ED » Joinery ITO

News 13/10 – Rena. VSM Response. Uni Paternalism.

Dave Guerin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:27:10 +0000

Rena Victoria’s Prof Neil Curtis says the ship’s cargo, some of which is hazardous, should not be a big problem. Waikato’s Chris Battershill says environmental recovery will take a long time – he worked with Bay Of Plenty Poly tutors (led by Keith Gregor) and senior students to do a baseline survey of marine life in the early days of the grounding Massey’s Malcolm Wright says the grounding hasn’t affected our clean, green marketing image – yet (release). Otago Uni’s Prof Julian Crane has helpfully pointed out that health effects from the oil will be minimal for people unless they eat it or touch it. Massey’s Brett Gartrell expected 500 dead birds to be discovered by the end of yesterday – turned out to be 200, but there’s lot’s going on. AUT’s Barbara Bollard-Breen thinks we need rapid response protocols (as does everyone else). A Massey-trained volunteer talks of the long hours of work for wildlife protection people.
High-Tech Precinct? A new high-tech Wynyard Quarter Innovation Precinct has been launched in Auckland (3 News, 3 News) but there’s not much to it yet.
Research Ethics Otago Uni’s Emeritus Prof Charlotte Paul is calling for ethical review of health research to be protected in op-eds in the ODT and NZ Herald.
VSM Response In a response to VSM, Massey has boosted its student services fee by the amount of MUSA’s 2011 fees. An agreement has not yet been reached with students’ associations.
Māori Quota Victoria is celebrating 21 years of its entry quota for Maori law students, but its media release doesn’t cite any results from the system, which is a bit sad.
Uni Paternalism Otago Uni is to explain the history and context of its paternalistic code of conduct to students. Good idea to publicise it, since the management want to increase fines.
Fossils If you like fossils, check out this Marsden Fund grant story about Otago Uni’s Prof Daphne Lee.
Cabbage Trees Massey’s Wayne Barrar has found lots of cabbage tress in the UK.
Awards NMIT’s Arts and Media Building won a couple of awards.
Robots Tertiary and school students are participating in the Robotics World Cup in Auckland.
Future Chef This is a lovely story about a student committed to be a chef, who did well in HSI’s school burger competition.
Top Joiner This is another great story on last year’s top Joinery ITO apprentice.
RWC 1987 All Blacks raise money for Auckland Uni scholarship and the third winner was announced.
Politics Massey’s Prof Claire Robinson on swing voters.
Short Bits Canterbury: possible land swap with neighbouring school; hosting a big cycling event. Victoria: Jonathan Boston launches a disaster book. Otago Uni: Maori and Pacific grads can wear cloaks; Council refuses to delegate; summer school director Claire Matthewson to step down; health performance improvement; glycemic index; Markus Melloh on back pain; Prof Kevin Dawkins on legal aid changes; suicide research. Otago Poly: app for flat hunters; election forums. Massey: Hamish Bond gets sports award. Waikato: Prof John Perrone on depth perception; Brenda Midson on the legal situation in the student killed this week (a man has appeared in court); Matiu Dickson on marae justice; student to tour with Hayley Westenra. AUT: student lifecycle IT project.

News 27/6 – Alasdair Thompson. WITT Poll Surprise. Timaru MasterChef.

Dave Guerin — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 20:22:12 +0000

Lots of interesting stories today and very few tedious media releases!

