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Teachabout helping out
3 August 2012
Teachabout is an organisation set up by University of Melbourne students and ex-students to run school holiday programs for children in remote communities. It was established in 2010, with funding from the university and the Cybec Foundation charitable fund, by a group of students from Melbourne University’s Trinity College who had visited Minyerri in the Northern Territory the previous year.
But the Teachabout people wanted the program to be more than just a boredom cure.
So our program has a twist…We incorporate literacy and numeracy into fun, engaging activities with a fundamental commitment to community involvement and cultural activities. Our aim is to contribute to a brighter education future for kids in remote communities.
- Check out Teachabout’s Donation page.
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Vocational students recognised
Five hundred of the nation’s most skilled students have been recognised for their efforts in vocational education and training in schools. Acting Minister for School Education, Senator Chris Evans, said:
The Australian Vocational Student Prize recognises students who have demonstrated exceptional skills and commitment while completing a Vocational Education and Training in Schools program, or an Australian School-based Apprenticeship. In addition, 20 students who strive to be the best and achieve outstanding results are awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Skills Excellence in School.
[Continue Reading]…
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Australian first program could discover the next “Facebook”
An interactive internet radio service, a remote area power system and a streamlined booking system for venues, are just some of the projects that are being translated from ideas to reality through a new entrepreneurial program at the University of Melbourne.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Julie’s second chance scores a medal
Macarthur Chronicle 18 June 2012
Julie Halcrow speaks from experience when she says no one should ever be afraid of doing something different. Julie left school as a 15-year-old with no formal qualifications. Thirty-five years later, she returned to TAFE to do her Certificate IV in Building & Construction (Building). She admits it was the hardest thing she’d ever done – going back to formal education as a mature age student – but also the best. Julie was awarded a state medal at the 18th TAFE NSW South Western Sydney Institute Achievement Awards. She says:
I am so proud of this achievement and my family are as well. I hope I am an inspiration to others to never give up or think age or gender is a disadvantage for anything you want to achieve.
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Another chance for Brad
CQU News 18 June 2012
Life is definitely looking up for second year CQU Bachelor of Exercise and Sport Science student Brad O’Connor. Brad, 39, is a recipient of one of CQUniversity’s Accommodation Scholarships and is making a fresh start here in Rockhampton after a bumpy few years, including a separation from his wife. Brad relocated from his hometown of Bundaberg in 2010 after completing CQUniversity’s STEPS program, and was determined to combine his intense love of sport with a university degree. Yet he says that education took a back seat in his formative years.
To find out more…click
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Bloomsday on Bondi
UNSW Newsroom 15 June 2012
The heart of Irish Sydney, Bondi Beach, will become the centre of annual Bloomsday celebrations for the first time this weekend at an event hosted by UNSW. Bloomsday is celebrated world-wide to mark June 16, 1904, the day James Joyce chose to set his modernist masterpiece, Ulysses. This year, the beach location was chosen for the all-day celebration because of its significance to Australia’s Irish diaspora. Professor Rónán McDonald, Director of UNSW’s John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies, says:
Bloomsday has long been marked in Sydney, but this is the first time that the famous Bondi Beach has become the centre for festivities. The sea and the beach feature prominently in Joyce’s novel, so the setting is appropriate, but also because of the number of Irish backpackers and migrants that have made Bondi their temporary or permanent home.
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The Queen’s academic gongs
11 June 2012
Simon McKeon, who has been made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, warns that Australia is at risk of losing its mantle as the “clever country”. The phrase was made popular by Bob Hawke when he launched his 1990 election campaign, and it’s one that weighs on McKeon’s mind.
We think we’re the clever country. But we underspend by about 20% what the average OECD country spends as a proportion of their GDP on education.
On the challenges of the two-speed economy, he says the best response is “we can only respond by being cleverer”.
Still, the Honours List announced on 11 June shows that we certainly celebrate the achievements of formally “clever people”: perhaps 40% of recipients in the upper echelons of the Order (Companion, Officer and Member) are academics, researchers and educators (this is not to say other recipients aren’t clever, too). Two of the eight Companion awards are to active academics, for their contributions to their fields of study.
Two former vice-chancellors and one serving vice-chancellor were made Officers.
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Higher degrees reach the centre
13 June 2012
Charles Darwin University will celebrate a special day on 14 June with the graduation of its first Alice Springs-based doctoral student. Dr Jane Walker will have that special honour when she collects her testamur at the university’s evening graduation ceremony in the Alice Springs Convention Centre. Campus Administrator David Reilly said it marked the end of six years of research during which Dr Walker examined the management of a large and fragile portion of the Northern Tanami Desert near Lajamanu, 870 km north-west of Alice Springs. He said Dr Walker’s achievement is an indication of things to come in terms of higher education inAlice Springs:
We have developed a strong reputation for delivering quality VET programs over a number of years, but it is just as important that we get more runs on the board in higher education.
