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A Waikato University lecturer acknowledge as one of the country's top educators says he gets the most satisfaction from creating opportunities for te reo Maori to be used in a wide variety of environments.
Te Taka Keegan this week won the supreme award in the 2017 Prime Minister's awards for tertiary teaching excellence.
Judges cited not just his student success data and the feedback of tauira but his work with companies like Microsoft and Google to allow users to interface with their computers and programs in te reo Maori.
Dr Keegan says some of his success has been about being in the right place at the right time, but also in his belief Maori language speakers need to be able to use the language in all environments.
"Computers don't speak in an inherently spoken language, they speak in ones and zeroes so they can handle languages even with as few resources as Maori but what needs to happen is for people to use their language, our language in all environments – radio, tv, computing, social media environments," he says.
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