A Personal Note When I began this project, I had just finished a Cert IV in Training and Assessment as part of my recovery from a severe disability through CRS - Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services. I cannot say enough about my gratitude for the efforts of the staff there.
My right hip had disintegrated and had to be replaced. I had put on some weight and there was a question about the efficacy of a normal hip replacement. The titanium grows into the bone of the leg and hip, leaving the surrounding muscles to knit and hold it in place. Essentially a resurfacing, the procedure is called a Birmingham hip, after the town in England where it was invented. In many ways, I was lucky. A more common hip replacement procedure only lasts about 10 years. This procedure gives more flexibility and may last 25 years.
I don't want to speak too much about this procedure, but this has been a very personal journey to recovery, part of which is the process of developing this business.
I began looking for a means to put my new certification to work.
The Moodle Conference in Adelaide While studying for the Cert IV, I did a great deal of background reading into the field of training. Since I had a lot of time on my hands while recovering, I read everything I could find on the Net. I was invited to the Moodle Moot in Adelaide.
I'd planned to leave Australia, at least for a couple of years, and hadn't seen much of the country outside Victoria. A friend said she had never been to Adelaide despite living here 35 years or so. I've always enjoyed professional conferences and seminars, so the trip was on.
It was wonderful.
The press of bright, aggressive minds is always exciting. New ideas swirling with ambition all around.
Taking an overnight train across the low middle of Australia, I had hardly arrived when someone stuck a badge on me and pointed me to the stairs. The first pre-Conference seminar on High Availability servers was already getting started.
It only lasted all day. When we stopped for lunch was my first look at my hotel room. Nice room. I wish I'd had more time to enjoy it and the large spa. I gulped down a delicious sandwich while listening to my friend's mercantile explorations of Adelaide, and returned to the technical half of the seminar.
Chris Aynsworth deserves a lot of credit for his efforts to put together the Aussie Mooters Gather-ing. 
The venue was the Technology School of the Future in Adelaide. The website hardly does the facility justice. Clicking on the thumbnailed links on the right will show some of the of what's available at this superb facility.
Chris is a talented, energetic man. He and I had a few conversations via email and Skype about the nature of the elearning and online vocational training in Australia. His insights still influence my thinking.
Schisms in the Market
In those days, Chris was active in the EdNA Groups forum. The interaction in those forums accentuated the funding and technology gap between the smaller, regional RTO's (Registered Training Organizations) and the TAFE's (Technical and Further Education system). Most of the funding goes to the TAFE system, which grows as a bureaucracy grows: relying on new software for innovation and really clinging to classroom methods simply translated onto the Net.
The Technology School of the Future is a remarkable bridge between the TAFE system and the entrepreneurial innovators in online delivery. Unfortunately, it is only one of three planned.
A Little History About a decade ago, Australia realized that it had some problems with skilled and educated workers. There is still a brain drain from this country because of the small population. Anyone who develops an outstanding skill finds more fertile pastures in the US or UK. The number of aussies in Hollywood is a good example.
One of the aspects of that problem was the lack of a centralized means of assessing skills even between Australian states. An effort was made to organize Performance Criteria. First came the ANTA (which has since become a part of DEST), then the AQTF (also now a part of DEST). The Principle of National Recognition is spelled out on the DEST site.
Australia took to the Internet faster than any other country on the planet, on a per-capita basis. In less than 5 years, nearly 60% of households have Internet access. However, the aussies are slow to accept purchasing on the Net. Where some 45% of the huge American market has bought something on the Net; to date, only about 25% of Australian households have.
As the aussies came onto the Net, the technology ran away from them. Many Australian households still use older computers on dialup.
Cable service is bound up in disputes and spotty, even in metropolitan areas like Melbourne. The cable providers don't support home networking explicitly for short-sighted, greedy reasons. DSL is poorly understood. Most aussie homes are still on limited dialup accounts.
TAFE and University failure And that's where the attitudes of the TAFE's really fall down.
The goal of the system was to open up training and assessment across the country. Demanding that students run a program like Elluminate is practically impossible on dialup. Elluminate requires the person to download the latest version of Java before it will start. That download can take more than an hour on dialup.
Small RTOs and Entrepreneurs Becoming an RTO is still an arduous process bogged down in bureaucracy. (continued)
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