ULearn conference worth millions to Christchurch

Around $2.5 million will be poured into the Christchurch economy from this year’s annual conference for educators, ULearn08.

The conference being held from 8th-10th October focuses on integrating new technologies to empower learning and transform leadership.

More than 1500 delegates from around NZ, plus 200 from Canterbury and a smattering of international delegates have registered.

Conference manager Gwenny Davis says ULearn08 and its associated pre-conference workshops make up four days of back-to-back inspiration, education, ideas, strategies and fun, equipping NZ educators with all they need to transform their teaching, learning, school or early childhood community.

“We already have nearly 1700 delegates from all over NZ, some from Australia and the CORE Education UK team in Christchurch coming to ULearn08. At times we have nearly 50 sessions going at one time in different meeting spaces around central Christchurch. That’s a massive undertaking!” she says.

ULearn has been going since 2005, held in alternate years in Christchurch and Auckland. The conference is run by Christchurch not-for-profit educational research and development organisation CORE Education to provide professional development, networking, gauge trends, provide information and celebrate best practice in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) education.

Keynote speakers Will Rich­ardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, both from the US, are recognised world leaders in the use of new technologies in the classroom.
One of the conference’s underlying themes is building bridges between education and enterprise and at the end of the first keynote, Macpac founder Bruce McIntyre will give a business response to the session.

NZ author and businessman Steven Carden will talk about collaboration between business and education. And George Lucas Foundation Global Six 2008 awardee Derek Wenmoth, CORE Education’s eLearning director, will lead a collaborative presentation on putting theory into practice in schools and early childhood centres.

CORE Education’s director, development and conference co-ordinator, Nick Billowes, points to the strong link in the conference programme between the MoE’s recently released NZ Curriculum document and its Maori medium counterpart, Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, as the main contexts around which ULearn08’s programme is built.

“ICT provides a range of methodologies to address the emerging teaching methods that these curricula allow,” says Mr Billowes.

“The great thing about both the NZC and the MoA is that they advocate developing curriculum within schools that meet community and individual needs as determined within the school’s own community.

“The impact of this for students should be wide-ranging and individualised programmes of learning, taught in ways that meet the learning needs of 21st Century learners.

“It is in this atmosphere that educators, at all levels, come to ULearn to work together to share these new skills and competencies.”

With the strong surge in ECE attendance (almost 200 participants from around NZ), Mr Billowes says, “The use of digital cameras, computers, the internet, weblogs (blogs) and many other ICT activities within early childhood centres is soaring rapidly. Linked to appropriate activity and framed in the context of the early childhood curriculum Te Whaariki, this means that kids are knocking on primary classroom doors with both the skills and expectations that there will be more of the same.”