[Edsig] Welcome To The DEANZ EdSIG

This is for my Kiwi colleagues and any other DEANZ members reading this…

Welcome to the DEANZ Education Special Interest Group

You are receiving this email because you indicated interest in being a member of the DEANZ EdSIG at the recent DEANZ conference in Wellington.

We now have our own mail address for the SIG as part of the DEANZ email list, so if you want to post items to all members of this group simply send your email to <edsig@deanz.org.nz>

In our discussions at the DEANZ conference we made a number of suggestions about things we could focus on as a SIG – I hope to process some of this thinking and use this list to begin some activity soon. In the meantime, there is one issue that has become very important politically, and is something we ought to consider responding to – that is, the  Parliamentary Inquiry into 21st century learning environments and digital literacy.<

Details can be found here: http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/MakeSub/f/9/7/50SCES_SCF_00DBSCH_INQ_11275_1-Inquiry-into-21st-century-learning.htm

In particular, the focus on  investigating the opportunities for technology to increase collaboration between neighbouring schools, and between distance learners is something that we feel DEANZ should be making a submission on – particularly as it applies to the school sector.

The submissions are required to be in by 11 May, which leaves little time for a substantial submission, however I believe it would be very useful for DEANZ to have prepared a submission on this area at least.

ACTION

• can I please invite you to send a bullet point list of the important ideas/statements that you feel ought to be included in a response from DEANZ?
• feel free to comment on any of the questions listed in the terms of reference (e.g. importance of UFB etc) but let’s provide a special focus on the one I’ve listed above.
• the select committee will be reading lots of submissions, so keeping ours succinct, with key points and evidence provided, will be important.
• happy for you to suggest a particular approach or emphasis we should take – even more happy to receive offers of help to actually write the submission ;-)

I look forward to hearing back from you on this – really need to have your thoughts by the end of this coming weekend so we have time to weave together a draft that can be shared with the DEANZ exec.

Regards
Derek