|
Mindshop Excellence News - January 2008
Excellence - An Innovation for Tafe Teachers in Ballarat
Aaron said “An integral part of my experience from Mindshop was being exposed to a professional working environment. By not only watching but participating in this setting I gained a first hand knowledge of how to conduct myself in many situations. Since then I’ve had multiple environments when I’ve drawn on some of the skills I gained, whether that be drafting letters or speaking in a formal setting. The benefits I got from the Mindshop program were immense and I would recommend it highly to anyone, I know personally I found it more beneficial than my week on work experience.” Since Aaron completed his Mindshop Excellence program in late 2006 he has been the recipient of 3 scholarships and will be heading to France for 12 months with Rotary Youth Exchange in 2008.
Excellence Launches On-Line Learning Site to the Victorian Applied Learning Association In late August 2007, Mindshop Excellence ran a workshop at the VISTA – VALA conference at the Victoria University. This conference was designed specifically for those working at the interface between VET, Schools and youth programs. John Tabone (Mindshop Educational Trust Board Member and teacher with Bendigo Catholic College) spoke about the practical, enterprising benefits of Mindshop Excellence and how it could be applied to apprenticeship and trade programs. Chris Mason then spoke about the brand new Excellence Course Website. The exciting development of this new highly interactive website is still under construction. It is anticipated that this will be the type of learning environment that students will experience in the near future. Some of the benefits of this new training environment include:
Please contact Emily Mason (emason@mindshop.com) for access to the online learning site.
Ballarat Business Month A group of 26 students representing four schools from Ballarat were taken through the day of training by Mindshop Facilitator, Robert Pridham. Undaunted by the large group, Robert did a mighty job facilitating and setting the tasks for teams. Chris and Julie Mason and Gordon Schell from Highland LLEN assisted the groups during the week and helped bring their presentations together.
Our four groups of students all did us proud! They came up with great solutions to their projects, gave a very impressive presentation at each host organisation and they were very well behaved - what more could I ask for!! Each group have been invited to return to their hosts to be a part of the implementation of their ideas. These included significant changes to the design of the local Ballarat newspaper, waste reduction at Haymes paint, redesigning the induction of staff at Laminex Componentry and finding significant water and cost savings at Laminex R & D. All students were recognised for their efforts at a formal presentation at the Ballarat Town Hall. Damascus College at the Ballarat Courier
Ballarat Grammar at Haymes Paint
Sebastapol College at Laminex Componentry
Mt Clear Secondary College at the Town Hall
Excellence Excels at Toyota Peter Longhurst and Mark Lennon, Mindshop Facilitators in Sydney, ran a Mindshop Excellence program with a group of students from De La Salle College in early August. Peter wrote - “This year was by far the best group we have ever had … the most satisfying for Mark and I and the best feedback we have had from Toyota. It was a wonderful week. To see the result and the proud parents and even prouder kids was heart warming. Mark did all the work this year in getting the programme up and running and so mate you should feel very satisfied and proud of your efforts … as usual it is a pleasure working with you.” Mr Garry Browne, Manager - Business Development Sales & Marketing came up from Melbourne on the Monday to address the students and present the issue. Tuesday, he organised to personally take the students to Sydney City Toyota, the largest dealership in NSW and they met with the Manager. According to the students, Garry was fantastic, and his enthusiasm was infectious to the students. He returned to Sydney on Friday for their presentation with several other managers from Melbourne Toyota. One of the participating students, Rebecca wrote to Mark and Peter to thank them. “ I wanted to thank you both for all your efforts, encouragement and support during the week and the many valuable ideas and mechanisms you taught me to not only get me through school but more so through life. Working as a team through the problem Toyota gave us, provided me with confidence and a higher level of self-esteem. This program was extremely valuable and I can only hope that one day in the future that my value to others or VTO can be as admirable as yours was to me.”
Mr Garry Browne has asked the students and the principal of De La Salle College if the students could come back to Toyota to re-present their presentation to senior management, including the Vice Chairman of Toyota Australia.
Generation 'Y' - An Excellence Challenge in Adelaide It was a family affair of Mindshop Excellence facilitators in Adelaide recently when Maurie Vast was ably assisted with an Excellence program by his wife and Primary School teacher Kath and daughter Robyn who is currently studying for her PhD in Psychology. The students from Adelaide High School were given their project “What do Gen Y look for when choosing a financial institution?” by their host, Powerstate Credit Union.
