us is shut down."

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Two views: Counterpoints on educational futures

Karen Sewell, John Hattie and Rod Oram

Collaboration and understanding between the education and business sectors is critical for ensuring the future successes of our students. But what does this mean for us as educators today? How do these views differ? Are we adequately preparing our students for the future?

This plenary session, chaired by Karen Sewell, will explore the personal views of two prominent New Zealanders about education in New Zealand, as well as their perceptions about what we need to do better or differently to ensure a successful future for all our students. Our panel consists of John Hattie, who is part of the education sector, and Rod Oram, who has a business background. John and Rod will participate in this session via a high speed video conferencing link.

The panel:

• Karen Sewell (Ministry of Education - chair)
• John Hattie (Auckland University - education perspective)
• Rod Oram (Unitec - business perspective)

Karen Sewell is the Secretary for Education and Chief Executive of the New Zealand Ministry of Education.

From 2001-2006 she was the Chief Review Officer of the Education Review Office, with responsibility for reviewing and reporting on the quality of early childhood services and schools throughout New Zealand.

Karen’s background is in education. Before she joined ERO Karen was principal of Green Bay High School, a large coeducational secondary school in Auckland. She has been President of the Auckland Secondary Schools Principals’ Association and between 1994 and 1996 she was Chairperson of the Principals’ Council of the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association.

Karen has held a teaching fellowship at Victoria University of Wellington, and a Nuffield Bursary for study at the Institute of Education, University of London. She has delivered keynote addresses and seminars at national and international educational conferences.

In June 2005 Karen took on the role of Acting Chief Executive of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. She returned to her role as Chief Review Officer in May 2006.

John Hattie is Professor of Education at Auckland University and director of the Visible Learning Lab. His areas of interest are measurement models and their applications to educational problems, including item response models, structural equation modelling, measurement theory, and meta-analysis.

John is chief moderator of the Performance Based Research Fund, editor of the International Journal of Testing, associate editor of British Journal of Educational Psychology, and is part-time cricket coach and umpire. He has published and presented over 450 papers, and supervised 150 thesis students.

Rod Oram has more than 30 years' experience as an international financial journalist. He has worked for various publications in Europe and North America, including the Financial Times of London.

Rod and his family emigrated from the UK to New Zealand in 1997. He was editor of the Business Herald section of the New Zealand Herald from 1997-2000.

He is currently a columnist for the Sunday Star-Times and Good Magazine, a regular broadcaster on radio and television, and a frequent public speaker.

Rod is an adjunct professor in the Business School at Unitec, and in 2007 Penguin published his book on the New Zealand economy, Reinventing Paradise.

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A marriage of necessity - business and education partnerships for the 21st century world

Steven Carden (New Zealand)

Steven’s keynote address will explore how the changing nature of business in a rapidly globalising world will impact New Zealand’s future workforce. In light of these changes, Steven will discuss how the education and business sectors can collaborate more effectively to ensure New Zealand’s organisations are getting the most benefit possible from the talent makings it way through the education system.

Steven has seen collaboration between the two sectors work well in a few contexts. As the founder of The First Foundation - a non-profit organisation that provides educational opportunities for New Zealand’s most talented but financially disadvantaged students by partnering them with leading corporates - Steven has witnessed first hand the power of effective business and education partnerships. He will share the major insights of these experiences and the implications for the education sector today.

Further, Steven Carden’s book, New Zealand Unleashed, focuses on the major changes likely to impact New Zealand in the next couple of decades. It explores the changing face of education and social connectivity in this new world, and provides some ideas on how New Zealand society can best adapt to a fast-evolving world. These ideas will also be interwoven into his discussion on how business and education collaboration has the potential to revolutionise New Zealand schools and workplaces.

Steven Carden (34) is the author of a recently published book about New Zealand and its future, New Zealand Unleashed (Random House, 2007). The book provides an outline of the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand in a rapidly changing world and suggests a strategy for ensuring the country is able to prosper in this new world.

Steven is currently the GM for Business Development at agricultural services company, PGG Wrightson. Prior to PGG Wrightson, Steven was a strategist at the world’s leading management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, in New York.

