Distance no barrier to learning

Danica-Lea Larcombe.

Danica-Lea Larcombe isn’t one to sit still for very long. The Wanganui-born, Perth-based woman is currently enrolled for an on-line Graduate Diploma in Education at the University of Waikato while holding down a part-time job, and has just published an account of her solo travels around the world.

Ms Larcombe, who is specialising in ECE, is the only overseas student among the 104 participants on the full-year GradDip ECE course. She juggles trips to Queenstown where she’s doing her teaching practicums with her part-time job as an environmental health officer back in Perth. It sounds complicated, but actually, she says, it’s the best of both worlds.

“I looked at various on-line teaching courses in Australia and NZ, but I really liked the course content at Waikato and the bicultural approach,” says Ms Larcombe, who has two sons at university in Dunedin.

“I enjoy visiting NZ for my teaching pracs, and it gives me a chance to catch up with the boys too. I plan to follow up my Grad Dip with a year’s teaching in Dunedin.”

Ms Larcombe says one big plus of the Waikato programme is the chance to learn Te Reo Maori.

“I’m looking forward to teaching and speaking Te Reo when I’m back in NZ. In the meantime, I’m working with a Maori guy here in Perth so I’ve been practising on him!”

Ms Larcombe says she’s been impressed by her lecturers at Waikato.

“They’re friendly and supportive, and make you feel like you are right there in the classroom by using podcasts and making personal one-to-one chat spaces available on the website.”

She also found it convenient that she could order all her textbooks on-line from the university bookshop.

It’s the second year the GradDip ECE has been offered at Waikato, and course co-ordinator Rosina Merry says the on-line students develop a really strong community.

“Early childhood teaching is much more about team teaching than individual teaching, so group work is important. The teaching techniques we use for the on-line programme dispels the view that you have to be in one place to be a community.”

From next week, Ms Larcombe will be in Queenstown for her second five­-week teaching practicum at Wakatipu Kindergarten.

“I love Queenstown as it’s just like a European village, and I can walk around every­where.”

While she’s there, she’s making arrangements to do a book signing session at the local branch of Whitcoulls, and is also in talks with other distributers to get her book into NZ bookshops.

“It is an account of my 10-month solo backpacking trip through 15 countries,” she says.

“But I was no ordinary backpacker: I was 35, and found myself with two teenage boys off my hands, so I thought it was time to take the plunge and go visit all the places I’d ever dreamed of seeing. It was an adventure of a lifetime, and the book came out of the diary I kept throughout the whole trip.”

Pushing the Boundaries: A Mission to See the World by Danica-Lea Larcombe is published by www.lulu.com

It is available as an e-book or as a print version.