Bye Jonathan! Jonathan Walmisley is moving on from Telford, having served as CE and then as head of the Telford division of Lincoln since January. The ODT has a long profile of him. I’ve enjoyed working with Jonathan immensely and wish him all the best.
Home Auctions NMIT has sold relocatable homes built by students before they have been completed. Meanwhile, Campus Living Villages is auctioning off a 5-bedroom apartment in Christchurch at a $1 reserve – check out the auction here. ED Blog friend Darel Hall is the man behind it.
Penguin SOS The emperor penguin has gripped the nation as we wait to see if it recovers. Massey’s Prof John Cockrem is NZ’s expert on the penguins and got in on the action. Someone at Massey will also be checking out feathers to determine sex and home colony. I’m not covering every story on this but will cover new material.
Alasdair Thompson Alasdair Thompson’s dopey comments sparked some academic responses amongst all the general angst. Cecilia Tarrant, Executive-in-Residence at Auckland Uni thought his comments were “unbelievable and incredible, but also wrong“. Auckland’s Ananish Chaudhuri explored the reasons for the gender pay gap in an op-ed (which Canterbury’s Eric Crampton reviewed). AUT’s Rachel Morrison thought the comments were outrageous.
Massey Vets The matuku or bittern is doing well after surgery at Massey, while Massey vets and students have been checking out birds after a tanker truck spill at Awakino. 12 students, in 4 groups of 3, will each spend a week in Samoa helping out an animal charity group. I wonder is Massey actually has to market its veterinary degree at all with all the free media they get for their veterinary hospital’s exploits.
WITT Poll Surprise A poll by WITT journalism students shows Labour’s Andrew Little well behind Jonathan Young in the race for the New Plymouth seat – Victoria’s Jon Johansson was surprised.
UFB Transfield is looking to hire up to 450 people to help build ultrafast broadband and Infratrain CE Philip Aldridge says his organisation is ready to help train them and others.
LinkedIn Savviness In a naked promotion, LinkedIn came up with a dopey index of savviness to identify the top users of LinkedIn. Anyway, Te Wananga O Aotearoa did well for female networkers while the MOE did well for male networkers. While, we’re on that topic, feel free to connect with me if we’ve worked together before.
PM and India John Key is likely to make some educational announcements on his trip to India.
Organic Planting Lincoln’s Prof Steve Wratten features in this very interesting piece on companion planting in organic environments.
New Waikato DVC…is Prof Alister Jones.
Goat@AUT AUT trainee chefs are serving up goat at the training restaurant, as part of the Monteith’s Wild Food challenge.
Trades Academies The Sunday Star-Times had a piece on trades academies – probably the most interesting part is an expansion of criticism by the PPTA’s Robin Duff.
DNA Evidence Canterbury academics have collaborated with ESR scientists to work on how juries interpret DNA evidence. While it looks interesting, the article on the Uni’s website is a good example of why humanities training helps to develop writing skills (or, at the least, editing skills).
Minimum Wage A couple of weeks back, Massey VC Steve Maharey wrote a column in NBR about why minimum wages are necessary. I figured it was behind the paywall but it wasn’t and Canterbury’s Eric Crampton responded to it yesterday. The Anti-Dismal blog also suggests that Maharey has no academic expertise in this area (although he didn’t claim such expertise in the column).
Quake Stuff An article on people leaving Christchurch has figures on Canterbury Uni and NZ Language Centres.
Supercomputing Claire Rodgers has done a good story at Stuff on the supercomputing partnership between CRIs and universities, including comparing it to a previous supercomputing shared facility in NZ.
Scams and Trust Victoria’s Marc Wilson has some interesting insight into why people get scammed.
Deaf Dictionary Victoria has launched the Online Multimedia Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language (NZPA).
Driveway Accidents In a long story on young children hurt or killed by cars in driveways, Massey’s Janet Molyneux is in a sidebar about pets hurt in driveways. I must say, I really struggle not to assign a lot of blame to the adults when driveway accidents occur.
Top Joiner Jonny Brown is the Joinery ITO apprentice of the year – he takes block courses at UCOL.
Timaru MasterChef? Good on Aoraki Polytechnic for starting a campaign to bring MasterChef’s South Island audition to Timaru – 775 people liked the Facebook page when I checked it out. They might even get the local paper onside!
SIT Update SIT’s opening a gallery for student art in its downtown premises and had a surprise concert for a retiring music teacher.
Joy’s Downer Mike Joy of Massey predicted mass extinctions at a Forest and Bird conference where he won an award (and Joy on DOC job cuts).
Adult Education The NZ Herald had a long article at the weekend about adult education in Auckland., What interested me most was the Chinese New Settlers Services Trust, which serves about 12,000 learners pa.
Wet Work Victoria master’s student Bridget Johnson is planting trees in a wetland for her thesis.
Anatomy Quiz Not enough medical students are up with their anatomy (only 85%), according to research, so the curriculum will change. Seems like a good project and response.
Short Bits Bay of Plenty Poly: Tania Berryman on nail care standards. Otago Uni: Stephen Wing on a lavender lobster; Pat Shannon in a long piece on social work and community development; Prof Jim Mann on obesity and diabetes; Matthew Croucher on dementia care. UCOL: 12 year old does well in an innovation competition. Victoria: Robert Ayson on defence job cuts. Another piece on the South Auckland CHB-tertiary education centre. Canterbury: Ekant Veer on social media marketing; a student is in an NZ junior korfball team. Story on the Learning State-Local Government ITO merger. Auckland: Prof Matthew Collett on the physics of forward passes in rugby. Wintec’s Matariki Wearable Arts show. ACT’s Heather Roy is retiring at the election but still hopes to get her VSM Bill through. Otago Poly student seminar on mobility scooter safety.

