In this edition we are looking at:

The Community Technicians graduate
Words from Garry
Tech Angels get mentoring angel
And the winner is

Community Technicians graduate

For seven Community Technicians their perseverance and hard work was recognised and rewarded at a small informal graduation dinner and ceremony held at a Christchurch restaurant recently.

Friends, family, DigiOps and Ministry staff and project partners gathered to see Emily Glew, Tristan Blainey, Richard Milne, Clint Deckard, William Berryman, Paul Northwood and Lucy Hazelwood graduate from CPIT with a Diploma in ICT (applied Q5 level).

Awarded to them by the Dean of the Commerce Faculty Murray Bain, the evening's celebration was a culmination of 18-months of intensive online study, face-to-face block sessions, hands-on practical experience and hours of hard slog. The graduating Comtecs' efforts were acknowledged by guest speakers Nils Beehre from Microsoft and Robin Whitaker from IBM, who were generous and gracious in their praise of the Comtecs. Project founder and manager Garry Falloon also spoke and said, "This project has provided you all with a golden opportunity not just for learning, but also to grow your own business and support your communities. This is your next challenge, and I am sure if you approach it with the same level of endeavour as you have this part of the programme, you will be highly successful."

Words from Garry

Over the past 18 months, Jane Thomson has been part of the Digiops team managing the website, writing all those 'good news' stories, and creating tremendous media interest and coverage of all the great things that have been happening in the projects. Unfortunately Jane is leaving Synergy and therefore her work on the Digital Opportunities projects from the end of August, and moving to Australia to pursue other career options.

I am sure you will all agree that Jane has done an amazing job with DigiOps. Although by her own admission when she joined the projects she thought a tablet was a lump of granite, she very quickly learnt and entered fully into the spirit of what the projects were trying to achieve, and really went the extra mile in taking a personal interest in each project and what it was achieving for students. Your enthusiasm and passion for the projects was fantastic, and will be sorely missed.

Thank you Jane for all your great work over the past 23 months, and we all wish you every success with your Trans Tasman exploits.

Garry (on behalf of all the DigiOps projects)

Mentoring angels join the Tech Angels project

The Tech Angel team at Wellington Girls' College has been joined by mentoring angel, Cheryl Horo, whose role is to inspire and educate the young women about career opportunities in the IT industry.

Cheryl is the general manager of the non-profit organisation Women in Technology (WIT), and was contacted by the school's deputy principal Denise Johnson, who was looking at ways to further help the Tech Angels.

"One of WIT's objectives is to work with girls in schools to increase awareness of the different careers in the ICT industry. It is a vibrant industry and there is concern about the low number of females coming through it," says Cheryl.

At present women make up only 18 percent of the IT workforce, and the senior Tech Angels who already have an interest in IT are exactly the type of young women Cheryl wants to encourage into the industry.

Two Tech Angels benefiting from Cheryl's guidance and wisdom are Tiffany Kong (18) and Josephine Hall (17). Both are passionate about IT and heavily involved with Tech Angels, devoting up to 15 hours per week to the project. After the ICT director left at the end of last year, Tiffany and Josephine along with two other angels took over the running of the project but were soon struggling with the demands it was making on them.

"We were having a bit of a crisis about what we were doing and the direction the project was heading, and we needed help," says Josephine.

Cheryl, accompanied by WIT mentor and IBM technology specialist Debbie Moon, spent time with the Tech Angels and discussed how WIT could help. "We talked the benefits of mentoring and different careers there are in IT," says Cheryl.

Later, Cheryl invited the senior angels to a series of seminars as well as a one day workshop about careers in IT. For Josephine the day was well worth giving up her Saturday for.

"To see all those female role models who have been hugely successful and made it - I hadn't encountered that before. It was great to see that IT is a real career option and it definitely opened up my eyes but I'm still pretty undecided about what I want to do," says Josephine.

In the meantime, Cheryl has arranged for another WIT mentor and IT consultant, Henrietta Hall, to visit the Tech Angels on a monthly basis. This has given the senior angels renewed enthusiasm and commitment to the project. "Henrietta is helping us to restructure and clarify our planning, goals and direction with the project," says Tiffany.

Josephine and Tiffany's aim is to seamlessly transition the project over to next year's leaders, and they doubt this would achievable without the guidance, encouragement and experience their mentor provides.

Both young women are keen to remain involved in the project, which they describe as "our baby," after they leave school at the end of this year. Study wise, Tiffany is deciding between doing fashion design at Massey University or a BA/BCom at Victoria University. While Josephine is tossing up between a BSc in computer science at Victoria University or a Bachelor of IT at the Australian National University in Canberra – either way, her study choices will be music to Cheryl's ears!

And the award goes to…

Opoutere School principal Vaughan van Rensburg, accompanied by teacher Jan-Marie Kellow and Kopu project facilitator, Wayne Howes, donned their best bib and tucker for the Computerworld Excellence Awards held in Auckland recently.

Nominated in the category Excellence in the Use of IT in Education: Primary and Secondary, Opoutere School was up against some stiff competition and the eventual winner was named as Samuel Marsden Collegiate from Wellington.

Wayne was philosophical about the loss saying the team could take pride from their achievement in reaching the finals.

"I was a little disappointed that Opoutere did not take the prize, but honoured to be a part of a team of people who were recognised as one of the four finalists in this category of a nationwide competition for excellence in ICT," says Wayne.

Vaughan said the school should take heart from making it into the finals as the Judges had an extremely difficult job in just choosing the finalists.

Putting aside their disappointment, Vaughan, Wayne and Jan-Marie were gracious in defeat and went and personally congratulated the team from Samuel Marsden Collegiate.

However, the mood soon lifted and the Opoutere table, which also included DigiOps' project manager Garry Falloon and editor Jane Thomson, and Vaughan and Wayne's wives, was rocking again to TV personality and singer Frankie Stevens' world-class cabaret act.

Congratulations again to Wayne, Vaughan and Jan-Marie for their outstanding effort in reaching the finals in this hard-fought category of the Computerworld Excellence Awards!

The Digital Opportunities (DigiOps) projects joint partnerships between schools, organisations involved in ICT Ministry of Education. The aim is to improve learning through the innovative use of leading edge technologies.