Oops, I realise it's some time since I updated!! I was going to last week but the server was down and on that note, I've been trying to get the formative assessment project completed but both myself and my colleagues who are taking part in the project have experienced difficulties in accessing the package due to server problems. We're persevering and it's coming along.

I finally made some progress with the summative assessment bank with the SQA sitting up and taking a very positive interest, so things are finally moving on that project but a number of hurdles to overcome yet. I'm keeping in touch with practitioners who've expressed an interest and I'm trying to keep them on board.

I met with Alison Harold regarding sector skills. From an intitially unsure start we had a positive meeting, which certainly let me know a bit more about the sector skills councils and has got me thinking about that part of my sfeu remit.

What else have I been up to? A number of universities got back to me about information links on Practitioners Plus and I hope to 'action' this with the help of Murray this week.

That's all for now I think

Week ending 18th January

HMItis has broken out at Langside and it's made it difficult for me to dip in and out of my e-mail and PP for sfeu so I've felt a bit out of touch this week. I'm recitifying this today though.

Last week I tried to get in touch with all of Scotland's universities, trying to get a named contact for FE liason for each of them. The point of this was connected to a meeting I had with the OU before Christmas where I agreed to work with them to promote FE links to the OU in social sciences. Not wishing to be seen to favour any one institution I thought it might be useful for all FE practitioners to have information regarding named contacts for FE in the universities and for the universities to be able to let FE practitioners know about open days (esp. particularly ones designed for particular curricular areas and/or FE students) and any other infromation they thought would be useful for FE. I thought that there could be a section on the main page of PP such as 'University News' that could be regularly updated and that could 'hold' the contact names and details.

I've had a good response to my e-mails from last week so I'm about to collate these and get in touch with the people named. As well as having the general item on the home page of PP, I'm proposing to give the uni contacts a list of the mentors and the subjects they are mentors for so that specific info from the unis could be sent to individual mentors to put on their PP pages.

I hope this is OK with everyone. I did talk to Colin about it. I think that making more links with HE is useful for us. It certainly is in social sciences.

So that's what I'm up to (along with trying to move along the summative and formative assessment banks). Being this busy keeps mischief at bay - well maybe!!

Hi, I'm a bit unsure about what I'm doing but giving it a go. I love the photo Annamarie put in as I am a cat lover myself. I have three who have been helping me (?) with my SFEU work all day today. I updated my profile because I thought that's what I was supposed to be doing so now you can all see some of my favourite things. Maybe you share them.