News Update Continued

Wednesday 31st October 2007:

Briefly at the beginning of the news bulletin they mention the Madeleine McCann story in that there are no further leads, but that the first and only suspect (other than the McCann’s themselves) is being re-interviewed again.

A heavily featured story was that of Mr Parry. Two IRA bombs were set off in Ireland in 1993 killing innocent 12-year-old Tim and 3-year-old Jonathon. Tim’s parents have since worked tirelessly to achieve peace in Ireland, so that something positive could come of their tragedy.

A Parry and Ball youth centre has been set up in Ireland (Foundation for Peace charity), this is open to all children of any race or religion. This was opened on the 7th anniversary of the children’s death. The parents still had unanswered questions as to why Warrington was chosen.

Examples of posters, that those that didn’t want to be involved in Halloween would have up tonight, were shown to increase awareness.

The main story that dominated the news regarding children and or education regarded Brown’s pledge to end failing schools.

The idea is that schools should all be achieving a minimum of 30% of their children receiving 5 good GCSE’s (including English and Maths). The schools have 5 years in which to accomplish this before being closed down.

The steps are as follows:

· Failing school

· Improve it – if improvement fails…

· Change the management – if management change fails…

· There will be a take over – if the take over fails…

· The school will be closed.

Although this may seem drastic Brown quite rightly suggests that the public don’t want to send their children to failing schools, and why should they? The space of a failing school could be used for many other projects, including those that support children, for example an area for an extended school or a safe play ground that children can access after school and keeps them outside.

He also commented on the fact that schools should be encouraging parents to become more involved. However, the harsh reality is that some parents just aren’t interested. Those that are get involved, those that aren’t don’t. And there are those that want to but can’t, and more “encouragement” is going to change the reason, whether it be a job, childcare etc, that they can’t be more involved in school life.

Who knows if this will work? But at least it is a step in the right direction.

News Update

There are two main stories in today's news regarding children.

Tuesday 30th October 2007:

6 months on and the police have taken on a new strategy in trying to find missing Madeleine McCann. The news reports suggest that Madeleine was abducted through her window and they say that it could have happened within a minute.

There has been a second Crime Watch appeal, with a reconstruction of Rhys Jones' last movements before he was killed. As a result of this a new witness from the car park has come forward and they are appealing for the female driver of a red car that drove past at the approximate time of the murder. The police have taken a new line of enquiry involving current technology. They plan on using blue tooth (on mobile phones) to contact people within a 100-mile radius of the pub where Rhys was killed (although this will only work if people have their blue tooth switched on). All these people will receive a text message in the hope to find more witnesses.

26 Schools have been praised for their teaching abilities.

A sideline story was that of trick or treating, how to have a good time, types of costumes and above all BE SAFE!!! Children held up signs saying, "go with an adult", "be polite", "knock once" and "stay in well lit areas". Good advice for tomorrows holiday.

Considering yesterday's news suggesting that we live in a perceived dangerous world it is a little concerning that today's news follows with a story of a child abducted whilst on holiday and another about a boy shot dead by another boy after playing football in the park. Granted these are not new stories, but they are still very much in the forefront of our minds and our thoughts can only be with the families who have suffered.

There is little support for Halloween in England, but it is something that children can enjoy, dressing up and going out, spending time with the adults in their lives away from the TV and video games. Isn't this what we want? Maybe we should embrace the idea of Halloween to some extent. The Scottish have a slight different angle on Halloween where children tell a joke or sing instead of "free handouts" of sugar, tooth decay and E numbers!!!

Today's News

I have taken to watching the morning news (before I go to school) and noting down how much children are mentioned in the news for various reasons, just to see what the "publicity" surrounding children actually is. (“They” refers to the news program)

Monday 29th October:

Are children too "over protected"?

A debate on this morning’s news as to whether we, in society, are too protective of today’s children? It stated that maybe we just perceive the world as being more dangerous than the world used to be. That most of the fear has come from scaremongers, and that children are losing their freedom. For example abductions are no more common today than they were 30 years ago or even 60 years ago.

(They then follow this story by saying that a serious offence involving knives occurs every 24 minutes. That in the past three months there has been 5,500 incidents involving knives. This was shortly followed by a story on GAP clothing, where some of their lines have used child labour to produce the clothing…)

People were interviewed on the street, most agreed that we are too protective of our children, whilst one woman commented that although she agreed she would too, be over protective of her children. You only have to look at the Madeleine McCann or Jamie Bulger tragedies to realise that maybe we aren’t being protective enough, even if society hasn’t really changed.

