If you have been watching coverage of Milano Cortina 2026 (this year’s Winter Olympics), you’ll have seen that medal ceremonies are announced in French, English and Italian.
I have announced at several international sporting events, including at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, where I was a French language announcer. The importance of meeting protocols while announcing medal ceremonies has been drilled into me over the years – speak on cue, stick to script, and make sure your mic is on when speaking and off when not (that’s a big one)!
Watching Jakara Anthony’s gold medal ceremony for the women’s dual moguls event, I saw a marvellous example of how we can meet these protocols while also infusing vitality, zest and meaning into the experience.
See for yourself.
This link takes you to Jakara’s Olympic medal presentation ceremony:
Go to 1:40 to watch the presentations to all 3 medalists, or fast forward to 4:00 to watch the gold medal presentation.
As you watch, pay attention to the Italian announcer. Compare his approach with that of the French and English announcers. Listen to how he ‘sprinkles some sparkle’ when introducing each medalist. He made me smile. In fact, he made me laugh out loud. Thanks to him, I noticed this ceremony. And I will remember it for much longer than others I have seen, or even announced.
I think vocational education and training needs more Italian moguls announcers
Like announcing Olympic ceremonies, when delivering accredited training and assessment, we must meet specified standards and protocols. But meeting these standards doesn’t mean that our training should be dull or lifeless.
As we continue to embed the 2025 Standards for RTOs into our training and assessment practices, let’s remember why these standards exist in their current, outcomes-based format. I think they remind us that VET should not just be about doing the minimum necessary to meet requirements. VET should be about sparkle – about inspiring, supporting and enabling our students to build better lives for themselves.
And to the Italian moguls announcer from Milano Cortina 2026, Magnifico! You are now my muse.
I have spent this month catching up on what’s new in the world of education and training. Digital skills have certainly caught our attention this past year – in fact, this past decade! Given the importance of foundation skills – including digital skills – it is great to see such wonderful work being done and the generosity of the many who share their work with us.
But I notice that work on digital skills is being undertaken with such vigour that it can be hard to keep pace with the latest – and most useful – updates. For example, which digital skill (or capability) framework will best help us meet digital skill needs in education and training?
One resource that I maintain is the LLN and VET Meeting Place site. This site focuses on foundation skills and their importance in adult education and training, including vocational education and training. The site offers a repository of information and resources for VET practitioners. So, I wrote a post about digital skill frameworks on LLN and VET Meeting Place. In the post, I outline some recent evoluations in digital skill frameworks, which I hope will help you answer the question for yourself – which digital skills framework should I use to meet the needs of my learners?
If you prefer, copy and paste this link in your preferred web browser: https://llnandvetmeetingplace.wordpress.com/2026/01/27/which-framework-for-digital-skills/
To many of us, the idea of networking seems cringy. It feels superficial. Selfish. Narcissistic. We dread it!
But in November, I was reminded of the value of having a strong professional network. It was my final conference presentation for 2025, and I was asked to deliver a presentation on (you guessed it) networking.
I realised that this presentation offered me the perfect way to round out 2025 – to increase my own comfort about networking and to acknowledge the benefits of a strong professional network.
I am one of many who find it hard to network without being self-conscious about how self-indulgent it can feel. So, to prepare for my presentation, I conducted some research and uncovered 3 insights that I found helpful.
Three networking strategies that work!
1. Take a ‘generosity first’ perspective.
Approach networking from the perspective of what you can give to others, not what you can get from them. This perspective made networking easier for me.
2. Be purposeful: aim for balance.
By ‘balanced’ I mean two things: 1) a balance between personal and professional networks; 2) a balance within each network. A balanced professional network includes a healthy mix of people who will do (and for whom you can do) the following:
support – who in your network might benefit from your support, encouragement or backing (and who might do the same for you)?
offer a different perspective – consider how broad your network is: we tend to feel the most comfortable with people who are ‘just like us’, but a healthy professional network includes a balance of people from both within and outside your area of expertise (does your network include people who can offer a different perspective)?
teach – who in your network can you ‘give back’ to, by teaching them in some way (and who can teach you)?
collaborate – with whom can you collaborate on worthwhile projects that require a broad range of expertise?
be curious and experiment – with whom can you muse possibilities?
challenge, when needed – this is important: who in your network do you care about, to the point where you are willing to challenge or disagree with them, when needed (and who might challenge you)? Adam Grant calls these people our disagreeable givers.
