The UK Apprentice 2010

Last night's episode was a corker!

The task was to create a personal DVD experience for customers held in a London shopping mall, Westfields I think it was called.

Sandeesh was project manager up against Stuart Baggs - The Brand!

After much running about and changing of ideas, price, product and presentation, Stuart's team limped home by £40!

Stuart's DVD experience was a toy car being raced around Brands Hatch. Baggs even found time for a jolly by driving the real car around for the footage that was needed.

Sandeesh was in the Board Room with Liz and Chris but she could not beat them in the argument and sadly she was fired.

I am convinced unless there is a major faux pas by one of them it will be a Stella v Liz grand finale. Or Sugar may even throw a curveball and have a 3 person final.

Liz and Stella seem to be the only ones with common sense - which often means a business brain!

Higher Business Management - Methods of Market Research

Remember divide market research into:

Field Research

Desk Research

Now...

Examples of Field Research include:

1. Personal Interviews
2. Telephone Surveys
3. Postal Surveys
4. Observations
5. Online Surveys
6. Consumer Panels
7. Hall Tests
8. Focus Groups

Now for each one you will need to be able to describe the process in a sentence or so, and then give some advantages and disadvantages.

It is important to be able to write about these methods under the following criteria:

• COST
• RESPONSE RATE
• REACH

i.e. Telephone Survey is a questionnaire conducted by phone. Telephone surveys are cheaper than using a personal interviewer, but the response rate is lower than a personal interview. However a major advantage is that you can reach a wide geographic audience.

Higher Business Management - Wholesalers

A Wholesaler buys from manaufacturers (producers) and sells on to retailers. CostCo, Booker and Makro are well known examples of Wholesalers.

They buy goods in bulk from the producers and then sell them off in smaller batches to retailers who then sell to the end user.

Q. What are the advantages of Wholesalers?

SBEA Conference 2010

Yesterday I attended the SBEA conference held in Inveralmond Community High School in Livingston.

The number of delegates was incredible! It is comforting to know that so many people care about our subject and are willing to give up their free Saturday (some even pay for the conference out of their own pocket and not through departmental budgets) to come to the national conference.

Strangely enough a pupil asked me on Friday "Why would you give up your Saturday if you're not getting paid".

Perhaps if more pupils, parents, politicians and (news)papers - our very own 4 Ps! - realised just how many teachers in general give up their own free time either preparing or marking or attending CPD events etc then we would perhaps be viewed in a different light at times.

I thought the conference went really well and there was a good choice of options for delegates to choose from. It was a worthwhile Saturday - even if some do not view it as so.

Higher Business Management - AOK Learning

On Monday I attended a very valuable CPD course on Higher Business Management delivered by AOK Learning and a well known figure in Business Education nationally Anne Bradley.

The course covered many aspects that are helpful to new teachers or new to Higher, plus there were great insights into some areas that even teachers who had taught the Higher over several years could take away and think about.

Everything was covered: from the actual syllabus itself and a discussion on the order of teaching the course, to preparation for NABs, creating and editing Prelims, and how to get pupils to answer the Case Study question a bit better than perhaps they do.

Oh and we spent some time on the dreaded Command Words! Dreaded because sometimes no matter how many times we highlight it to pupils, they get nervous in the exam and just write everything they know!

It was a worthwhile course and was very thorough.