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David Parsons, BA, Cert Ed, MPhil, PhD

My main interest is in how technology can help to transform teaching and learning, without putting the technology before the pedagogy
I am Research Director for academyEX, a private graduate school in innovation and education based in Auckland, New Zealand, running a national postgraduate programme for in-service teachers in digital and collaborative learning. Although my original degree, from the University of Sussex in the UK, was in Music I soon changed track and did my higher qualifications (teaching certificate, Master’s and PhD) in Computer Science and Information Technology. I began my career in the UK as a Lecturer in Computing in London colleges, then became a Senior Lecturer in the Systems Engineering Faculty at what is now Southampton Solent University. Following this I worked for several years as an IT consultant in various companies, including The Object People, BEA Systems and Valtech, working across Europe and North America. In 2003 I emigrated to New Zealand to take up an academic role at Massey University, firstly as a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems and later as Associate Professor of Information Technology, while also doing some external training work for Software Education Associates. I moved to my role at academyEX (under its former name of The Mind Lab) in 2015 and have remained there since, with a brief secondment to Unitec as Associate Professor (Research) during the 2017-18 PBRF process.
Among other things, I am a certified member of the Association for Learning Technology, hence the badge below. I am a lifelong learner, and over the last few years I have achieved certifications in Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, and completed a postgraduate micro-credential in Organisational Agility and a Postgraduate Diploma in Learning Design
Live long, and prosper.