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Seeking the next big thing
Hungry for the ideas of a new generation, The Big Issue organisation is challenging university students to invent a social enterprise
that will do as much good as the $5 magazine it sells fortnightly on the streets. About 400 homeless and disadvantaged vendors sell 33,000 copies of The Big Issue, pocketing half the cover price in a scheme that offers a product, provides jobs and preserves dignity. Now Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Wollongong and the University ofNSW have signed on to run a competition to find the next big idea that will carry things a step further, creating a pipeline of viable not-for-profit businesses. The brief is to create something with low or no barriers to entry, sturdy enough to weather all phases of the economic cycle, as The Big Issue has since it was established here in 1996. Swinburne’s Noordin Shehabuddeen says the task now was to “incite” innovation.
You cannot tell people to innovate. Young, bright minds with the skills we are developing in management and IT, combined with freshness of thinking, are absolutely crucial to innovation.
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Bid to develop bushfire management system
22 May 2012
The University of Tasmania is hosting a Bushfires, Biodiversity and Climate Change workshop. The workshop will bring together a variety of participants hoping to develop a bushfire management system that will allow Australia to cope with a changing climate that will almost certainly bring more bushfires.
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New bioimaging centre to drive healthy ageing research
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MSIT & Holmesglen combine to offer degrees
Courier Mail 18 May 2012
Students in Brisbane will be able to earn a bachelor degree at TAFE, with Mt Gravatt-based Metropolitan South Institute of TAFE to offer degrees in accounting, early childhood education, fashion design and screen production. The initiative is a partnership between MSIT and Victoria’s Holmesglen TAFE, in what is described as the first example of cross-jurisdictional co-operation in the non-university sector. Holmesglen CEO Bruce Mackenzie said the “historic” partnership would offer more Australians the opportunity to study for a university degree.
MSIT in particular is targeting students in lower socio-economic areas with poor education participation rates, so this arrangement opens up a world of new study opportunities.
But prospective students will face a fee for service degree, as the federal government is yet to offer any commonwealth supported places.
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Training boost at CDU’s Katherine campus
17 May 2012
A purpose-built facility on Charles Darwin University’s Katherine rural campus will provide a much needed boost to community and health training for remote students in the Territory. CDU General Manager of VET Business Improvement Dr Steve Shanahan said the facility housed equipment to meet various training requirements in the critical areas of health and community services.
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Research off to flying start
10 May 2012
Using bumblebee aerodynamics to enhance flying robots and research to improve aircraft engine reliability has won two PhD students from UNSW Canberra Amelia Earhart Fellowships. Priyanka Dhopade and Sheila Tobing, from the School of Engineering and Information Technology, have both received $10,000 from the fellowship, which helps women pursuing advanced studies in aerospace-related sciences and engineering achieve their research goals. Tobing’s research is taking cues from the flying abilities of bumblebees and hoverflies, to further enhance Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), which are machines capable of performing surveillance, reconnaissance and other tasks in situations deemed to be hostile to humans.
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Swinnie students scoop film awards
3 May 2012
Swinburne’s School of Film and Television has earned a remarkable 15 awards at the 45th Annual Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival. Film and television student, Romilly Spiers, took out the festival’s top award for her short film Ten Quintillion, winning a Grand Remi for Experimental Film and Video. “This is a formidable achievement, since only eight Grand Remis were awarded across the entire festival,” said Swinburne University of Technology Film and Television lecturer Dr Jeffrey Bird. Known for discovering such enigmatic talent as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, the Coen brothers, Oliver Stone, Peter Weir, Spike Lee and David Lynch, the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival is the oldest independent film and video festival in the world. The festival is highly competitive, regularly attracting around 4500 entries from across the globe each year. The awards recognise and honour outstanding creative excellence in film and video.
Watch the Ten Quintillion trailer.
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CQU cements its presence in Cairns
CQ University will open a state-of-the-art centre in Cairns, for more than 350 Far Northern students. The $500,000 hub will open in July and allow students to form study groups, access e-library and internet resources, sit exams, lodge assignments, participate in live lectures broadcast via high-speed internet, and make academic enquiries.
Local Cairns-based staff will operate the centre and provide an on-the-ground point of contact for students and prospective students alike, while ‘hot desks’ will be in place to allow CQUniversity’s pool of academic and research talent to operate out of the centre while working in Cairns
“The new centre will give CQUniversity a bricks-and-mortar presence in a city where we have been operating for many years as one of Australia’s leading providers of distance education,” says v-c Scott Bowman.
- A hub of higher learning for Cairns – Cairns News 23 April 2012
UWS plan to create jobs
Daily Telegraph 16 April 2012
The University of Western is seeking the backing of Penrith City Council for a consortium between the University of Western Sydney and the Penrith Business Alliance to create 400 jobs under a $28 million development in Sydney’s west. The project would create jobs in the research, education, health, wellbeing and digital communication sectors in a 7000sq m building on university land at Werrington. UWS would commit $14 million in funding for this $28 million development and is seeking $14 million in funding from the Commonwealth suburban jobs program. More than 60%of Penrith’s resident workforce travel outside the suburb to work