Twelve students at Charles Sturt University (CSU) will have the ultimate cultural experience in teaching when they land in the Pacific Island country of Vanuatu for three weeks of teaching practice in three schools around the nation’s capital, Port Vila. The students, in their third year of the early childhood / primary school education degree based on the Albury-Wodonga, Bathurst and Dubbo campuses, will teach for one week in each of Peter Pan School, Port Vila International School and The Central School, starting Saturday 16 October. The program coordinator Ms Sharon Milsome, said immersing the students in the culture gave them a better understanding of how other cultures teach and learn. “Students can try different teaching strategies and hopefully learn from the teachers they are placed with in a variety of classrooms. The students have prepared a variety of lesson plans and ideas to implement while they are there, and will share ideas among their peers. They might even have some fun!” The students return to Australia on Saturday 6 November.

Do you stutter, or know of someone who does? You may be interested in learning more about a treatment program soon being offered locally. Speech pathology academics at Charles Sturt University (CSU) are keen to hear from interested adults who stutter. Stuttering program coordinator Ms Lisa Brown said one percent of Australian adults stutter, and “we have developed strategies and techniques to reduce the impact of stuttering”. Ms Brown would like to hear from adults around Albury-Wodonga who want to take part in an intensive one-week treatment program to be conducted in early November by final year speech pathology students. Ms Brown, who is an experienced speech pathologist and is now completing her doctoral research on stuttering, will supervise the students. The program will start on Monday 1 November on CSU’s Thurgoona site.

People will fence, plant, prune and plan new and existing gardens as part of a Permablitz to be held in Thurgoona on Saturday 6 November. Charles Sturt University (CSU) and the Albury-Wodonga Environment Centre will host the Permablitz which is a community project to redevelop existing gardens and cleared paddocks around the Inland Living Experience (ILE) House on the University’s Thurgoona site. Activities for participants will include establishing ‘no-dig’ and perennial herb gardens using permaculture principles and an irrigation system. ILE coordinator and chair of CSU in Albury-Wodonga’s Environmental Committee, Dr John Rafferty, said the blitz is an opportunity for the Albury-Wodonga committee to help establish an education centre to demonstrate practical ways of living more sustainably. “The permablitz is really concerned with engaging with the environment, learning new skills and having fun. Set up permaculture gardens is a good thing to do on many levels,” Dr Rafferty said. The Permablitz will start at 10am at ILE House, St John’s Road (though the CSU entrance on Elizabeth Mitchell Drive), Thurgoona.

An Austrian freshwater ecologist is visiting Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) School of Environmental Science and the Institute for Land, Water and Society to see how scientists are studying the survival of the young stages of fish in Australian rivers. Associate Professor Hubert Keckeis, from the University of Vienna in Austria, is working with CSU researcher Dr Paul Humphries on the ways that fish larvae disperse in rivers. His visit follows Dr Humphries’ own work two years ago in the Danube River, which was the basis for a major three-year project for Professor Keckeis, the results of which will be used in plans to restore the Danube River that flows through much of southern Europe. “Dr Humphries is well-known for his ‘larval drift’ work in rivers,” said Professor Keckeis, who is working with Dr Humphries, Dr Kevin Warburton and Honours student Mr Tim Kaminskas on experiments to investigate the effects of water velocity and light on larval drift, and analysing age and growth data of drifting larvae.

Were you born here or overseas, and did you start or re-start school in Australia between 1965 and 1995? Education researchers at Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE) based in Albury-Wodonga want to speak to you. They are recording the memories of people who started or re-started school in this period, and want to interview people face-to-face or by telephone for about one hour. Interviewees are also invited to share their memorabilia and photos with the early childhood researchers at the University, as part of a project titled Narratives of Transition: Starting school in different decades, which is part of research into transition to school by the Murray School of Education. To organise an interview for the project, contact Dr Tuija Turunen on (02) 6051 9419, or send an email ttururnen@csu.edu.au .

Society has been transformed by computing and data transfer technology in the last two decades. The success of Charles Sturt University (CSU), which was established in 1989, owes much to the innovation and capacity of its Division of Information Technology (DIT) which celebrates its 20th anniversary with a staff barbeque on Friday 26 November. DIT Executive Director, Mr Garry Taylor, said, “Charles Sturt University was created as part of the Dawkins-era reform of the Australian higher education sector, and the University’s success is partly due to the early and deliberate priority to develop technology to ensure success. We were one of the first universities in Australia to adopt video conferencing technology, and we now have more than 100 terminals, which is important for teaching, learning and collaboration, as well as reducing the need to travel which is important for the environment. In 1990 Charles Sturt University was one of the first regional universities to connect to the Internet, and at one stage our website had the most ‘hits’ of any website in Australia in 1995-96. We also had a world-first enterprise-wide Online Learning Environment in 1997. We now have the fastest single and direct internal network link in regional Australia and the largest wireless network in the Southern Hemisphere.”

Millawa in North East Victoria will echo with the sounds of whirls, clicks and clunks when a Charles Sturt University (CSU) technical expert holds a day-long workshop at Millawa Primary School tomorrow, Thursday 2 December, to help students with their robotic projects. Mr Andrew Shaw from CSU’s Division of Information Technology in Albury-Wodonga will help senior students at the school to build robots using LegoTM and program them to do simple tasks. The students recently completed a Lego Robotics course with Goulburn Ovens TAFE and want to extend what they learned to ‘real world’ situations. “I had completed my degree on applied cybernetics and computing at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, and I am really please to share what I learned,” Mr Shaw said. “The recent New Zealand coalmine disaster highlighted that limitations still exist in modern robots, and I hope to give the students some appreciation of the challenges and approaches we face in this area.”

There is nothing worse than ending up in the emergency room with food poisoning on Christmas day and it is just as bad being the host who provides the food. To ensure it doesn’t happen to you this Christmas Charles Sturt University (CSU) School of Biomedical Sciences food microbiology lecturer, Dr Ester Mpandi Khosa has some food safety suggestions. “From a microbiological point of view, food poisoning is a very serious illness,” Dr Khosa says. “Micro-organisms growing on food can cause food-borne illness, which in some reported cases, has resulted in death of the victim.” This is the time of year when a large quantity of food is processed, purchased and consumed, creating a huge potential for food poisoning, if the food is not handled properly. “Every food handler, from farm to table, has a responsibility to make sure food is kept safe from contamination that can lead to food poisoning. The food that one handles is going to be consumed by someone else so it is important to make sure that hands are washed thoroughly, surfaces and utensils are clean and foods are stored at the correct temperature.”

As families prepare for Christmas celebrations, with festive goodies such as candy canes, gingerbread and chocolate within easy reach, Charles Sturt University (CSU) Dental Clinic dentist Dr Ying Shi Chang asks parents to remember the importance of children’s teeth. “Holidays often mean lack of routine and the festive season is a time when people eat more sugar, more frequently, than at any other time of the year,” says Dr Chang. “That can cause serious problems for teeth unless sensible and straightforward steps are taken.” Dr Chang recommends limiting the number of times a day your child eats sugary treats or snacks between meals and avoiding soft, sticky treats that get stuck between teeth. “It is best to eat sugary treats at the end of mealtime while there is still plenty of saliva in the mouth, as saliva helps to wash away the sugars and acids. Drinking a glass of water after eating a sugary treat also helps.” Finally, always have your child brush and floss before going to bed. It is also suggested that parents book their children in for an annual check-up before the start of a school year.