Jackie Hartley’s BLOG

Finding it really hard to concentrate on writing. I have realised that I really hate short days and dark nights. At this time of year all I want to do is hibernate. I hate waking up in the dark (so frequently don’t!) and as soon as the light starts to fade around 4 pm my […]

Am back to writing the U3 series and busy producing teaching materials around the topic of healthy eating. The more I read, think, attempt to write, the more I realise how easy it is to tell someone else they need to eat more healthily and how hard it is to actually do it! Then I […]

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There is an old saying ‘What you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts’. So in these difficult times for careers publishers, we’ve definately found our swings so now we just need to […]

After much consultation and lots of useful feedback from our customers we have decided to move on this, but only partially. We are going to put our products on CD but send them out inside a customised binder. Apparently people still need to be able to handle a printed version and if we don’t send […]

With only a couple of weeks to go to Christmas the temptation to abandon ship and go shopping is enormous. So it’s a little ironic that the pack I am working on at the moment, Developing Young People’s Skills for Work, entails that I ‘anglicise’ an American publication which looks hard at the skills employers […]

I’ve got used to spam email but am now up to my eyeballs in blog spam. It is really annoying because it is all posted as comments so I get an email saying you have a comment on this or that entry and I think ‘oh great, someone has read my blog and commented’ then […]

Rummaging through the office for ideas on financial literacy I came across a great article in the Grand Designs magazine, written by Stephen Bayley entitled The misery of materialism. In the article Bayley points out that we now live in an age of ‘conspicuous consumption’ where ‘planned obsolescence’ makes waste almost obligatory as we continually […]

I am wanting to include in the World of Work pack I am writing, some lessons on financial literacy. This is part of the enterprise education agenda and relates to the need for young people to learn about taking responsibility for financial decisions, being able to budget and plan financially and understand how money, credit […]

It takes me ages to write one of our teaching packs. I set myself deadlines and miss them by miles. It’s not because I’m not trying, it’s more that once I get into a pack I spend ages crafting lessons that feel right to me. Also I keep getting sidetracked into training (which I love […]

Found out today that VT Hints, one of the biggest careers resources distributors, has ceased trading. All their orders are now being channeled across to Trotman. (The VT Lifeskills Publishing arm, ex Careers Productions, is still keeping going though, it’s just the distributorship that is folding.) It’s a bit worrying for us as they were […]