What do you think?

What do you think of our Bed and Breakfast model? As part of an assessment project Ciploma in International Tourism students completed this year "The Bent Trees" model was a highlight. We shall be putting it on the Wiki under Tourism Enterprises (under the new Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism) as this aspect of the project will form part of the new assessment along with the other tourism business areas: marketing, financial control, operations management information and systems and human resources.

One of the comments from the last posting came from Wayne at Wikieducator who has asked if I can elaborate a bit more on our "good news" so that he can put a sentence or two on the wikieducatior newsletter. Here goes.....

The Otago Polytechnic (New Zealand) Diploma of Applied Travel and Tourism development on wikieducator has been granted further funds and salaried support for work in 2008. The orgainsation funding is the second instalement for the project which began in 2007 and continued connfirmation of the commitment management have to progressing this innovative and unique product on wikieducator, according to Programme Manager Hillary Jenkins.

Our first group of students have finished for the year and while a few are graduating a good portion are returning for the second year of the diploma in 2008. Staff will be spending the next few weeks revising the programme which run this year making improvements and updates.

Good News!!

Good news day - this development has been allocated from OP CAPEX funding a realistic time allocation for curriculum development and a top up for our budget. The monies will be used mainly in the area of graphic design and EDC (Leigh's time) and possibly training for staff on using wikieducator and web logs.

Nicky (tour guide) and I are also meeting with Andy Thompson from the Adventure School to look at our course plans for Adventure tourism and any role they may play in supporting it or even if some of their student may like to enrol on it as a specialty area.

Blogs

At our regular meeting - now moved to a Wednesday, Leigh and I discussed the framework for setting web logs eg. do we have a blog for every speciality or do we just have one? After some discussion we decided on using the option to have a blog for each specialty. This would provide the lecturer (delivery the speciatly) with the opportunity to personalise the blog, keep it updated with the latest industry trends, news and generally take ownership of it. The emphasis being not so much on who is teaching the specialty but the subject.

Leigh has set up conferenceandevents.edublogs.org/# tourguiding.edublogs.org/# traveloperations.edublogs.org/# cookislandstourism.edublogs.org/# sustainabletourism.edublogs.org/# tourismenterprises.edublogs.org/# adventuretourism.edublogs.org/# wholesaletouroperations.edublogs.org/# receptionservices.edublogs.org/
These are still in the developing phase, we have a designer who will create the graphic design of the blog and also will work with our powerpoints to standardise them.

We also discussed training needs for staff early in the new year. EDC can offer the service however we would have to look at funding for this so will investigate with Head of School. Training should occur in the first few weeks after staff return from the christmas leave. On going training will occur through EDC.

Leigh can you continue on any outstanding jobs and provide some sort of timetable for design. Thanks.

What next!

Missed the usual meeting with Leigh, he was in Queenstown so am just going to update and then provide him with some jobs to complete before the next time we meet.

I am trying to work through the front page of the wiki and update and add resources, activities etc. Need to get this completed and then we can use it as a template. In the meantime am also working on the other specialties. Had a meeting with William Lucas from Languages today trying to work out some way in which we can collaborate on the Reception Services specialty(L4). There is a local course for greetings, customs etc those working in the tourism industry should be aware of. This could work out really well in that William says his students need to have practical experience in english conversational skills. Could see this working well with ours in that it would provide them with experience of trying to listen and gain information from people whose first language is not english. Also would like to use the language students as a resource from which to build activities around. We are both going to think about what we could do and then meet again to put in place a plan.

We have had our first input of information into the wiki on the Cook Island Tourism specialty - this is great. So have opened put out a notice on googlegroups and Wikipasifica to see if anyone else is interested in developing this with us. Will keep you posted. Terry Marler is off to Samoa on Saturday and is trying to set up a tourism contact person in the educational field for us. I have to come up with a wish list for him. Wish I was going too!

Have entered the tour guiding wiki into the OP Staff Innovation Awards. Want to increase the profile of the programme so thought it was good to start from the inside and work outwards. Have been working with marketing to improve our profile on the website and design a new flyer and graduate profile. Its not curriculum development though is it?

Met with Terry Neal today to complete an evaluation which will be feed back to TEC amongst others. She looked at the work on wikieducator and asked lots of questions about the development, student feedback and support surrounding it. It was good to talk about the project and she was very positive.

Have to go so shall make another entry soon with a work list.