Media Release
05/10/09

NorthTec will host the Northern Regional e-Learning Symposium on 19 October at its Interactive Learning Centre on the Raumanga campus in Whangarei.
The symposium is the first of four regional symposia sponsored by AKO Aotearoa to be held around New Zealand and features international keynote speaker from the University of Wollongong, Dr Sue Bennett and New Zealand e-learning expert John Clayton.
The Northern Region’s symposium is designed to show organisations how e-learning can provide a cost effective way to meet their training and education needs and priorities.

“This symposium will present best practice real-world solutions that your organisation can implement,” said Vasi Doncheva, NorthTec’s Flexible Learning Manager. “Through a series of presentations, workshops and case studies facilitated by internationally-recognised e-learning experts you will come away with an action plan for developing e-learning solutions.”
Workshop topics include: building your organisation’s e-learning capability, enhancing learning through 3-D models and practical e-learning design.
Registration for the symposium starts at 8:30am with Dr Sue Bennett’s presentation scheduled to begin at 9am.
Those interested in attending the symposium can call Mark Christian on (09) 4703782 or email him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) by 12 October.

Guest speaker biographies:
Dr Sue Bennett: Dr Sue Bennett is an Associate Professor - ICT in Education in the University of Wollongong’s Faculty of Education and is Director of the Education IT Centre. She has extensive experience in the design, development and evaluation of multimedia and online instructional materials developed for both university and commercial clients.
Prior to joining the Wollongong University team Sue managed the Interactive Multimedia Unit at Central Queensland University. She has previously held positions at the Australian National University and the University of Canberra.
John Clayton: John Clayton is an e-learning educator with an in-depth knowledge of deploying, using and evaluating e-learning technologies as well as authoring, describing and storing digitally-created materials. He has been the project leader of a number of New Zealand government–funded e-learning projects including the Open Source Courseware Initiative and the Open Source Learning Object Repository Project.
He is currently the manager of the Emerging Technologies Centre and the Waikato Institute of Technology. For the last three years John has been a member of the New Zealand Ministry of Education e-learning Reference Group.

To view a showcase presentation of the Nextspace/NorthTec e-learning collaboration.