FIRST YEAR APPRENTICES AT WORK

Looks good, will it work ? Of course it will !!

The practical work by our first year apprentices is on display and we are proud of the standard achieved.


This work is carried out within a social constructivist environment, suggesting that students work on projects better in teams with close scaffolding of the instructor. Student tasks are slightly more difficult than students can manage independently, requiring the aid of their peers and instructor to succeed.


Cognitive apprenticeships reflect situated cognitive theory in that problem solving activities should not be 'neat' and pre-defined, but rather, complex with students required to discover relevant procedures.

Perhaps the most critical component of situated learning is communication among peers. This component may be best elicited by designing technology-free discussions and other face-to-face activities. This is how we work in partnership with our students and strive to find ways to better engage with them on a continuing basis.

Great work guys !!

Interactive Learning Breakthrough by Swinburne

Well, the day of the paperless classroom has arrived at Swinburne University of Technology's Hawthorn Campus.

We have developed an extremely novel electronic whiteboard solution that allows for a fantastic blended learning environment to be created in any space !!

No longer is there a teacher's desk at the front of our classrooms and nowhere is there a workbook to be seen. Instead, we have provided our students with the "key" to THEIR learning space ( note the absence of the word "classroom" ).

Using audio-visual learning materials projected onto our interactive whiteboards and with wireless keyboard/mouse combination units spread around the work tables and with infra red pens and wands at the board, we have created the ultimate learning environment with a facilitator ( note that the word "teacher" has been replaced ) able to move around and assist in the blended learning experience.

Enjoy this new experience in learning and give as much feedback as you can to assist us in improving the experience even further. We wish you well in your studies and for coming on this journey with us.

The learning revolution has just started - led by Swinburne of course !!

"ROBOTIC SALSA" AT OPEN DAY 2009

Open Day 2009 was the best yet !! The Electrotechnology Department was brilliantly represented and the lighting by the "Maestro of Lumens", Paul Hawthorne, was fantastic. His lighting desk was admired and tinkered with by many a passing future electrician (and his dad!). This is another aspect of the electrical industry that you can look at. The industry, unlike all others, is full of different areas that you can study and work in. No other industry offers so much and is constantly evolving the way our electrical and electrotechnology ones are.

Literally, the sky's the limit. Just consider this........man could not have reached the moon without electrical power. A world without an iPod or iPhone?

NO WAY!!!

We showcased our new interactive learning materials with loads of audio visual content and look forward to having our new students gain their education in an enlightened fashion. Swinburne is going to be the leader in this regard and we have thrown out the textbooks in favour of a "cool" way of learning. Who said education wasn't fun ??

The video you can see above is of robots that have been choreographed using programmable controllers, the same ones that our students work with. Just think what you'll be able to do once you've learnt how to programme one.

The video below was taken in the Electrotechnology display room on Open Day. We had a lot of interest this year which shows that even on a day with high winds and rain, Swinburne attracts those who want to share in our future and that of our young generation.

Enjoy the videos and be kind to your mother.

Paul.

Another interesting video for you

This is just another instance of what is happening in the wonderful world of electricity. Young people, especially, are becoming more involved with the new technologies, as this video shows.

This is most definitely the near future, and we need to gain experience in the technology that's driving the development of the vehicles and machinery equipment that we're going to see in Australia more and more.

Electricians of the future will be highly skilled technicians working with the latest technologies and their toolkit will comprise a computer as the basis for all diagnostic and repair work.

Electric cars will become more popular as the technology progresses, at the present time it is screaming along at high speed and now that the Victorian Government has signed an agreement with the Renault-Nissan consortium, electric powered vehicles will soon appear more and more on our roads.

We are living in exciting times and Swinburne University of Technology is going to become more involved with these developments - BE PART OF IT. The future is NOW !!

Open Day in Hawthorn

This is Ampere's Left Hand Rule for motors that all electrical students learn when at TAFE. We have introduced our "new look" learning materials that are on our Web Server and can also be downloaded to your iPod, mp4 player or Smartphone.

We will be showcasing this new material at our open day in Hawthorn tomorrow and look forward to seeing you there.

Mr Guinness and I have had to take a short break and that's why we haven't been "on air" for a little, but we're back with lots of news and interesting things to tell you.

Right now we're planning a new "state of the art" blended learning centre in Hawthorn where there'll be interactive learning using the latest tablet PC's and electrical and electronic equipment for practical work. This is really exciting and will certainly appeal to all you GenY guys and dolls.

Here's another interesting video. It's the road test of the TESLA Electric Roadster. Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest inventors of all time as far as electricity is concerned and, in fact, invented three-phase electricity. You should Google the name "Nikola Tesla" and see for yourself what he was responsible for, and how his work has affected all of our lives. He believed that he could invent a source of high voltage electricity that would make electrical wiring unecessary.

In my next posting I'll include a video of a Tesla coil working in sync with some cool music.

See you then.

Electrotechnology (and Guinness) travel to New Zealand.

Electrotechnology and Guinness continue on their journeys and have just visited Christchurch and Auckland in New Zealand. While in Christchurch they visited the Electrotechnology Department of CPIT ( Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology ), where great strides are being taken in the implementation of Computer technology and the use of Tablet PC's as well as Web 2.0 social networking methodologies to enable students to interact with others who are doing similar learning to them.


We then travelled to Auckland and visited UNITEC and the electrotechnology unit there. They are also using new technologies including mobile phones to interact using Web 2.0 ( Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and others ).

While in Auckland we travelled down south to Rotorua and the videos you see here were taken at the hot mud pools and areas where hot sulpur fumes are pouring out of the ground from fissures. What a fantastic day we had !!!!

We had a very informative and enjoyable two days

Well it ....sneeze (but not Swine Flu!!) .......... certainly....(sneezes again) was absolutely blo--dy

fffreezing on Philip Island but that didn't deter the teams from Wantirna and Hawthorn from having a great couple of days of information gathering and networking with educators from other TAFE colleges and representatives from industry and education resource providers.


Our message to Captain Ignorance. "Don't try to defeat us, you should have learnt by now, after countless defeats, that we are well armed and constantly vigilant. We are constantly looking for new weapons and at present are investigating further use of the Gates machine loaded with the deadly WebCT and Wimba engines.