Domineik was chosen as the leader and she wrote the following about her Mindshop Excellence experience’ “What do you get when you take six relative strangers; stick them in a room together for a week and ask them to solve a problem? Mindshop Excellence in collaboration with GSI Consulting gives secondary students in years 10-12 the chance to step out into a workforce and experience what it would be like to pose as a consultant for that company for a week. I Dominiek, Cathy, Marcus, Peter, Nicholas and Philip were taken out of our comfort zones and thrown into the working world of suits, ties and PowerState Credit Union. It was a sunny Monday morning as we all gathered in front of 115 Grenfell Street, standing in unfamiliar casual clothes, chatting nervously to each other, waiting impatiently to see what was behind those big shiny elevator doors. When we reached the twelfth floor, we were lead from a cosy little hallway to an inviting office setting. To us, it felt like twenty pairs of eyes were watching you cautiously, making judgments with every step you took. To the employees of PowerState Credit Union, it must have looked like our group had never seen a real working office before and we gazed at them as if they were animals in the Adelaide Zoo. When all accounted for were seated, we started with some general introductions from two representatives of MindShop Excellence, followed by Maurie, Kath and Robyn Vast from GSI Consulting and Helen Scarpf and Debbie Jones from PowerState Credit Union. Then we introduced ourselves, providing information about our hobbies, interests, ambitions and which football team you followed. After a quick tour of the office, we came back to our boardroom and began to discuss what it meant to work in a team. We talked about each other’s strengths and weaknesses, how important it was that we all listened and respected everyone’s ideas and opinions, even though at the time, we may have not thought they were right. As the end of the day was drawing ever closer, our host company presented us with our problem that we would we be finding a solution for. Our problem was “How does Generation Y (15-30 years) choose their Main Financial Institution?” With the promise of tomorrow in the air, we packed up and set off to leave but not before making a plan of how the next day was going to run. We could have made all the plans in the world, but the next morning we ended up walking around in circles confused by how to approach such a problem. With so much to consider we decided to break the problem down into smaller parts and tackle them first inside of trying to attack them all at once. By the end of Tuesday, it was a unanimous decision that we were going to conduct a survey and take our results and findings from it to help us find our solution. Wednesday morning and came and went and with our survey finalised and completed we hit the streets of Rundle Mall pursuing unsuspecting victims asking them what they thought was most important in choosing a main financial institution and what factors would be most important if they thought about changing their main financial institution. Thursday morning went off with a bang as we got to experience a fire drill where walking down twelve flights of stairs was nothing compared to the idea that we could be walking back up them. With so many people situated in the Grenfell street building, the lifts used to take crowds up to their floors became jammed and clogged and someone suggested that walking up the stairs would be quicker than taking the lifts. We all laughed merrily but quickly shuddered inside and grew a deeper respect for our teachers and thought about when they try to herd us to safety during our school fire drills. Therefore, by the end of Thursday we had a semi-completed power-point presentation, and the fear that we were going to make complete fools of ourselves at Friday’s presentation. From the extremely hard-working efforts of Cathy and Marcus, they together produced one of the most professional looking presentations that any of us had seen. We came together again to work out what we had to say and braced ourselves for when the clock chimed two. With an exceptional presentation (that impressed everyone) behind us, we took the time to wind down and discuss our feelings and thoughts about the week. Goodbyes were then said, and we left PowerState Credit Union with a feeling of pride that we had actually pulled the whole thing off. I can tell you what you get when you take six relative strangers; stick them in a room together for a week and ask them to solve a problem. You get ideas, opinions, thoughts and feelings thrown about. You get laughs and arguments and you find out ways how to make it work out in the end. But the thing that I will miss the most, the most important that comes out of being stuck with a bunch of strangers is that they stop becoming strangers and turn into your friends who create memories that you will treasure forever. By Dominiek - Year 10 Student
EXCELLENCE PROGRAMS - SEPTEMBER Marketing Project for Excellence Students In early September, a team of Yr 10 students from Ivanhoe Grammar were involved in an Excellence Program at C-Direct. The host is a member of Family Business Australia and the project they gave the students involved developing a marketing plan and lifting the turnover of one of the smaller divisions of the company, the Entertainment and Products division. Harry Kras facilitated the students and was assisted by Mindshop Facilitators, Elizabeth Christodoulou and Fergal Coleman. The people at C-Direct were very pleased with the outcomes, as did Ivanhoe Grammar and they are looking forward to being involved in future programs.
EXCELLENCE PROGRAMS - OCTOBER St Mary's Anglican Girl's School - WA Mindshop Facilitator, Michele Rawlins had a special interest in her group of Excellence students from St Mary’s Anglican Girl’s School … her eldest daughter, Laura was one of the team. They were hosted by LotteryWest. Michele commented, “ We had our fist day today and I don’t think mother and daughter did so bad! I asked Laura how it went and she said besides looking over my shoulder when I filled in the questions… ok! She said the girls said I fried their brains! I am really enjoying my time with the team ”. The presentation went well on Friday and the students were quite pleased with their results and LotteryWest was as well. Laura said on the training day that she hoped to get new skills in the workplace and for school and to be able to work better and more efficient The team mentioned that LotteryWest was a very organised and supportive company and they enjoyed working with them for the week. The training was very beneficial and worthwhile and they thanked Michele for teaching them a lot of new techniques and skills.
