Monday, March 9, 2009

Small world

I hear a number of colleagues attended the LSIS Research Practitioners conference in London the week before last. My Principal tells me that a number of you came up to him and told him that you are coming to Jersey in June, which I'm really delighted about. Hopefully we will be able to tell you more about the two LSIS/CEL research projects that we have on the go for the last couple of years.

If you need any more information, please let me know asap

Regards

Gary

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Once you get here - what are we going to talk about

Hi

I'm proposing that we begin the process of putting the agenda together for our day. I think it might be worthwhile indicating some of the things we might want to discuss etc - so I'm going to suggest the following.

On the Sunday - I'll organise a meal for us to meet up and begin our discussions

On the Monday we'll have two start times - 9.00 am for those who came into Jersey over the weekend and 10.00 am for those flying in that morning. For those who are here at 9.00 am we'll do a tour of the college, meet the Principal etc

The first part of the session could be spend on sharing our successes and stuff that we our proud of

The second part could look at interest groups on issues where colleagues need assistance or just someone to talk an issue through with

The third part could look at a specific issue which we could all agree was of import - this could be decided in advance and maybe we could get someone into talk about this issue

The fourth part could be about how we take things forward for future years

Any comments would be most useful

Regards

Gary

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Once you get to Jersey where to stay?

Hopefully most of you are looking into making arrangements for flights, which I would encourage you to do as soon as possible as there are some really good deals going at the moment.

As to where to stay once you get here well that's upon many things: your budget; a desire to be close to the college and our venue; or maybe you are bringing your partner over.

So if you are looking to stay close to Highlands College there are two hotels worth considering: first is the Hotel de France; second, the Monterey Hotel. Both of these hotels are within 5 minutes walk of the college and have a reasonable range of leisure facilities.


(If you contact my colleage kath.mcginness@highlands.ac.uk she will be able to arrange a rate of £85 per night at the Hotel de France)

On the other hand, if you are looking to stay in St Helier and go to one of spa hotels then you could go to The Royal Yacht.  If you are looking for fabulous sea views or a beach location you could really spoil yourself and go to the L'Horizon Hotel or The Atlantic Hotel

Nevertheless, I'm sure there are others who would prefer the pleasures of the good old bed and breakfast and if you contact Jersey Tourism they will put you in touch with appropriate places.

If you need any more information, please do not hesitate to contact me.



Sunday, January 18, 2009

How to get to Jersey

Hi

Thanks for the all the enthusiasm and support for the idea of a our networking event. Things are moving here with the venue being booked etc so all we need is a few people to get here. You can fly to Jersey from a whole range of regional airports which include: Exeter, Southampton, Bristol, Gatwick, Luton, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands, Manchester and others. Flights if booked in advance can be pretty cheap at around about £100 or less including taxes etc. Airlines using these airports include: Flybe, BA, Easyjet, BMIBaby and I think Thomsons (not sure if they are still flying in and out of Coventry and Doncaster)

As for accommodation, I'm going to do a little work with a colleague and see if we can get you a corporate in a hotel within a stone's throw of the college where I work. Alternatively, you may wish to find other accommodation which has better views of the wonderful coastline. I'll post more details next week.

Moving onto the agenda - well that's very much for us to decide and again over the next few months I'll try and come up with an outline and then see what everyone thinks. That said I would like us to agree on aims, objectives and what we want to get out of the session before the day itself so that we can get on with the work of networking and creating really useful things that we can take back to each other's colleges.

In the next few weeks I'll post some photos of the college and the island so that you can get a glimpse of where you are coming to.

If there are any comments questions - please let me know asap

Gary