Sunday, 16th March

Hi,

This week I've still been trying to tie up the SOLAR project so that only the psychology is left to be done. I made better progress with this this week than I did last week, but it took time. It is important, especially as I'm writing an article on it for Broadcast.

On that note I started thinking about the article. 600 words isn't a lot, especially for wafflers like me ( I always go over wordcounts for essays and have to spend ages cutting them down to meet the requirements). I'm going to have a look at previous articles in Broadcast to get a 'flavour' of the sort of styles that tend to be included as I'm only used to writing academically, so this is a new challenge for me.

With respect to PP demonstrations, Anniesland seem quite keen so I'm hoping we can get a mutual time agreed for that. I'm keeping a correspondence going there. They are also interested in the HN Assessment bank and Nautical have also expressed more interest so I'm keen to chat with them.

I replied to various enquiries from practitioners that my post has generated and I tried to find out how the SQA was progressing with the idea of an HN Assessment Bank. It would appear fairly slowly but it is progressing and I appreciate that there are quite a lot of issues involved.

Finally, putting together information for Colin for Anne and John allowed me to reflect on what I had done and what I really still want to do. Sometimes, I get a bit frustrated at how long anything takes and the 'bittiness' of it, but ce la vie.

thinking of Peggy

Hi,

I'm thinking of Peggy and hoping that her event is going well. This week I've been trying to follow up leads on good, kind folks who might contribute bits and pieces to the social sciences PP section. I'm also trying to keep people on board for the assessment bank and seeking some SMT approvals, though it is not moving altogether as fast as I'd hoped - ah lumbering bureaucracy.

I've been checking up on resources and hopefully not creating too much work for Murray. After chatting to Claire at last week's meeting at Telford, given that her meeting at Langside to show off PP went so well, I thought that I'd start touting for business along those lines too. So I've made a few suggestions of visits to various colleges - I'll see if there are any takers.

I've also been following up on matters arising from the QST (qualifications support team) meeting that I attended last Wednesday and I'm still trying to follow up on Uni contacts.

Jings: lots of following up.

I'm about to head out to a meeting to try to get most of the SOLAR project I've been working on completed. Soon it should just be the psychology element to be finished and those involved are due to have a meeting with Graeme Clarke of SOLAR to 'generate tests'. Sounds a bit scary but I don't think there will be any medical experimentation involved.

That's it for now I think.

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.