Country Case Study:

New Zealand Educator Interviews

Virginia Senft
Integration of Technology: Global Perspectives
Dr. LeAnn Derby
EDTC 645
Spring 2017
 Introduction

The New Zealand Ministry of Education recognized that teachers needed to

integrate technology for supporting young people to develop skills, confidence and

interest in digital technologies (2015, Jul 4). Previous initiatives to meet this need

included providing interactive whiteboards or flat screen televisions, internet access in all

schools, and 1:1 digital devices (2015, Oct 8). Future initiatives include for students to

have equitable access to digital technologies, access to quality content and resources, and

to have 21st century learning (2015, Oct 8). The purpose of this report was to learn the

perspective of current New Zealand educators regarding access to technology, integration

of technology in the classroom, and suggestions for future integration.

Interview Questions

The questions were personalized per the contact information to which they were emailed

to. They were tailored for a teacher, principal, or administrator whenever possible.

What is your current role as an educator? Where do you work and what is your

title?

Rationale: This question provides background information of the educator that

responds.

In your role as an educator, how much interaction through technology do you

have with students? Teachers? Parents? With which technologies?

Rationale: I wanted to know if the entire school community used technology for

communication.

What technology do you have access to and how often do you use it?

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 Rationale: This question is to find out if there is access to technology that is not

being used.

Are teachers encouraged to use technology? If so, how?

Rationale: I wanted to know if support or lack of impacts the use of technology.

What professional development opportunities for technology are currently

available at your school?

Rationale: I wanted to understand the effect of professional development

opportunities on the use of technology.

How do teachers use technology in your school?

Rationale: This question is to see whether the Ministrys goals are reaching

students.

What suggestions do you have to improve integration of technology in the

classrooms?

Rationale: I wanted to know if there were initiatives that educators would like to

see.

Do you believe that technology has enhanced the quality of education in New

Zealand? Please elaborate.

Rationale: This question is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Ministrys

technology initiatives.

Strategy Used

My initial contacts with educators in New Zealand were sent using the Original

Flat Stanley Projects email service (Hubert, 1995). At this time, I also sent requests for

contact using Edmodo (2016). When responses were not received from these contacts, I

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used email and Twitter to contact additional educators. For this round of contacts, I used

the Ministrys Find a School (2017). This allowed me to visit school websites to identify

staff and their contact information. The Ministrys website also enabled me to target my

searches to varying areas in New Zealand (2017).

Persons Interviewed

Paul Wilkinson (Email Interview)

Mr. Wilkinson is currently the Deputy Principal of Rawhiti School in North

Brighton, Christchurch, New Zealand. This suburban primary school currently has

550 students (Rawhiti School, 2017). He utilizes email, Google Docs and

websites to communicate with teachers. For parent communication, he uses email,

the schools website, and the school app. Staff has access to iPads, Chromebooks,

robots, and a 3D printer. Mr. Wilkinson utilizes a laptop for significant portions of

the day. Teachers are encouraged to integrate technology into their classrooms

through professional development. Staff is currently in professional development

for coding and Google Suite for Education. Mr. Wilkinson identified a need for

professional development to demonstrate real world technology use to make

integration relevant for students and teachers. He sees this as important as

students need technology tools to interact appropriately and learn the things they

need to know with the appropriate tools (P. Wilkinson, personal communication,

April 3, 2017).

Kayla Walker (Email Interview)

Ms. Walker is currently the Deputy Principal and Year 5/6 Teacher of

Mangaroa School in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. This rural primary school

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 currently has 112 students (Mangaroa School, 2017). Ms. Walkers classroom has

Chromebooks, iPads, and laptops for student use. She states that students in Years

4 6 are encouraged to bring their own device. Students use game websites,

conduct research, make movies, and to share work with peers and families with

Google Portfolios and Seasaw. Years 4 6 have Google accounts and utilize

Google Suite for Education. Ms. Walker states that technology in integrated in all

curricular areas.

Staff uses technology for testing, attendance, grade books, reports to

parents, and email. Home communication occurs with Facebook, Google

Portfolios, and the school website. The Signme app is used to send out and collect

notices and permissions. The school encourages teacher to integrate these

technologies and interactive whiteboards in their classrooms. Currently, school

provided professional development is on their new student management system.

Teachers also have the option of requesting attendance to other available

professional development opportunities.

