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.

This week's activities

Another eventful week. Several accidents, flurries of snow and an overturned lorry on the Forth Bridge conspired against me today. However, following a 2 hour car journey from Edinburgh to SFEU to meet with Christine we eventually made the Mentor's Meeting at Cardonald College in Glasgow - only 1 hour late. Unfortunately we missed the tea and scones.

Going off to South Lanarkshire College this afternoon to spread the Subject Networks' word and discuss the BlendEd resources for Care and Business Administration. See next week's post for news on this visit.

This week

This week some of the mentors joined the Hairdressing and Beauty Advisory Group for Sametime training at SFEU.

Sametime is a secure system that can provide presence awareness, instant messaging and Web conferencing. Sametime helps speed communication and reduce travel expenses. Practitioners can immediately and easily interact with one another and collaborate in real time. For further information and to get involved log on to Practitioners Plus.

NQ Business Management event - Wednesday 6 February 08
SFEU and SQA Academy are holding a blended learning event for staff delivering NQ Business Management programmes. The event comprises an online component and a workshop at the Carnegie Conference Centre, Halbeath, Dunfermline.