With two new Learning Managers joining Makers Empire, we thought it was a great time to introduce our learning team based in Australia. The Makers Empire learning team is responsible for delivering professional development programs across Australia and internationally, working with partners to deliver schools industry programs, creating curriculum-aligned challenge courses, lesson plans and teacher resources, guiding the development of the Makers Empire 3D design app and teacher dashboard and supporting schools, teachers and students for a successful experience.
Makers Empire’s learning team was led by our founding learning director, Mandi Dimitriadis, for around 10 years. She was instrumental in building our professional learning programs, designing our curriculum and teacher resources, managing the learning team, and working with partners to deliver research studies and school industry programs. Mandi has recently moved onto a senior position within the South Australian (SA) Department for Education where she will be working to implement the new strategy for public education in SA schools. We thank Mandi for her pioneering work and wish her all the best in her new role. They are lucky to have her!
At the same time, we are happy to announce that Sharon Morris, the second-in-charge of the learning team has now been promoted to Learning Director at Makers Empire. Her hard work and contributions to Makers Empire over the last two years made her the ideal person to lead the learning team. Congratulations to Sharon!
We are also delighted to welcome two new learning managers, Lee McNamara and Cameron Hocking. Both educators are very familiar with Makers Empire: Lee used Makers Empire at three different South Australian schools she taught at and also participated in the Andy Thomas Space Foundation’s Kids in Space program delivered by Makers Empire whilst Cameron had previously been working for Makers Empire in a consulting capacity creating in-app challenge courses. Lee and Cameron join existing learning team members supporting schools using Makers Empire: hardware expertise is provided by Luke Todd (né Henderson), challenge courses are built by Mel Harmer, and schools industry program coordination is provided by Tanya Giobbi.
Learn more about our learning team members below.