Looking forward

Most of this week was spent on our mind map evaluation task which required much time and consideration. Sent my thoughts and ideas to Colin but am also keen to hear the other mentors' perceptions.

Checking and corresponding to emails takes up much time each week. Although not so much time as trying to keep up-to-date with what's new in our sector and disseminating that information to practitioners in the most appropriate way. Added several new links and some latest news to Practitioners Plus - thanks Murray - and sent reminder to my contacts about College People Week.

Unfortunately not enjoying the same success as some of my colleagues in the advisory group stakes. Think I need to offer another incentive as the Sametime trial was not lucrative enough. Will need to give this some thought- suggestions welcome.

Back again

Hope you all had a nice holiday and some well deserved R & R.

I have been busy catching up with my many emails and responding to requests which have come in during the holidays.

We submitted our article for the SFEU e-zine to be sent out to our subject network contacts. The idea of the e-zine is to keep everyone up-to-date with what is happening within the network. Also submitted our article for the Broadcast 79 magazine which is to be published in time for College People Week. The Business and Administration day is Thursday 05 June so please register and come along.

Also spent time updating web links and resources on our subject web page – thanks again Murray. Please check this out and let me know what you think.
Wrote to my advisory group to gauge interest in a Sametime trial and hope we can arrange this sometime soon. Other than that I've been doing the usual contacts stuff and the different College holidays made that a challenge.

Information and stats

Got Colin's urgent request for stats and information for the funding council on Sunday so spent the afternoon working on my submission. Hope I made it in time.

Having difficulty getting my advisory group together so had dinner with one of my group (the sacrifices we mentors have to make) and utilised some (well I can't be too boring) of the pre and post dinner chat to further our cause. Interesting discussions about the universal time and workload difficulties and in particular how staff development operates differently from College to College.

Drafted some editorial for our Broadcast 79 article, caught up with blogs and emails and updated the web page with some new resource. Murray and I are working on how best to sub-divide the page for ease of accessibility for Practitioners as Business and Administration covers a wide variety of subject areas. This is Work in Progress so log on to see the latest changes and let me know if it makes it easier to find what you need.

Off to sunny (or snowy as the forecast predicts) Loch Lomond. Have good Easter breaks - next update in three weeks.

Another busy week

In order to help appraisal of the networks I compiled an Evaluation Form (thanks to Claire for the idea) to send to Colleges visited and to issue at future visits. This should give valuable feedback on our project and for for the Subject Networks in general.

I attended an Admin and IT College Consortium Meeting at Forth Valley College in Falkirk on Friday 07 March. Twelve practitioners from various Colleges attended and the demonstration of the Practitioners Plus site and the BlendEd materials seemed to go down well as the Evaluation Forms confirm. Practitioners seemed keen to get log ons so hopefully we have a few more converts. Z cards were distributed as well as a copy of a CD with the Office Administration and Office Management BlendEd resources so practitioners could see the materials that were relevant for their subject area.

This week I made email contact with my Advisory Group asking for their feedback and arranged a tentative date - Thursday 22 may - to visit Stow College in Glasgow.

I also kept Murray busy by checking and updating the Practitioners Plus site with latest news and developments in Business and Administration.

Spring?

Even if Spring isn't here the snowdrops are.

This week saw me promoting the Subject Networks at a Curricular Area meeting at Stevenson College attended by the Associate Principal, Head of Section and 7 practitioners. An update on our latest developments and the Z cards with all the project information was well received. The Associate Principal was particularly interested to learn about our links with the Sector Skills Councils and information about labour market intelligence.

The monthly Mentor's meeting was held Edinburgh's Telford College where we had a presentation from representatives of Coleg to discuss their latest developments and how we might collaborate with our 'Swop Shop' for the benefit of all practitioners. Coleg will be launching their new repository at the end of April so watch this space.

Christine, the Care Mentor, and I met to update and plan our College visits programme.

New name

We are now officially called Business and Administration which fits the curricular area well. Thanks to Murray and Penny for their help with this.

Spent time this week encouraging and enlisting recruits to my Advisory Group. Now have a good group of eight enthusiasts and look forward to working with them more closely in the near future. A bonus has been inviting those Colleges we have visited to join the group - was that clever or what? Thanks Genevieve for that good idea.

Requests for College visits are still coming in and Christine and I have been invited to Inverness College sometime in May - date to be confirmed. Updating the web site with latest news (thanks Murray) and checking that resources are still current.

After technical failure spent a few frustrating hours listening to a continuous collection of Creedence Clearwater Revival (remember them?) whilst trying to get a response from my ISP who will remain nameless but whose contract is about to be terminated! Now I am 'live' again I can get back to business.

This week

Enjoyed the Moodle demo at Cardonald last week - thanks Tony. Have been playing around with this trying to get familiar. Am getting more confident with the Blog and may try an upload soon!

Meeting at South Lanarkshire College went well. Met with Karen Cleary, Curriculum Manager for Business and two members of the Care team. They demonstrated where they are at with the BlendEd resources. A staff member has been seconded 2 days per week to work on this and has several units loaded on their VLE ready for use when they move to their new college in August.

We demonstrated the PP site and the Cookbook for the BlendEd materials where the methodology and templates can be accessed and staff found this very useful.

Thanks to Christine for driving in such awful weather conditions we got home safely with no further delays.