Virtual Tour with Jo and Sean

I have just been on a virtual tour of second life with Jo and Sean who are exploring virtual worlds.

We visited a US government site which had great features like a weather demo and more very educational. We went to Rome and discovered ancient items and information here they replay ancient events that would be so interesting to watch especially if your studying ancient Rome.
We also checked out the TAFE Hairdressing salon wow! It looks so good I must go back and get a new look. The Learnscope lounge was good to visit it is amazing how you can create these great places. My favourite place was the Library I will definitely go back there so I can explore their information.

In summary it was a great group experience, well organised and I would certainly suggest anyone to take one of these tours well done to Jo and Sean :)

Exploring Second Life

I've been exploring again. Second Life is so exciting! I want to start my own retail store. I need money to start building things. I can see that students could do virtual work placement and develop customer merchandising and service skills.

During induction day I told my students about second life and they were very interested in it and thought it was pretty cool.

My Flickr

Today I thought I'd explore Flickr. Alex emailed me a link where Tourism and Hospitality have a Flickr collection which shows pictures of students, teachers and avatars involved in using different technologies in learning.

So I thought I'd start one and I look forward to using this with my students and colleagues. I must talk to our fashion teachers as I think they could use Second Life with their students as well, the only problem is access is blocked at TAFE. This probably needs to be addressed in some way as students need to have access to these sites. On my wiki I have a link to a movie and it won't play at TAFE as it is blocked, the movie is about wound healing and it's great for Pharmacy Assistants but they have to view it at home or in the workplace.

Thanks for your comments to my last post maybe you might like to leave a comment on access to Second Life at TAFE?

My Second Life!

Yes I am leading a double life now. I have been exploring Second Life. In this virtual world my name is Adnil Aabye, so if you are in Second Life add me to your friends and we can catch up. I met Alex The Learning Technologies Support Officer at NCI TAFE and she showed me around some places to visit. It was fun! I am mainly looking for opportunities that I can use for class and to share experiences with my colleagues. It's certainly fun once you get the hand of it.

Visual Merchandising Workshop in Coffs Harbour

Last Saturday we held a visual merchandising workshop in the Coffs Harbour Campus including students from Pharmacy and Fashion. The feedback on the day was great and everyone had fun which is great because you always learn more when your having a good time. Two of the students said they wish they could come everyday. They was lots of creativity by students which I enjoy to see as well as the elements learnt being used as a part of their major display at the end of the session.

New Wiki Feature

Today I explored a new feature available from pbwiki for my wiki. It is a voice chat pod. This means I can speak to anyone who is on my wiki and anyone can talk to each other this is a great way to collaborate and share ideas and for students to connect with other students. This is great, I am just waiting for someone to be on the site at the same time so I can speak to someone. If you are reading this go to my wiki and check out the new chat pod located under my picture on the bottom of the left hand side of the screen, you will need to scroll down a bit. Maybe we can chat?

Pharmacy Expo

The Pharmacy Expo was held at the Sydney Convention Centre at Darling Harbour. It was great to attend the educational sessions to update my knowledge.

The North Coast Institute of TAFE also had an exhibitor stand with the PSA. The PSA invited us on their stand as we have a partnership with them and offer traineeships for New Pharmacy Assistants and Existing workers. There was a great interest in the training we deliver and also the other exhibitors had a great interest in what we do. Many companies wanted to provide information for our students in hard copy and via online sources they also liked the idea of being on our wiki site. It was a great opportunity to expose people to what we provide with pharmacy training and the networking opportunity might provide some future working relationship eg Hillary Khan with merchandising and training, she was very interested in us.