The Manaiakalani Digital Teaching Academy: Training our teachers for a digital future
There’s no doubt that the web is transforming how we learn. Being able to work together in online documents, and publish and share work with friends and family around the world, turns out to have a big impact on educational outcomes—because kids know their work is seen and cared about.
New Zealand is making a huge investment in ultra-fast broadband, and our schools will be among the first to benefit from super-fast speeds and the services that come with them. Schools like Pt England, part of the Manaiakalani cluster, are already making the most of broadband by combining traditional teaching techniques with new technology to create a blended approach to digital learning—we were so impressed by it, we featured Pt England in a video here.
Pt England provides a great example of the potential of the internet to allow children to learn more, and to bring their knowledge and ambitions home to their families. But we’d love to see even more schools across New Zealand make the most of the same blended learning approach—and see more teachers and principals trained in how to make it happen.
That’s why we’re so pleased join the Ministry of Education in supporting the new Manaiakalani Digital Teaching Academy, a new partnership being announced today between the Manaiakalani Education Trust and the University of Auckland.
The Academy will take the skills and successes of the Manaiakalani cluster and share them with 10 graduate teachers who will teach and train in a full immersion digital learning environment for a year.
We’ll follow the stories of the first intake of graduate teachers here on this blog, and look forward to seeing digital learning light up classrooms across New Zealand in the coming years. To learn more about other New Zealand organisations making the most of the web, sign up to get the Innovation Partnership’s weekly Get On newsletter here.