Eltham College - Victoria Who I am – Where am I going – How will I get there? This was the theme for an Excellence program involving 100 Year 7 students at Eltham College in October this year. Chris Mason facilitated the students in a 2 hour morning session of 50 students and a 2 hour session with the rest of the grade early in the afternoon. To start their Excellence journey Chris introduced them to the ‘Now-Where-How’ process and explained that it was a framework tool used to help get a clear picture or helicopter view of where you want to take your life and the issues or opportunities they are currently facing. The students were also put into teams to discuss the bike of life and they thought it was fun to combine life balance into one big picture. Several staff members from Eltham College were on hand to assist/manage and work with the large group. The students all gained valuable knowledge and skills which they will take with them into Year 8 next year.
Bendigo - Victoria Article from the Catholic College Bendigo Newsletter :- Five Year 10 students were recently given the challenge to:
The students were given this task as part of the interactive learning intiative called “Mindshop Excellence”, which is the first such program to be run in Bendigo. The partnership between Catholic College, McCulloch’s Hydraulic Engineering and Mindshop Excellence represents a win-win-win situation in which young people from the school are placed into an adult environment where they are treated as adult consultants and not constrained by normal school rules, as well as giving McCulloch’s access to recommendations which may prove to be useful in further enhancing their manufacturing environment. The program gives students the opportunity to participate in a unique form of work experience. The students were trained in problem solving skills, including Mindmapping, Pareto Analysis, Force Field Analysis, Visioning, Team Style and Decision Matrix, by Mindshop facilitator and CCB teacher, John Tabone. They were then given the problem to solve, which they were required to complete during the one week period whilst at McCulloch’s. At the end of the week they presented their report and solutions to the management of the company. Also in attendance at the presentation were parents, Catholic College staff, McCulloch’s management and staff and several business representatives from the Bendigo area. The students, Amelia, Olivia, Alexander, Megan and Eli, commenced the program with an initial training day on the Monday. Mindshop facilitator, John Tabone, guided the students through the training and the problem solving skills they would require. After the initial training, the students were on their own, with their facilitator available for guidance through the week. In order to complete their challenge the young team of consultants were required to work as a cohesive team, liaise with McCulloch’s staff, become familiar with the language used in an environment where machines and tools unfamiliar to the students were common place, conduct research into various aspects of their given problem involving liaison with production staff as well as phone, e-mail and internet contacts with experts in fields such as materials handling. At the presentation on the Friday the students gave a very detailed power point presentation in which they addressed the problem given to them, along with their findings and recommendations. Ken McCulloch, manager of McCulloch’s Hydraulic Engineering was impressed with the maturity of the students and noted the transformation which they had gone through during the course of the week. Ken praised the maturity of the students involved and promised feedback to each of them once their recommendations were considered in further detail by the management team. As a result of the success of this Mindshop Excellence program, Catholic College is looking forward to again running a similar program in 2008. Thanks must go to the management and staff of McCulloch’s and Catholic College for their support of the program throughout the week as well as the excellent “young consultants” who took part in this program.
Ken McCulloch with (Front) Megan and Eli . (Rear) Amelia, Olivia and Alexander
Ballarat - Victoria The Ballarat Occupational, Health and Safety organisation, BROSH supported three Excellence programs during WorkSafe Week – 22 to 26 October. Each host employer was asked to provide a workplace health and safety project for the students to undertake. The Beaufort Secondary College students were assisted by Chris Mason who helped to organised their work for their presentation. Their host, the Pyrenees Shire, were delighted with the outcomes and will probably involve some of the students in representing their ideas to those members of council that didn't get to the presentation. The boy’s team from St Patrick's College included in their presentation some remarkable drawings of the warehouse and their ideas for change using the program Google draw. Their host, Steelframe Solutions were very impressed. The students from Ballarat High School worked well on their project to improve the safety in the caustic bath area of the FMP plant. Gordon Schell from Highland LLEN spent some time with the group on Thursday and he was also with them all day on Friday. The Safety Manager from FMP was really complementary about the kids, their conduct and the outcomes and indicated that some of their ideas were already being implemented this week. All in all a great way to finish the week. Many thanks to Kay Macaulay from the Australian Industry Group for her continued support to the Excellence program and her tireless efforts to involve the young people of Ballarat in enterprising projects in the region.
For further information on the Mindshop Excellence or to discuss running a program in your region please contact: Julie Mason (jemason@mindshop.com)
|
|