3. (This is critical) Nurture your networks.
Networking isn’t just ‘an event.’ Networking involves first forming, then nurturing relationships. We must continuously invest in our networks, not only by attending events, but also by actively supporting people and organisations in our network – offering a new perspective, teaching, collaborating, being curious and experimental with them, and challenging them.
Why bother to do all of this?
Strong professional networks make us better at what we do.
In today’s fast-moving world, it is impossible for one person to be an expert in everything. A strong network helps us amplify our expertise while leveraging the expertise of others. We see this in multiple situations, including:
projects – when we work as part of a project team, where team members offer complementary areas of expertise
education and training – when the teacher welcomes knowledge and insights from the learner group, everyone learns more
unpredictable situations – we can draw on the varied areas of expertise; we can offer (and receive) energy, encouragement, or support in threatening or uncertain circumstances.
Furthermore, a strong professional network reminds us that we are not alone and that the best things happen when people work together.
As we round out 2025 and look towards 2026…
My conference presentation in November was especially meaningful because one person in the room that day has been part of my professional network for more than 25 years. Philippa has helped me remain sane in numerous difficult times and prompted several milestones in my career. I like to think that I’ve been able to help her out from time to time, as well!
I realise that Philippa is just one part – but a significant part – of a network of skilled and dedicated professionals that I have been fortunate enough to contribute to, and who have helped me, over the past 25+ years of working in Australia. Delivering this presentation allowed me the chance to reflect on my own network and recognise how lucky (and grateful) I am that together we can support, challenge, teach, muse, disagree, complement each other, and more.
So my parting question for you…
Who is your Philippa?
This photo shows me with 2 people who have made a tremendous impact on my professional life. I met Philippa (in white) in 1999. I met Tricia (in black) in 2004. So really this post should have said, “Who are your Philippas and Tricias,” but it wasn’t as catchy!
What a great day out this was! Last week I joined Paul Pellier from Accellier Education and 476 live attendees to chat about psychological safety and its importance in education and training. It was soul-restoring to see so many people share such an interest in this topic, which I believe has a profound impact on learning. A memorable conversation we had!
This podcast reaches thousands of learning and development professionals around the world and is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading podcasts for L&D professionals. I felt more than a bit honoured (and slightly daunted, but for all the right reasons) when she invited me to join her to look back on L&D in 2024.
If I had to choose a podcast episode that I had the most fun recording, this is it! I joined Tom Bailey – an award-winning L&D practitioner – as his guest on the Rogue L&D Hotshots Podcast. Rogue L&D is “…a short video podcast allowing you to meet some of the brilliant folk driving people performance and development forward.” Well, I’m not so sure that I’m brilliant – especially after seeing how long it took me to tell a story about a famous musician – but I sure had fun, and his questions made me think about what is important in work and life.
To say that Claire Field is a standout voice in tertiary education is an understatement. Every time I see her, she is speaking, writing or otherwise advocating for quality tertiary education. She works across the VET and higher education sectors, and keeps the decision makers on their toes with her astute analyses and sage advice for our sector.
This was the second time I joined Michelle Ockers on her award-winning podcast, Learning Uncut. In this episode, we debriefed key insights gained at the 2024 AITD Conference in Melbourne.
I subscribe to the Vision Australia newsletter and have just read a fascinating article that I wanted to pass on.
I am constantly on the lookout for ways to support adult learners. One way we can do this is to ensure that the documents we ask our learners to read are accessible. By providing accessible learning materials, we avoid imposing unnecessary demands on our learners’ digital and reading skills.
When it comes to accessible writing, many of us know about the importance of using:
a font colour that contrasts with the background, so words stand out on the page ‒ for example, black font on a white background, rather than light grey font on a white background
a font style that features easy-to-distinguish characters ‒ for example, a sans-serif font, rather than a flamboyant serif-font
a font size that makes letters and words easy to distinguish – for example, size 12-14 font size for body text, depending on the type of text and how it will be read.
But thanks to this article, I now know to look for fonts with a high x-height, large aperture, and other features that enable readers to distinguish between similar letters.
