Teraknor

Nationally there is a worrying dilly dally delay taking place; government vs awarding organisations, awarding organisations keeping educators in the semi-darkness of a dimly lit room. Come 2015, which is closer than you may appreciate. A large tranche of qualifications reach the end of their normal approval (or validation) cycle. Whilst there is nothing unusual in this process, the worry comes when you discover that as yet nothing has been agreed to replace them and by now you would expect the development to have started. The problem seems to be that there is a government desire to make vocational qualifications more academic, to the point that they would exclude the countless practical students who would have taken them in the past. The reality is that, there is likely to be another six months of wrangling, before there is a last minute panic and rush to deliver a qualification. Resulting in errors being introduced.

You have to face it, in some ways we are all fish in our own personal ponds. Some of us succeed in changing the water, finding a different or more interesting pond. Yet remain a fish in water, unless we evolve, Often work takes me around the country (and sometimes the world). Part of my working ethos is to share advice, experience and a can do (rather than a cannot do) approach to qualification delivery. Yet so many seem trapped in a self created universe; a perception of what their limitations are and how they bind them in what they do. It is rare to see fish fly, but they do, it is rare to see fish survive out of water but some can. Some fish climb, to change their environment others seek bigger more plentiful ponds until they become oceans. You can't free a fish from water, that is its choice alone.

Definition : a dealer in a specific commodity, often used in combination eg. ironmonger. There is something I like about this old English word. Hanging in there and clinging to a few titles. Ironmongers and fishmongers alike, it is a postfix we all know but somehow underuse. I think that we need a campaign to give it more life and supplement everyday language with more mongery. With so many modern positions, I am sure that they would sound better being mongered. So as a networking engineer come computer scientist, am I nerdmonger, geekmonger or internetmonger? Choice is yours. A jeweller; are they a blingmonger, tatmonger (depending on the retailer) or goldmonger. Politicians are an interesting bunch, do we call them liemongers? I am sure that flimflammonger may be the term used in polite company. Pilots could be skymongers, cabbies are ridemongers and some fast food chefs piemongers. If priests (and the clergy) are faithmongers could authors be wordmongers. Police of...

In my day job, we use different centres to deliver a package to our students in the guise of a 'day school'. Over the years, we have selected centres based on location, resource as well as those teaching the subject. Where the person is in my experience more important than the place. For the second time since 2005; I learned that one of the centres we use are going to lose key staff. A risk and something that has to be resolved if one is able to ensure a continual level of service within a geographic area. Such is the relationship maintained with our partners, I learned of this from a team member rather than their somewhat detached management. Appreciating risk and with the awareness of the risk that this posed to our students, a new centre was sought (and found). All sorted, so one would think. A couple of weeks ago, I receive a text message from the team member who is now not long from leaving. "Our deanery is asking detached department management what is going ...

Do you every have that conversation with others, where you can see that they are not bothering to listen to what you have to say and have a mental setting of autocomplete. Once they ask a question, before you can give them an appropriate answer, they have to autocomplete the explanation. As if their mental model of the universe cannot take on too much external information. Equally entertaining, is when you tell them what you do (or doing) and they promptly give you a model of your role that seems to have no bearing on what you are actually about. So, does one correct them anymore, it depends, if the autocomplete comes across with a particular indifference. I tend to help fuel their misconception and add some more for luck. If you think you know what I do, or have understood what I have explained, it may be best to double check as I may have deliberately fed you some fluff for my own edification.

Time and time again I encounter further education establishments that expand, contract and reorganise their departmental structures. Leaving in their wake, confusion and a work force, if it survives disenfranchised and often unable to maintain a continuum of learning.  On one hand, senior management demand growth, success and performance. Yet fail to provide their educators with the time and opportunity to develop successful programmes of study. Looking back at programmes I have had to develop in further and higher education, it has been through maintaining and developing these programmes that has encouraged their success. They don't just happen; you have to work on them, tweak and manipulate them as well as watch over their ebb and flow.  Success does not 'just happen' you have to have a mind to the strategic and think in terms of three or more years. Progression, completion and retention is never overnight. So, please think on as you reshuffle when things ...

Was in conversation with a further education college recently, sadly the tale being shared were nothing unusual, having heard this many a time before. It focusses on the pedantry of external verifiers (now known as standards verifiers). In the particular case cited the verifier block a centre because they removed capital letters from an assessment criterion. I am not entirely sure of the detail and will take this citation as an allegory of when the verifier becomes too obsessed with needless detail and gains a self perceived God complex. We encourage centres to 'copy' the assessment criteria from the unit into the students assignment. They must not add nor remove anything from that criteria. This is appropriate and something I support. It is appropriate to 'advise' on minor indiscretions and direct a centre to 'not do it again' but block when a capital is a lowercase and vice versa is taking it to the extreme. The reason cited is that it changes the ass...