This week’s aim was to share best practice of activities you can organize with industry. Thanks a lot for sharing you experiences and ideas. A summary:
Career Days
•    People can talk about their day to day job in such a lively and inspiring way. They can really make an impact.
•    Sometimes school administration invite parents to talk about their job.
•    Good practice: "career fairs" where students visit with their classes or on their own. In those fairs careers, occupations, colleges and universities and companies can advertise themselves and recruit.
•    The role of the teacher is important. Both in choosing who is going to be invited to your career day, and both clarifying pupils what is the purpose of the career day.
•    Good practice: an event where a career adviser comes to school and 14-15 year old students take career tests. Later they discuss the results, analyze their interests and strengths. It is very useful for their future career.
•    Inviting experts to visit the school on special "theme day". Like a day for climate change or other similar subjects.
Girlsday
•    If we would motivate chemistry learning for girls, we need to think about visit to cosmetics or medicines factories.
•    Organize an event where there are only professional women as presenters - and both girls and boys in the audience. It is OK to arrange days for girls only, but I think it would be wise to have women showing their competence also when both sexes are present.
•    I think many pupils need contact with practical knowledge from real life as a complement to all the theoretical knowledge they study in books. This is one important argument to why we must integrate companies and other aspects of society into education at school.
Lab visits
•    These visits contributed significantly to the link between school and local industry, allowing students to have an understanding of the application of science/technology in the business world and its economic importance to the development of local society. We also discussed the negative impacts of industrial activity and the solutions adopted to minimize them.
•    After those visits, pupils are able to understand better why they have to learn all those teaching subjects in school that seems not to be necessary for their professional life.
•    When visiting a Company I always make a plan together with the Company about what is gonna happen before, during and after the visit - and why. This secures an outcome for the students and makes the visit more than "just" an experience.