Ten years ago Steven founded what has now become the nationwide non-profit organisation, the First Foundation. He is also the former CEO of FlyingPig. In 2005 he was named by the Sir Peter Blake Trust as one of New Zealand’s six emerging leaders. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and law and arts degrees from Auckland University.

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Ensuring our students are learning in the midst of all the excitement!

Derek Wenmoth (New Zealand)

Our final keynote is a collaborative presentation in which a group of leading educators share their experiences in “making this happen” in their schools and centres. The panel will provide examples of how they and their staff have translated theory and good ideas into practice that is sustainable and where the impact on learning can be assessed.

The panel:

• Derek Wenmoth (chair)
• Tania Coutts (Manaia Kindergarten)
• Beverly Kaye (Manaia Kindergarten)
• Carolyn Stuart (Tawa Intermediate)
• Linda Tame (Lincoln High School)

Derek Wenmoth is currently director of eLearning at CORE Education, and is involved with a wide range of e-learning activities from exploring the innovative use of the latest technologies and researching e-learning practices, to helping establish policy and strategies to enable the implementation of e-learning.

With a background as a teacher, principal, teacher educator and education policy advisor, Derek’s role at CORE perfectly combines his passion for teaching and learning together with his long held fascination with the use of technologies in education.

Derek is a regular speaker at conferences both nationally and internationally, and maintains a blog on matters relating to e-learning and other aspects of interest to educators; http://blog.core-ed.net/derek

In recognition of his work in this area, Derek has recently been designated one of 2008’s “Global Six” by the George Lucas Educational Foundation’s Edutopia which recognises individuals making a difference in education.
http://www.edutopia.org/daring-dozen-2008

Tania Coutts (right) has been the head teacher at Manaia Kindergarten for 4 years. She has been teaching for approximately 18 years and has worked in both kindergartens and childcare centres in Whangarei, Auckland and overseas. Tania says, “we began our ICT Journey in September 06 at ULearn06 in Christchurch. Our kindergarten is participating in the Ministry of Education’s Early Childhood Education ICT Professional Learning Pilot Project with Core Education. Integrating ICT into our kindergarten curriculum has been highly successful and provided endless opportunities for community, whanau and family involvement.”

Beverly Kaye has been teaching for approximately 6 years both in childcare centres and kindergarten. She has been teaching at Manaia Kindergarten for 4 years. Before studying towards her BEd, she completed an apprenticeship in printing and publishing, working with graphic artists on commercial projects. Her ICT journey at Manaia Kindergarten combines her passion for children’s learning and development with her interest in technology. Beverly says, “it is wonderful to grow and learn along side our expanding community - including children, teachers, parents, grand-parents, aunts, uncles, friends - from Whangarei, throughout New Zealand and internationally”.

Carolyn Stuart is currently the principal of Tawa Intermediate in Wellington and the project director for the On-Line Bridges Cluster. Prior to this she was seconded to work in the Ministry Of Education’s Student Management Systems Team from her role as principal at Southbridge School in Canterbury. She is passionate about making a difference to the lives of children and educators. Carolyn has had articles published, and presented at conferences in Australia and New Zealand on many of the aspects facing educators in the 21st century. She still cheers for the Crusaders within the land of the Hurricanes.

Linda Tame has been the principal of Lincoln High School since 1997, and over this time has become increasingly passionate about improving learning experiences for students. The school is currently involved in Te Kauhua, a project focusing on improving Māori student achievement. Having studied computer science at university, she began her career with a large multinational corporation, but quickly recognised the call to teaching heard by so many of her ancestors.

Linda began her teaching career at Aranui High School, followed by an HOD role at Mairehau High School for 6 years, until taking up a senior management position at Lincoln High School in 1996. She is currently a vice president of the Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand.

She has always believed that ICTs offer enhanced learning opportunities, and Lincoln has been involved in an ongoing project of their integration for 11 years. The school aspires to be a professional learning community, and facilitated cross curricular learning teams have been a feature of ‘in school’ professional development since 2000.

Linda is committed to lifelong personal learning and is excited by the opportunities presented by the New Zealand Curriculum.