Foreign Perspectives

Although many people would tell you that travellers cheques (or travelers checks) are past their sell-by date, that’s not the case.

Their major plus point is that even if they’re lost or stolen, you can still get the money back which is not the case if you were carrying around the same amount in cash, their closest equivalent. In both American and Canada they can be used as though they were cash even in places that say “no checks accepted” and you can also treat them this way to some extent in the UK.

As with cash, it’s useful to have some travellers cheques in either US$ or Euro. If you’re going to America go with US$, Europe or Africa Euro are generally best. One key difference is that because you may be charged to cash them, it’s best to stick to 100 denominations rather than 20’s as we recommended with cash. Banks cashing them usually charge some combination of a per cheque fee and/or a percentage with, of course, a foreign currency conversion charge if the cheques aren’t in their local currency. You can avoid these charges by cashing them at an office of the issuing bank. Again, if you’re going to a civilised country it’s best to consider these as a backup and just get cash in an ATM when you get there.

Since there’s no expiry date on the cheques, you should keep any uncashed cheques for future holidays if they’re in a mainstream currency which’ll save you on charges and commissions.

Unlike cash, travellers cheques come with a brand and it’s best to stick to the more common ones which are American Express, Mastercard, Visa and Thomas Cook. Normally your bank will issue cheques with one of these brands plus their own. You can’t use American Express or any American issued cheques in either Cuba or Vietnam.

Charges are similar for cash at around 7% (even in “commission free” places). Sometimes it’s cheaper to get cash, sometimes travellers cheques. Check at your bank if they’ve any special offers for customers but otherwise shop around.

Take them in the currency of the country you’re going to if it’s a mainstream one, otherwise dollars or euros. If you have any left over after your holiday, keep them rather than cash them in your bank as you can use them later (there is no expiry date) and this will save you paying the commission again. If you buy travellers cheques on a card, it counts as a cash advance with all the charges that implies. Make sure that your travellers cheques come with the Visa or Mastercard or American Express brands as others may not be accepted. You can’t use American Express travellers cheques in Cuba or Vietnam nor any issued by American banks.

Downsides are that you will have to pay to cash them at foreign banks which will involve an additional exchange rate charge if they’re not denominated in the local currency. Worth noting is that not all banks cash travellers cheques and, bizarrely, some require you to have an account with them before they’ll cash them.

I’m going to work my way through the various ways you can take money abroad over the next few weeks. I’ve already covered cash and travellers cheques, and will be covering credit/charge cards, debit cards, cash cards and prepaid cards in future episodes.

The package for this arrived the other day though it’s another couple of weeks before the website opens.

As well as the book (200 pages!) and assignment guide (but not the actual assignments) there’s a DVD which seems to have loads of videos on it and the digital microscope program. Sadly they don’t send out proper digital microscopes any more so this is just a simulation by way of the DVD although I imagine that they’d have some health and safety issues around sending out slides with some of the microbes these days.

The plan is that I set this course aside for a couple of months ’til I get SK185 finished off (the ECA needs more thought than expected), TT280 finished and the first A251 TMA out of the way. Essentially I’m thinking of this as a warm-up for S204 which should be turning up after Christmas so there’s no rush to get moving on it and I’m aiming for the second ECA submission date which is in late April.

You’d think that the free creche within IKEA was aimed at those shopping there who don’t want to drag the kids around the shop with them but it isn’t really.

Although I’m sure that they originally intended that, what’s happened since is that it has become too popular, at least in the afternoons. Thus when you turn up at the shop your creche slot (it’s for up to 10 year olds) is generally a couple of hours later so you either drag the kids around and then plop them in the creche or you go to it specially.

Our little guys thought it was better than Indiana Land so have added that to one of the play areas that they’ll be asking to be taken back to. What I think we’ll do next time is to book a slot in the morning and drop them in for the 45 minutes after school.

I wonder how long IKEA will continue to fork out for it now that it’s effectively become separated from the shop?

ED209 is a really big course to revise from and to pass so any help in condensing that revision is always useful as there’s an awful lot of pages in the course books. To that end, I’ve collected together all the various posts and resources relating to it right here.

Before you start there’s the matter of choosing the seen question topic. If you want a head start on this, it’s basically the same question every year and is something along the lines of “how does the theory support your chosen area”. It’s best to treat this as TMA7. In case you were wondering, yes, the question on the exam is exactly the same as the one that they give you in April/May.

Since it is such a large course, it’s best sitting back and deciding on what to revise before starting the revision. Although it’s based around the 2009 exam, that article goes over how to select what you should revise.

In 2009, those revision topics were Early cognitive development, Temperament and development, and First relationships from book 1, Gender identity, National identity, and Young consumers from book 2, Early category representation, First words, Development of children’s understanding of grammar, Executive functions, and Theory of mind from book 3.  All of these are collected in the PDF file. If that’s not enough for you, Tim has an excellent series of notes covering every chapter in book 1 to book 3; not quite so organised but with some useful gems is the information here. For book 4 you’ll need to get the notes from Erica Cox as Tim and myself thought that it would be asking for trouble to publish notes on our own topic.

Once you’ve all that done, there’s some exam preparation to be done right down to the final 24 hours when you should definitely look over your TMAs as they can come up in the exam (and did in 2009). There is a LOT of writing to be done during the exam so get yourself a decent pen.

There are two different revision weekends run for the course. These are by Erica Cox and the OU Psychological Society. I gather that Erica’s are more inspirational, the OUPS ones are more hard work. I didn’t go to either on the basis that the time would be better spent actually doing the revision rather than going to a course about doing it but if I were choosing I think I’d get Erica’s notes and go to the OUPS weekend on the basis that this would get the best of both.

Finally, for your perusal there’s the post-mortem. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the analysis of the 2009 results is that seven people didn’t answer the seen question. Worth noting too is that the large number of people leaving in the first hour or so almost certainly represent the 10% who fail the exam ie if you’re still sitting there at the end of the three hours, chances are that you’ve passed.

I was going to say “good luck” at this point but you shouldn’t need it if you use all the resources above. If you come across anything else that’s useful, let me know and I’ll mention it here.

Of the 481 students on this run of the course, all but 2 passed it with 83% getting 85% or above.

Somehow I suspect the figures for the next CMA will be rather different as it required a good deal more thinking about in comparison to the relatively easy CMA1.

As is customary with the TT CMAs, one of the questions was cancelled. There’s no official reason for that but I suspect that it’s down to the rather iffy statement in the book that smaller web designers most commonly use hierarchical structure for their sites. Whilst that may well be the “answer according to Sklar”, I’m not convinced that it’s the correct answer.

I submitted my answers for CMA2 this morning so next up is completion of SK185 before I get on to the first TMA for A251.