Our Governance Group Roles and Responsibilities

The Governance Group are responsible for overseeing the strategic and financial planning of the VLN Primary School. All our team are passionate about empowering young people with equity & access to education, have networks and experience in business and the community, and are serious about making a difference. They also support the VLN Primary School management team to provide primary schools with:

  • support and leadership for virtual learning,
  • effective coordination of virtual learning programmes,
  • professional learning to enable quality online teaching and learning programmes,
  • personnel to advocate for virtual learning initiatives.

2020 – 2021 Annual Report: ePrincipal Rachel Whalley

VLNP Charter Document 2021 – 2023

Rachel Whalley – Kōtui Ako VLN ePrincipal (Primary)

Rachel has led the development of Kōtui Ako VLN as primary ePrincipal for a number of years. She is passionate about equity and access to education for all learners and the potential of the internet to connect learners. Rachel is a primary trained and NZ registered teacher. I think technologies can be a great enabler… Read More

John Owen

John has worked in technology for 25 years and has seen how it has brought many significant changes to the way businesses operate – both in terms of what they do and how efficiently they do it. The most significant changes have been around communication, culminating in the wide range of social and collaboration tools… Read More

Dr Michael Barbour

Michael K. Barbour is an Associate Professor of Instructional Design for the College of Education and Health Sciences at Touro University, California in Vallejo, California, USA. He has been involved with K-12 online learning for almost two decades as a researcher, evaluator, teacher, course designer and administrator. His research has focused on the effective design,… Read More

Rick Whalley – Chair

Rick is committed to supporting the educational community to develop their pedagogy, to help learners grow and have access to the education opportunities they need. Rick is an experienced educational leader and classroom teacher with a decade of experience as a principal in New Zealand schools. Rick joined the CORE Education team in 2013 as a… Read More

Melvin Dinn

Melvin is an experienced Physics and Mathematics teacher and currently teaches in primary schools. Melvin has been very active in STEAM Learning and digital collaboration with several schools in China. Apart from teaching in two schools, Melvin runs two Live stream classes per week Dual STEAM learning. This is a collaboration with PhD students from… Read More

Geoff Wood

Health and Life Skills teacher Geoff Wood has been on the Virtual Learning Network Board for the past five years: The previous three years as Chair. Geoff started teaching at Rosmini College following a sixteen year stint as a member of the faculty and project director at Washington State University, where he managed a number… Read More

Tam Dobie

Tam has been involved with the VLN community of schools since 2008 and with the VLN Primary schools from its creation. As part of the, then, elearning and channels Teams at the Ministry of Education, Tam has been a member of various teams that worked on the development and operation services intended to support the… Read More

Lucie Lindsay

Lucie is Deputy ePrincipal and eLearning Lead. Lucie leads our eteacher community with  professional leadership and support for online teaching and learning pedagogies. She works with schools to support our learners to connect and engage in their online classes. A New Zealand registered, experienced primary teacher, Lucie’s background includes teacher professional learning development on digital… Read More