From the Chair
Kia ora,
It is with great sadness that on May 26 the TENZ Council farewelled Cia Winter. Cia has worked on the Council for over 15 years both as secretary and also acting chair. In these roles Cia wrote articles for T-News, IPENZ reports, and attended TESAC meetings, Ministry meetings, Digital technologies development meetings and TENZ conference planning meetings. She worked tirelessly for the subject and the Council will miss all her efforts. We are grateful that Louise Milne volunteered to step into the role of secretary and Ceri de Boo has stepped in the membership and marketing role previously held by Louise (jointly shared with Bruce Granshaw).
Well even though the weather hasn’t been the best over the last two months the Council certainly has been very busy. I am sure I won’t be able to capture all they have achieved, but here goes.
As chair, I started to spend more time on the Technology Teachers Facebook page. All technology lecturers at the major universities were sent an email reminding them of the Facebook site and asking them to inform their student teachers. This Technology Teachers Facebook site is brilliant and I hope you all are members. If not contact the Facebook team and tell them which school you work in https://www.facebook.com/groups/technoteach
Health and Safety
In order to ensure all future teachers are well-informed about health and safety issues, all technology lecturers at the main universities were reminded of the key links to current health and safety and digital safety practices. To ensure our future teachers leave teacher education with some knowledge of the new digital technology curriculum these lecturers were also sent information about digital technologies as well as links to the digital technology curriculum and digital webinar information. Jessie at the Royal Society forwarded on some of this information out to her mailing list.
Promotional Pens
Council members priced pens for regional chairs to distribute. These will be printed with the TENZ logo and conference details once the date and location have been confirmed.
Travel Policy
The TENZ Council do not believe regional chairs should be inconvenienced and required to use a rental car if driving their own car is a cheaper and more practical option. The travel policy was amended so that if the Council or regional chairs are traveling distances over 100km (160km) return then rental equivalent for an economy automatic or similar class rental will be paid.
Achievement Standards
A member raised a query about NZQA and the achievement standards being different from explanatory notes. Wendy Slatter contacted NZQA to get guidance for teachers.
Week of Engineering
Council members were keen to link with ENZ to promote Engineering week (18 August) in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. Numerous strategies were discussed. If members have any ideas about how we could support these events please contact your regional chairs or a council member ASAP.
TRCC
In consultation with the regional chairs, TENZ applied for TRCC funding for nine proposed courses (managing specialist rooms, becoming workshop ready, Coding, Digital technologies, secondary technology, primary technology, ECE, Hangarau and the digital technologies curriculum for those in initial teacher education). We were notified that ‘From these offers, the Committee would like to ask for two proposals to be combined into one course: Digital Technologies and Coding. This course would be for July (2019) with a cap of 50 attendees’. Planning for this course is about to get underway.
TENZ has spent quite a bit of time building relationships with community organisations, such as ENZ, MOTAT, the Pop-up-Globe, and Mind-kits, who are all keen to work with technology teachers. We even approached Quinn Kanaly and Noel Dockstader who are the directors of Point-of-no-return (a movie produced about the first solar-powered round the world flight). Although we were unable to get free or cheap viewings for members we did promote this incredible movie on the Facebook page.
TESAC
TENZ has contacted the presidents/chairs and vice-presidents/deputy chairs of HETTANZ, DTTA, NZGTTA to organise the first TESAC meeting of the year (July 28). TESAC stands for Technology Education Subject Association Coalition. It was established around 2008/2009 to bring together all the technology related subject associations. This provides shared information and expertise as well as a stronger lobbying voice.
Support Request
Many people contact the TENZ Council asking for support. Each request is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Members are frequently notified about webinars run by Wendy Webb and Core Education. However, the Council had to decline an email request from an Associate Professor in India, keen to establish an International Technology and Engineering Research Institution, as it was outside the scope of our organisation.
Matanga Project Update
A meeting was held on May 21 to discuss the first milestone report for the MoE. On the 31st of May, the Matanga project was released to TENZ members, and Expressions of Interest are now being shortlisted. The next phase is to advertise for teachers, who wish to be involved in the Matanga project. If you have any great ideas in terms of advertising, or would like to know more about this project, please contact Liz Reinsfield at [email protected]
Website
Extensive work has been undertaken to continue to extend the capabilities of the TENZ website. If you have any queries or suggestions regarding the website, please contact Mike Forret at [email protected] .
As a way of increasing an awareness of the site, all lecturers at the major universities were sent links with the hopes that their student teachers would be shown the page and links provided on their course homepages.
Regions
If you have not received a member email, please contact Wendy on [email protected].
Auckland/Northland Region Meeting on May 24 to visit Mindlab and MOTAT STEAM cells. This meeting was attended by teachers and University teacher education students. MOTAT offered some generous teacher scholarships for TENZ members present for events and courses running in the July holidays. I hope to give you an overview once these have run. Term 3 meeting plans are a suppliers day (probably held centrally at UoA Epsom Campus), and then a social event in term 4. We are hoping to re-establish local area meetings for 2019. I already have a few schools offer spaces but I’m looking for peeps East, North Shore, and West Auckland and anyone in the Far North. Please contact Wendy if you have any questions or can assist with meeting spaces.
Waikato/Bay of Plenty On 5 June the University of Waikato, hosted a regional event to showcase current research projects There were a total of 23 in attendance. Please contact Steve Andrew on [email protected] if you have any questions or suggestions about future events.
Central Region Central Region – was invited to join the Wellington Robotics course. Members have also been invited to a safety seminar at Massey University through our ENZ connections. TENZ is still looking for a Central host who will offer us a meeting space. If you can host us by offering us a staff-room or technology space to meet, please contact Wendy either by email or phone her on 021 795 366.
Wellington Region Bill Boyes ran a Coding Day on Friday 8 June (prior to Robocup) for TENZ members. The plan going forward is to run a social event late term 3- early term 4 in Wellington Central, with a view to setting up local area meetings in 2019. Please contact Wendy if you have any queries.
Southern South Island Held a meeting at Tahuna 23 May, approx 30 people were present. Great to hear that our Food and Fabric teacher members in the region also met at this time to moderate together. If we can support and facilitate other regions with setting up this style of meeting, please contact Wendy. Bill is hoping to run some ‘locally-based’ meetings in the next half year in places other than Dunedin. If you can offer to be a meeting host, please contact Bill Boyes on [email protected] or Wendy.
Northern South Island Region–still looking for a host school who will offer us a meeting space. If you can host us by offering us a staff-room or technology space to meet, please contact Wendy either by email or phone her on 021 795 366.
Students – If you have joined under a student membership, our Students’ Regional Chair, Kaelin Jones will be contacting you regarding the change-over from a student membership to an individual or institution (through your school) membership. Thanks to those who have already responded to Kaelin’s email. The process is still ongoing. We look forward to welcoming you to our professional organisation.
Contact Us
We regularly receive emails from members, requesting information or suggesting new directions. We want to build a strong, connected and collaborative technology education community and, to this end, we are keen to hear from you. Please feel free to contact us with any queries, new developments or suggestions you might have, either via our website https://tenz.org.nz/contact or by direct email or phone.
Best wishes/ Ngā mihi,
Kerry Lee
(Chair of TENZ)
m: 021-620318 | e: [email protected]