Google+ and Google contacts on mobile device

Snappy title, eh?

Last night Jane was commenting on Google+ how much she liked Google+ when I noticed that I could see her full home address on her profile.

Which, clearly was a bit worrying. But after a bit of digging around Jane figured out that it was because I was viewing the mobile site and Google was taking the personal information I hold in my Google contacts on my iPad and merging them into Jane's Google+ profile.

Which I confirmed by taking a screenshot of her profile with the original contact information (don't worry Jane - I've blurred the details!).

...and then changing Jane's address in my Google contacts and then opening the mobile page again.

Add it worked. As you can imagine, Jane was very relieved.

Phew!

By the way, while I'm here can I link up my blog to automatically publish to Google plus? After a quick search I can't see how to do it.

Careers website updates nearly done

I blogged a few weeks ago about the progress on our front pages revamp for www.le.ac.uk/careers and I'm pleased to say that we've now completed the main structural changes. Matt and I have been working on it off and on for a few weeks (Matt mostly on, me mostly off) with help from Vic and #Stephaniewhosnotontwitter. We've still got work to do but the main front page is now active...

...as are new pages for each of the three main audiences:

• students and alumni
• employers
• staff

I think it's both cleaner and clearer but your comments will be much more useful than mine...

If these aren't employability skills I'll eat my hat

By pesbo

In a meeting a few months back I recalled a particular section of the University of Leicester's previous Learning and Teaching Strategy (2006-2009). In the section on 'Aims of undergraduate programmes' it said the following:

Each undergraduate degree programme should enable development, in a discipline context, of a range of personal or transferable skills, including:

• problem solving
• communication skills (written and oral)
• basic numeracy
• team working
• IT skills
• information handling skills
• emerging learning technologies skills
• lifelong learning skills
• employability skills

Which is all very well - but what's 'employability skills' doing at the bottom there? a) as an afterthought and b) as if it doesn't encompass all the items above it in the list? I think things have moved on since then but I think it's an interesting insight into how people sometimes perceive employability - as only to do with CVs and applications and interviews and not with the skills employers are looking for to do the job in the first place, like these.

Any thoughts?

Staff pages revamp

By dannyasmith

I'm struggling to find time to think about our staff pages, which are desperately in need of a revamp. I'm hoping that putting up a quick blog post will help me gather my thoughts and perhaps gain some inspiration from helpful commenters...

I've had a quick look at: Durham's, Lancaster's, Manchester's and Warwick's (some of you will know why I started with these ;) I didn't get many ideas from them but it has made me think we need to make our DLHE data more prominent (currently it's tucked away in the Career Development pages for students). Also, advice for personal tutors (Durham) seems a good idea, as does a link to JobShop (Manchester's Jobs On Campus). But the best site I've found for staff pages is Exeter's, which includes:

• a staff guide to employability
• how they work with colleges/departments
• a section for Careers and Employability Reps (we call ours Careers Tutors)
• they also have some materials for group tutorials - but I need to figure out how they use these

So, I might be borrowing some of these ideas. What else do we need?

New front page progress

Since putting up a post about We need a new front page and getting lots of useful comments, Matt and I are much closer to the finished article now. There's a screen shot below - the main changes have been:

• getting rid of the three themes above the images which looked like they should relate to the images below but didn't (thanks Steve)
• added space for an additional 'featured' image (thanks Marta), which we'll change every week
• changed 'what's hot' to 'featured' (thanks James)
• reduced the size of the 'follow' links (thanks Jonny)
• also added some explanatory text underneath each of the three audiences (this is draft - would be interested in opinions)

Need to decide on the portlets to the right now. Are there any other changes we need to make at this stage?