Ms Walker suggests that it is important for teachers to make good choices

about using technology. For the best results, its use must be planned with clear

objectives. Overall, Ms. Walker believes that technology integration is providing

the skills that students will need in their future workplace. It assists with

developing their critical thinking skills, connects them with experts around the

world, and assists with completing tasks.

Carmen Jennings (Email Interview)

Ms. Jennings is currently the Principal of Discovery School in Whitby,

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Porirua City, Wellington, New Zealand. This suburban primary school currently

has 448 students (Discovery School, 2017). She has a laptop and would like

additional items. However, she prefers the budget to be used for student

technology. The school has 100 Chromebooks and 70 iPads. Year 4 students are

issued school email accounts and provided with usage lessons. Annual cyber

safety lessons begin in Year 4. Years 5 8 learn in a digital environment for 40

50% of the school day. Teachers use Hapara, a teacher dashboard, to monitor and

manage student online use and to communicate with students while they are

online. All classrooms have interactive whiteboards, data projectors, and access to

digital microscopes and visualizers.

Professional development occurs on Teacher Only Days and in staff

workshops. The school requires that all teachers integrate technology naturally.

Ms. Jennings states that she approves outside workshops that she feels will

strengthen a teachers digital capability whenever the budget allows.

Last year, the school experimented with a digital classroom. This

successful experiment resulted in parent demand for additional digital classrooms.

Due to improvement in student achievement and engagement, the school made all

Year 5 8 classrooms digital. Ms. Jennings highlights the importance of

technology skill growth for all teachers so that students have the skills needed to

be successful in these classrooms. She thinks that technology enables our

teachers to develop individual learning pathways for our students, giving them

greater student agency (C. Jennings, personal communication, March 29, 2017).

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 Thoughts and Reflections

Carmen Jennings provided insight on the issue of the cost of technology

integration. She spoke of how she does without so that teachers and students have

technology. Teachers have access to professional development that will grow their skills.

Teachers and students have access to technology throughout their school day. Students at

her school are achieving academic goals while learning 21st century skills.

The other two schools also have access to a good amount and variety of

technologies. All of the schools have Chromebooks, iPads, and interactive whiteboards.

They also provide professional development and encourage teachers to integrate

technology in their classrooms. All three also stated that teachers may also attend

technology courses from outside resources. These schools also use technology to

communicate with families to ensure that students have the support that they need.

Conclusion

Based upon these interviews, New Zealand teachers and students have access to

and utilize a variety of technology in the classroom. The importance of professional

development was highlighted by these interviews. All feel that more professional

development opportunities are integral for proper integration of technology. All of the

interviewees stressed the need to provide students with the technology skills that they

need for successful futures. The schools are working towards this by integrating

technology into classrooms in meaningful, real world ways. Further knowledge on school

budgets would assist with understanding how and when this will be achieved. Additional

responses from urban schools would provide the ability to compare technology access,

utilization, and professional development in to the interviewees schools. These

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interviews demonstrate the New Zealand schools are working towards the Ministrys goal

to integrate technology for supporting young people to develop skills, confidence and

interest in digital technologies (2015, Jul 4).

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 References

Edmodo (2016). Welcome to edmodo. Retrieved from: https://www.edmodo.com/

Hubert, D. (1995). The original flat stanley project. Retrieved from:

http://www.flatstanleyproject.com/default.html

Mangaroa School (2017). Mangaroa school. Retrieved from:

http://www.mangaroa.school.nz/home

New Zealand Ministry of Education (2015, Jul 4). Digital technology to become part of

the New Zealand curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. Retrieved from:

http://www.education.govt.nz/news/digital-technology-to-become-part-of-the-

new-zealand-curriculum-and-te-marautanga-o-aotearoa/

New Zealand Ministry of Education (2015, Oct 8). Digital technologies for teaching and

learning. Retrieved from: http://www.education.govt.nz/school/managing-and-

supporting-students/student-behaviour-help-and-guidance/searching-and-

removing-student-property/digital-technology-guide-for-schools/

New Zealand Ministry of Education (2017). Find schools in New Zealand. Retrieved

from: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/find-school

Rawhiti School (2017). Rawhiti school. Retrieved from:

http://www.rawhiti.school.nz/home

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 Appendix

This is a link to a PDF file of the email interviews:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw9Dp_DQHVHVZHMtbWpRdlZEZE0/view?

usp=sharing

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