Thursday, December 08, 2011

Ako Aotearoa Academy symposium workshop day

In Wellington, the rest of the week to attend the annual Ako Aotearoa academy symposium. The academy is a networking and professional development base for winners of the NZ excellence in tertiary teaching awards (now just over 150 strong), with about a third or so of members attending each year.

Great to touch base with many familiar academy members and meet this year's inductees.

Yesterday, day one insisted of a half day of workshops before the formal symposium starts.

After brief welcome from Jon Hoskins, the academy president, we break up into regional groups to discuss how to contribute towards helping tertiary teachers improve practice. The Otago and Canterbury groups met together and after batting several ideas to hold Another spotlight on teaching event, decided on organizing a series of roadshows to the various south island cities/towns. So watch out for these events for next year.

Then two streams of workshops began. I ran a session to introduce the ideas gained from the net tablet project at cpit. A hands on session with some good input during the discussion wrap up.

In the other room, various projects seeking to garner academy members participation proceeded. Including worthwhile projects from Ksenjia Napan on co-inquiry learning, Sara Kindon on educational equity for refugee-background students and Marc Wilson and Dawn Garbett on extending our award portfolio into a publication.

No comments: