2008 Trades And Skills Teacher Of The Year Award Winners announced
The Institute for Trade Skills Excellence has announced the 2008 Trades and Skills Teacher of the Year Award winners at its annual event at the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron in Kirribilli, NSW. The Institute worked with industry to develop and establish the awards criteria, in selection and judging the fourteen winners for the 2008 Awards. Each award winner receives a $5,000 - this is divided into $3,000 personal spending money, with the remaining $2,000 to be spent on a professional development project which gives back to both industry and students. Category winners are listed.
Training places available to June 2009
Most training places will be allocated by the Program Information Management System (PIMS)on a monthly basis until 2009, targeted to those people who are most in need. They will be available to a smaller cohort via referral from Employment Service Providers, Access Providers and Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) participants to approved Registered Training Organisations. The remaining 10,000 places are being made available to support displaced workers in the automotive and manufacturing industries as part of structural adjustment processes.
Funding available to try out new RPL tool
Skills Recognition, New South Wales has released a new free evaluation tool to help students prepare for skills recognition or Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). Industry groups, employers, and Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) with a significant business presence in NSW are encouraged to apply for funding of up to $5000 to form small user groups of RPL candidates who will try out the tool in February/March 2009. Applications close at 5.00 pm on 18 December 2008.
Free learning objects for educators
The Toolbox Repository is a bank of free learning objects available for teachers and trainers for use with their learners. Learning objects are small 'chunks' of e-learning content for easy download and delivery. They are designed to be easily discovered, modified and reused in different teaching and learning contexts. Over 1,500 learning objects supporting a range of industries, training packages, and competency units are currently available in the repository.
More opportunities for existing workers
A new partnership has been established between the Rudd Government and industry to pilot training for the existing workforce through a series of National Enterprise Productivity Places Program trials. The trials will begin over the next six months, and will be a joint venture between the national Industry Skills Council network and large national enterprises to offer more than 1250 training places. A list of participating enterprises are included.
Harmonising month
Licensing and training stakeholders are invited to attend a series of free online seminars in November 2008 on occupational licensing and regulatory matters that impact on training and assessment.The sessions, to be held throughout November, are part of Harmonising Licensing Month, which is an event to increase knowledge of occupational licensing and its relationship with vocational education and training.
E-learning for English
The Australian Flexible Learning Framework has funded a number of e-learning projects focusing on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)around the country. For example, in a project which spreads across a number of registered training organisations (RTOs), the NSW-based Adult Migrant English Service (NSW AMES) has set up the JobEquip2 Project. It is using the internet to connect students in Sydney, Coffs Harbour and the Northern Territory to study Certificate III in Spoken and Written English as well as a range of other vocational education and training courses.
Trade Training Centres in Schools round two now open
Expressions of Interest for Round two of the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program are now open and close in December 2008. The funding can be used to construct new, or upgrade, existing trade or vocational education and training facilities. Round one has been received positively with a total of 136 applications received from schools around Australia. These applications represent 417 schools with total bids worth over $385 million.
Four reports available for industry comment
ServiceSkills Australia has released 4 industry specific reports on retail, community pharmacy, sport and recreation, and hairdressing and beauty. These industries are invited to comment upon these reports in preparation for the Services Industries Environmental Scan 2009 which aims to capture and analyse the most recent grassroots industry intelligence about existing and emerging skill shortages and training requirements.
New paper on sharing information across VET sector
The Australian Flexible Learning Framework has released a discussion paper about ways for web-based vocational education and training (VET) systems to work together in a 'trust federation'. 'A trust federation is a network of organisations that agree to trust each other's verified users to enable the sharing of information, resources and services.' Other issues are: descriptions of specific scenarios (eg. LORN and e-portfolios); and a discussion about different levels of security and access.