News 18/6 – Uni Access, New Bill, Maharey Challenged and 20 more Stories

Dave Guerin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:01:04 +0000

Welcome to all the new readers this week – we’ve had a wee spike in traffic – and let me know if you’d like to see anything new or different. Today’s post is pretty enormous to end the week.

Uni Access There’s a really good NZ Herald story today about university entrance, covering a wide range of issues. It’s probably got the widest coverage of any I’ve seen on the issue, without being a feature story.
New Education Bill Anne Tolley has released a new Education Bill that covers PTE refund criteria, secondary-tertiary programmes and other school matters.
Maharey’s Authority Challenged While Steve Maharey’s in China, the TEU is challenging his authority at Massey. I covered the closure of Massey University’s teacher education programme in Hawke’s Bay yesterday. Now the TEU is saying that closing such a programme should be a Council, not a management, decision. Interesting take. There’s a short Newztalk ZB story here.
Sorting Sheep The impressive looking machine at left is the Gallagher Sheep Auto Drafter, unveiled at Fieldays yesterday, and was designed with the help of Massey Professor Tony Parker. It sorts sheep in new and exciting ways and if you like design, read the story. While I’m on Fieldays, Wintec journalism students are producing a daily paper – here’s yesterday’s edition.
Scarfie Flats Otago flats are due for a cleanup and TV1′s Closeup did a story on them last night (HT DC).
NMIT Strategy There’s a good piece in the Marlborough Express about NMIT’s strategy. (HT TEU)
Whitireia Happy Whitireia Community Poly is very happy about the government’s changes to student permit conditions.
PTE Honour Sandra McKersey, a past NZAPEP President and founder of People Potential, Whangarei, has been awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for services to education and the community. (HT NZAPEP)
Bridge Death Alistair McWhannell was found guilty yesterday of the manslaughter of Catherine Peters, a Massey student who died when a bridge swing went wrong. The story has been covered by Radio NZ, NZPA and the Dominion Post - jail appears unlikely.
Outward Bound OK Outward Bound is celebrating a “highly confident” rating by NZQA in their external review.
Friendly French A University of Auckland architecture student has won the inaugural excellence scholarship by the France-New Zealand Friendship Fund.
Stab in the Dark A University of Otago masters student has done some impressive research on the effect of stabbing on different fabrics, including taking account of the age of the fabric – apparently it’s a cap in crime-related research.
Boatbuilding Bay of Plenty Poly’s dropping of boatbuilding is inspiring some people to find alternative ways to interest people in the industry. It’s all a bit informal, but that’s where a lot of things start, and informal education can be a great launching pad.
Waikato Honey This seems to be a new story on the Comvita-University of Waikato stoush, but most fo the details are the same as last week’s story.
New CPIT CEO There’s a Christchurch radio interview with CPIT’s new Aussie CE here. She sounds like she’s good value.
UCOL Corner UCOL has put out some releases about successful ECE stduents and a mentor for fine arts stduents.
It’s not just Michael Laws Wanganui’s deputy mayor Dot McKinnon has some strong educational ideas to rival Michael Laws’ outspokenness : “If we can encourage school leavers to take on skilled trade training, instead of the university track, we are doing them and our communities a favour. Let’s face it, you can make a lot more money in trades than you can in academia.” Read more here.
Geography Book The University of Canterbury is publishing a book of papers by George Jobberns, NZ’s first Professor of Geography (1942-60).
Top Glass Ross Holmes is this year’s most promising glass apprentice, announced by the Joinery ITO.
SIT Student Gets Chance An SIT student has had multiple convictions discharged after being given time to turn his life around - it’s a nice story.
Tairawhiti Wine A Tairawhiti Polytechnic chardonnay has again won a wine prize.
Immersive Art An AUT PhD student is using Macs for her immersive reality art.
Spitting on Babies… can have health benefits in passing on healthy bacteria, but only if you’re the mother and part of this University of Otago study.