International award for Christchurch educationalist

Christchurch educationalist Derek Wenmoth has been named by the United States-based George Lucas Education Foundation as one of the Global Six - recognising outstanding contributions to teaching.

Derek Wenmoth

The CORE Education eLearning Director has just received a copy of an article in the Foundation’s Edutopia magazine along with an award certificate acknowledging his achievement.

The Global S

ix awards were introduced last year as an international adjunct to the Foundation’s Daring Dozen awards for US educators making a positive difference in the world.

Derek’s award focuses on his passion for distance education.

“I’ve been involved in several large scale New Zealand-wide distance learning initiatives, including some through CORE Education. And probably the professional development programme we’ve been doing has attracted international attention,” he says.

CORE Education is a Christchurch-based not-for-profit educational research and development organisation that researches, applies, supports, and disseminates new learning technologies across New Zealand and on contract internationally.

CORE Education offers eLearning (learning online) for specific communities and schools, research, professional development programmes, online communities and a number of projects including an online interactive website in partnership with WETA Workshops.

New Zealand has been recognised internationally for work in three main areas of education – work on numeracy, early intervention for literacy, and our approach to the curriculum which focuses more on designing programmes that meet students’ needs, Derek says.

“The way New Zealand teachers have adopted ICT (Information and Communications Technology) has therefore been much more innovative in using ICT as a means for teaching and learning, rather than just teaching ICT.”

The Global Six award could be viewed as a pat on the back for New Zealand’s education system, Derek believes.

“It’s quite humbling to be named among such incredible people. If you look at the backgrounds of the others in the Global Six and the Daring Dozen, it feels like a privilege to be in such company.”

The George Lucas Education Foundation was set up by Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas to address the challenges of the modern education system in coping with transformational changes to society.

“We have to know that for kids today graduating without any understanding of computer technology and multi-media, they’re just as disadvantaged as we would have been years ago if we left school without being able to read and write,” Derek says.

More information about the Global Six awards and the George Lucas Education Foundation is available at: http://www.edutopia.org/daring-dozen-2008.