Where was I?

Once again I've let myself and you down -- but I refuse to be down-hearted about it. "New Year" resolutions start here and now.

Back to the drawing board with the ACEG Conference -- or, more particularly, about the people and resources that I thought were interesting and/or useful which were not part of the Conference programme. These items are not in any hierarchical order -- just as the reminder piece of paper, catalogue or CD comes "out of the box".

It's a small world, isn't it? I was talking about blogging, this writing of posts to a weblog, and about the general interest starting to be shown in reading blogs when I was asked about getting training in setting it up, mentioned a name (Phil Bradley) and got "oh, we know him".

careercomp@nion notebook
At first glance £7.99 seems like a lot of money for a 60-page A5 book (booklet?) but when you open it you realise, quite quickly, that Alison Dixon and Hilary Nickell have produced an extremely useful notebook which can be used, as a stand-alone career planning and preparation tool, by any motivated person. I tried to find a review of it on the web but failed miserably -- and the only third-party reseller that mentions it is Trotman and that is only on the Master Excel file (looks as though it's Trotman's internal document designed to produce an order form). I'm certainly not the right person to try to review it so I'll prompt Hilary to get it to a number of places so that someone else can do it.

Personal Development Curriculum provides "complete curriculum materials for careers, citizenship, enterprise, PSHE and work-related learning". Since I've never been a teacher and never worked in a school or college I will not attempt to evaluate the resources but the people at the exhibition stand were very friendly. You can access all the information you need at the link above and all resources are available on a 14-day trial. If PDC Education is not a name you recognise then perhaps you will know these people better as Gapwork Limited (name no longer shown at Companies House but the website, or at least Google's cache of it, is very easy to find).

Better Practice: a guide to delivering effective career learning 11-19 provides "practical help on leading, managing and delivering effective careers education". The document is available at http://www.cegnet.co.uk/ and http://www.aceg.org.uk/

The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust provides an "Equal Opportunities Interactive Resource" which shows the benefits and challenges of pursing a different career oath to the norm. "It confronts the fears and aspirations of young people who wish to enter the sectors of: construction, early years, engineering, health, manufacturing, and social care".
"This dynamic new DVD has been sent to schools, additional free copies are available from the eshop."

I guess that I had better not let this post go without mentioning organisations that you must, surely, already know about such as:

• HERO: helping your students track down the facts on higher education http://www.hero.ac.uk/
• Aimhigher information was provided by the local, West Midlands, Aimhigher organisation and leaflets provided pointed to West Midlands resources. I do know that these vary from region to region but you are probably in touch with your local representative for programmes such as "Learning Pathways" and "Get Up and Go". Nice bags available!
• Careers Europe is the UK National Resource Centre for International Careers Information. It provides resources to Careers services, Connexions services and other information and advisory services throughout the UK. You can access information about the organisation's role as a Business Language Champion here and about the Gap Year Resource Pack here.
• skillset: the Sector Skills Council for the audio visual industries has what is, in my opinion, one of the best sectoral-based careers information centres -- it was certainly the first of the newly-formed Sector Skills Councils to take up the challenge of providing careers information < www.skillset.org/careers >.
• Prospects Education Resources had their usual informative stand with a wide range of resources on display -- and reminders that e-Learning Credits can, and indeed probably should, be used to purchase a wide range of multimedia resources including CEG and PSHE software such as the Real game (£350 for a 3-year site licence) and FastTomato (£365 for a 1-year site licence).
• Trotman were also providing lots of resources to look at but I failed to pick up their catalogue and after the long interval I can't remember whether any particular resource was being promoted over others.