Australia, Day 13

The day was dedicated to TAFE, the Technical and Further Education system in New South Wales.  We visited two campuses at opposite ends of Sydney, both sitting on a hill.

The first campus focuses on design: graphic, industrial, interior, theatre, jewlry, with some very impressive facilities.  TAFE is seen by many as the way to get a second chance at education.  The usual route is that students will come to the school once a week for longer classes both in their particular discipline but also for general classes such as communication.  The rest of the time, they work in their job, most likely as an apprentice.  The design students of this school graduate to be involved in major motion pictures and a lot of other high caliber projects.  They also have an interesting outreach program with the 40K Foundation (https://40k.com.au/), sending students to developing countries to jump start a local design project that can lead to local business later on.

collection of movies design graduates worked on

jewelry shop

one on one instruction

prototyped ring

outside showcases for student work

set model for movie

puppet

The second campus focuses on hospitality and horticulture.  Its hospitality program has a strong partnership with Cordon Bleu, allowing students different ways and speeds to get through the program (and to pay different fees).  Again, the facilities were quite impressive, and this is the largest and best equipped culinary school in the Southern hemisphere.  We saw and tasted some of the student work:  chocolate sculptures and pastries. We were also very tempted to sign up for some of their barrista and coffee making courses.

mobile device use in kitchen

auditorium with camera focused on stove

chocolate sculptures

coffee making workshop spae

student created pastries

In terms of technology and learning spaces -- both spaces are experimenting with flexible learning spaces, which appears to be more successful in the design school.  The culinary school uses some nice camera equipment to make sure all students see what is happening in the pot and on the chopping board, and students use their mobile devices to take notes and pictures in the kitchen when they are working.  The design school uses prototyping, such as 3d printing, to work on designs first before turning them into the real object.

At the end of the day, we went to the Finders Keepers market in the Australian Industrial Park -- a set of old warehouses renovated and modified for modern technological facilities and exhibition spaces.

warehouse in Australian Technology Park

portable sound systems from Jukecase.com