Janice Shiner
Chief Executive - Tertiary Education Commission
New Zealand

Janice Shiner started as Chief Executive of the Tertiary Education Commission in July 2005. Janice came to New Zealand from the United Kingdom, where she held several senior positions in the education sector. Most recently Janice was Director General of the Lifelong Learning Directorate of the Department of Education and Skills, based in London. Janice also oversaw the Learning and Skills Council, a funding and planning body responsible for allocating funding to more than 1400 tertiary colleges and private providers. Janice also has a background in human resources and management.

Audio recording (19 minutes, 8.6MB MP3)

Hazel Gamec & Lin Yew Cheang
Wanganui School of Design (UCOL), New Zealand

Professor Hazel Gamec has over 35 years experience in teaching and researching visual design, computer graphics, and interactive technologies. Professor Gamec is the founder and academic manager of New Zealand's leading computer graphic design school, The Wanganui School of Design.

Lin Yew Cheang is an interactive designer, graphic designer and new media artist. He is co-founder of Hyperthesis Visual Lab, New Zealand's multi-discipline design studio. His recent research focuses on motion sensing and tracking technology, experience design and interactive audio-visualisation. Lin Yew lives and works in Wanganui, New Zealand.

Audio recording (26 minutes, 12.2MB MP3)

Meegan Hall
General Manager
Cultureflow, New Zealand

Meegan Hall is the CEO of Cultureflow, a Wellington based Māori language and culture training company that offers courses throughout New Zealand. Māori owned, managed and inspired, the company takes an innovative approach to teaching te reo (the language) by integrating technology such as on-line chat rooms, email messaging, interactive CD-Roms and mobile phones, with more conventional ‘kanohi-ki-te-kanohi’ (face-to-face) delivery to provide the most accessible and effective programme that it can. 

An innovative approach, the Cultureflow® programme is currently one of the leading learning styles in te reo Māori for second language learners - high touch - high tech. Cultureflow provides services that enhance the bicultural development of individuals and organisations nationwide. We are people and team-focussed and are proud of the innovative programmes that we have developed. We provide training specifically tailored for the public and private sectors and for individuals who lead busy lives. We also have our programmes in a number of educational facilities throughout New Zealand in order to spread the benefits of the Cultureflow system.  The newest addition is Cultureflow Mobile - an exciting new technology that allows the user to learn Māori via mobile phone technology.

Audio recording (20 minutes, 9MB MP3)

Dr Frank March
Senior Specialist Advisor, Information Technology Policy Group
Ministry of Economic Development
New Zealand

Frank has been with the Ministry of Economic Development since August 1998 and is currently working on policy issues related to the Government's Digital Strategy, especially the Broadband Challenge, which is intended to encourage the spread of community-based open access networks capable of delivering services of 1 Gb/s or more to businesses, hospitals, tertiary educational institutions etc. He is also responsible for a range of policy areas in relation to the Internet, in particular. issues associated with Internet governance. He was involved with implementing Project PROBE, a joint Ministry of Economic Development and Ministry of Education project which ensured that all New Zealand schools are able to access broadband services, along with their surrounding communities. Frank was previously Director of Information Technology Services at Victoria University of Wellington and was instrumental in introducing the Internet to New Zealand.  He is a member of the Council of InternetNZ.

Audio recording (20 minutes, 8.9MB MP3)

Peter Mellow
Flexible Learning Advisor - Auckland University of Technology
New Zealand

Peter Mellow has been teaching Sport Science at AUT for the last 19 years. In this time, his interest has moved from anatomy and anthropometry, to pedagogy, and using technology to allow students to learn better.

Peter has produced CD-ROMs and DVDs for his students over the last five years, taught online and is now focusing on an mLearning project (StudyTXT), delivering content via text messages onto students cell phones in the tertiary and secondary sectors.

The last few years Peter has achieved the following awards:
2004 - Named in the first group of 15 flexible learning leaders in New Zealand
2003 - Apple New Zealand Outstanding Tertiary Educator Award
2002 - Lifetime achievement award for contribution to the health and fitness industry
2001 - Distinguished teaching award from AUT

Peter holds a Postgraduate Certificate in eEducation, Waikato and a Graduate Diploma in Teacher Education (Tertiary) AUT.

Peter is a recognised leader in Mobile Learning in New Zealand.  He will talk on the recently established StudyTXT, an innovative way educators can use texting to better support their learners.

Audio recording (30 minutes, 13.4MB MP3)
Presentation notes (780kb PDF)  

Martin Eadie
Executive Director
ITP New Zealand

Martin Eadie took up the position of Executive Director of ITP New Zealand at the end of May this year.  Martin had been the Group Manager for Tertiary Education at NZQA since 2001.  Prior to that he spent five years as the General Manager of the Seafood Industry Training Organisation during which time he was also chair of the NZ Industry Training Federation.  In that time he believes the Industry Training Organisations were transformed from a marginal interest group to one which is now widely acknowledged as a credible and integral component of the tertiary education system.

Major achievements for Martin at NZQA have been his leadership in implementing the NZ Register of Quality Assured Qualifications and a move from manual to electronic processing for over 500 tertiary education organisations.

Murray Leach
Chair, Education Sector ICT Management Committee
Chair, Education Sector ICT Connectivity Sub-Committee
Senior Manager, Tertiary Information Systems and Sector Liaison (TISSL)
Ministry of Education, New Zealand

Murray Leach has played a pivotal role in New Zealand education for a number of years. For the last four years, Murray has led a team in the Ministry of Education responsible for the management of education systems, processes and relationships that enable sector–wide collaboration and effective service delivery across the sector.

Murray is also the Chair of two key Information Communication Technology (ICT) forums involved with the development of ICT initiatives across the education sector.  These two forums involve representatives from all six education sector agencies, the National Library and other key government agencies and are working towards the vision of “improved learner achievement in an innovative education sector, fully connected and supported by the smart use of ICT”.

One of these forums - the Education Sector ICT Connectivity Sub-Committee has particular relevance to eFest 2006 - ‘Moving Learning’. Connectivity is about improved access and the ability to share resources. This Committee is working with national and international partners to ensure that New Zealand’s ICT standards in education enable connectivity to occur. As we move towards an era of lifelong learning and learning anytime, anyplace, anywhere, connectivity will be a key enabler of this.

Murray, on behalf of the Ministry of Education, is delighted to be involved with eFest once again and is looking forward to sharing the key developments in e-Learning and ICT connectivity at this year’s conference.

Audio recording (33 minutes, 15.2MB MP3)
Presentation notes (505kb PDF)
Presentation notes (2.9MB PPT)