Amy-Lee
Wells
Facilitator, He Waka Unua Operations Coordinator
Qualifications
Post Graduate Certificate Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative Learning) – MindLab and Unitec
Graduate Diploma in Teaching (Secondary) – University of Otago
Bachelor of Design (Fashion) – Otago Polytechnic
Professional profile
Amy-Lee began her teaching career in food, textiles and art after completing her degree in Fashion Design at Otago Polytechnic. From the beginning, she thrived in the areas of computer aided design and computer aided pattern-making. Then an opportunity arose to extend into digital technologies.
Since then, she has also been a specialist classroom teacher, Head of Department and led information and communications technology (ICT) implementation. In her ICT roles, she has worked with the student management systems and network team as well as supporting staff in their implementation of digital technologies to support practice.
Amy-Lee loves a challenge and has been the coach for a class of Year 12 and 13 students looking to implement a passion project utilising NCEA standards and Project Based Learning (PBL). Based on this experience she has also supported other teachers looking to set up similar classes in their settings.
Expertise
Student engagement
- Using student voice to inform learning
- Using project based learning methods
- Empowering ākonga to own their learning
- Building on cultural capital brought into the classroom
- Finding authentic contexts to enable learning
Working with the NCEA framework
- Developing authentic learning opportunities in an NCEA framework
- Designing collaborative and project-based tasks that meet NZQA requirements
- Using PBL frameworks to support assessment
Future-focused education
- Leveraging digital tools to enhance learning
- Digital technologies and emerging technologies
- Digital fluency
- Empowering learners to be content creators, not just consumers
- Developing critical thinking skills
Collaboration
- Design-thinking methods to solve problems
- Agile planning tools to aid collaboration in teachers and learners
- Leading change by working with learning communities
- Working alongside other educators to develop practice
- Using distributed leadership to support others
- Coaching
Conference presentations, keynotes, seminars, workshops
Conference breakout presenter
- uLearn17 workshop “Spiralling into Collaboration” (co-presenter)
- uLearn18 workshop "Leading from the Pack"
Personal statement
In my experience in the classroom, I have seen that when students are empowered to own and lead their learning, amazing things happen. I am passionate about seeing teachers resourced to engage their students in the same way. I love to see teachers leverage resources such as PBL, digital technologies and collaboration tools to see their students succeed. As the mother of a child with a disability, I am also passionate about seeing all ākonga access quality education in Aotearoa.