They commented on the fact that we should be making society more accessible to children for example their freedom to use public transport (by emailing in…using ICT people could comment!!). But (for example in the Madeleine McCann instance) people are too quick to turn on the parents, to blame them, and maybe it isn’t always their fault, but can you ever really know? Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells had the freedom at age 10, they went out together during the day and that was the last day they saw… An expert on the news suggested that age 10 was approximately the appropriate age that children could be granted more freedom, but as many parents tell their children, “I trust you, but it is everyone else out there I don’t trust” and don’t you think Holly and Jessica’s parents wish they had been more protective?

They said that society/parents and schools should work together to be less protective over the children in today’s world, but can we really take that risk? If a school was more relaxed, maybe they weren’t as strict about checking who were picking the children up and making sure they knew the families, but in that case who would get the blame if anything happened? The school. And there would be distraught parents, quite rightly. But the most important thing is that there would be children with their lives in danger…for what? Just so a child could have the freedom to walk home from school? Is it really worth it? Should we risk the safety of our children?

Ghost School

I read in recent news about a "ghost school" in Germany that has recently been discovered. Parents taught in a relaxed classroom environment hoping to make learning fun. Children were taught and moved to secondary school with forged documents.

A minister for Bremen said although it was clear the pupils had received a solid education, she would not support the concept of parents going it alone. "This is an elite concept and we cannot indulge it."

The head of the Free School Bremen said "We're in favour of a more varied education, a more open approach to learning and letting children organise themselves more,"

I am enthused that there are people who are so passionate about their, and others children's education that they are willing to defy the law and set up a productive school, teaching the way they think their children should be taught and the way they wish they had been taught.

Although I can see why the government wouldn't approve of this type of school maybe we should be taking something from it? If the children enjoyed the learning that happened in the "Free School Bremen" and they did actually learn and have successfully moved through secondary school and ended up either at university or with good jobs, then maybe there are key tips that we as trainee teachers can take from it.

New ideas that allow for creativity in teaching and learning is all the rage, instead of condemning them we should praise them for their success in providing "fun" education and follow their lead within government approved schools.

For the whole article: Ghost School

I Saw it on the Tele!!!

I saw on the news (channel 5) today a short clip on being able to add video links etc to let them know what is going on with you, there was a clip of a child at school sitting at a computer with a web cam. The child explained that this was where they did their video conferencing, talking to schools all over the world including China.

I was impressed to see what we have been talking about in lectures is actually happening and working out there in schools today. That there are teachers who are confident enough with ICT to allow the children some freedom with these types of projects, at the same time they are informing the world this is what they do by advertising it on the news.

Great stuff!

Blogging Mania!

Out there in the blogging world.....found this AMAZING blog but don't know where to go next?

Click the links below to find some other fantastic blogs:

[ Becky Jules ] [ ICT Reflections ]

Get blogging people!

Variety is the Spice of Life

Hello and welcome to the blogging world once more... so what is new in the world you ask?

After doing some reading for ICT and literacy etc I have found that there seem to be two main extremes of teachers around, there are those that are "digital immigrants" and seem to remain that way, they barely use ICT and when they do it is very basic and limited. However, the other extreme and not necessarily better are those teachers whether "natives" or "immigrants" are confident (rightly or wrongly) with ICT and throw it in at every point almost to prove that they can use ICT and it can become over-bearing, children can become desensitised to teaching methods often resulting in boredom.

The key as with EVERYTHING in life is variety, they say it is the spice to life and maybe they were onto something?

Click here to link to Kate's Choice that we did in Literacy

Hope all is well out there

Howdy People!

I have been an official blogger for exactly 11 minutes and 32.8 seconds.....ok well longer now. This is my very impressive Blogging wall type thingy and I am very proud of it!!! I am not 100% convinced about blogging as just something to do, although I do have a lot of opinions and thoughts about the world from politics to fashion, from noisy freshers to GHD's! And I suppose if this is an outlet for those thoughts and opinions then why not!

I think blogging in the classroom is a really good idea that can help children to take control of their own learning, and I think it is something you can let them have basic control of and they would really get into it.
So watch this space, there is no telling what sort of exciting comments, reflections and thoughts I may have.........