Where have my last two posted blogs gone? Anyone?

Last week in chilly Hobart, uni staff from around Australia, NZ and UK met to discuss what the big issues are for first year students. The annual First Year in Higher Education conference saw a range of issues covered but for me, the big one was that we have a good body of literature now on the FYE, but too many great initiatives and programs are dependent on individuals. We need to see stronger commitment from universities to put emphasis on the importance of FY and make sure that there is support at policy level.

Holidays are a funny thing.  Every now and then I panic that I should be doing an assignment or doing some reading but then I remember I'm on holidays.  I have a feeling that the minute I get used to relaxing it'll be time to get back into uni work.  People are talking about picking up unit outlines for next Semester already!  I didn't even know that was possible - I suppose it might be worth a go although then I might feel the need to start getting books out of the library again!  eek!

Second Semester is often met with a flurry of students asking how they can improve their skills.  Some students want to get higher marks than they did in Semester 1 (and there are lots of ways of doing that!) but many many students want to find ways of becoming more time efficient and managing stress levels. 

In 2006 I got to go to Australia's only Disability Film Festival "The Other Film Festival". The festival features films made by, about and for people with disabilities and is held every 18 months, the next one is coming up in September. Its also the most accessible film festival in the country with audio descriptions for vision impaired and captions for hearing impaired. An amazing event if you can get there but if not, last time they streamed some films & workshops over the internet.

The BBC is launching Britain's Missing Top Model (a show like America's Next Top Model but with disabled contestants) in the hopes of changing attitudes towards disability. You can watch their promo on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGVpKZ400qs 

I've just re-read my post below and there are so many questions in it that reading it out loud will give you a high-pitched squeaky voice (just like mine!).  Mucho apologies readers!

I soooo know what Lisa is talking about.  It seems that I spent my whole life preparing to get INTO university and now I've been here for one Semester it has just gone by in a flash.  Have I really completed half my first year??

This is *sort* of related to Katie's post below..[begin promotion :)]  Did you know that the Study Smarter workshops are now available free via iTunes?  You could always get them via the Lectopia website but now you can subscribe and manage the recordings the iTunesU.  way cool (IMHO)

2008 sees the 10th anniversary of the MP3 player and the launch of the apple iphone. These devices are becoming more and more important in our lives and our education. Yet the iphone and itunes is generally regarded as highly inaccessible. The good news is T&T consultancy are doing something about this, but is it enough?