“Blogs and Online diaries should be part of school curriculum ” says Thinktank October 8, 2008
Posted by Joan MacRae in : Access, Additional Support, Alternative Assessment, Curriculum, Home Teaching, ICT, inclusion , add a commentCharles Leadbeater introduced his lecture at the Scottish Learning Festival on 25/09/08 with a You tube clip of a teenage boy playing guitar in his bedroom. The clip had had 49 million hits!
A report in the Guardian 6/10/08 points out the claims of the Think tank, Demos, (with which Leadbeater is associated), that young people “are being failed by adults who are not paying proper attention to this new medium.”
“The study.. considers how their enthusiasm and skills can be encouraged.”
“The report makes recommendations to help adults cope with the changing online environment and calls particularly on schools to help youngsters understand the long term implications of living their lives in a semi-public way.”
“Schools should prepare young people for an era where CV’s may well be obsolete, enabling them to manage their on-line reputation .” says the report, “we need an educational response that extends beyond the focus of safety towards broader questions of privacy and intellectual property.”
I was personally concerned about the information my teenage daughter was relaying about herself on Facebook, especially when she realised that her boss had added herself as a friend.
Politicians see youngsters as apathetic and unreachable, according to the Guardian.
“The (UK )government is pouring money into this because they feel young people should be making themselves heard”…”but bloggers say it feels contrived.”
Barack Obama in the United States, on the other hand, is said to be the first ‘Youtube politician’ because “he gets that you can’t control it. His campaign team get that its about the enthusiasm”…”he encouraged (young voters) to exercise their creative urges online, instead of simply dictating his ideas to them.”
Court upholds blind girl’s right to attend special school of choice October 2, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, Visual Impairment , add a commenthttp://news.scotsman.com/education/Exclusive-Court-upholds-blind-girl39s.4549358.jp
The Scotsman reports on how a couple successfully sued Argyll and Bute Council to secure their child a place at Edinburgh’s Royal Blind School.
For months, the local authority fought the McCullochs, insisting their visually impaired daughter was able to cope at a mainstream school. The parents strongly disagreed and were forced to take legal action. What ensued were two years of emotional and financial turmoil that almost destroyed the family.
The 15-year-old, who chose not to be named, has a cerebral visual impairment that restricts her peripheral vision and means she struggles to see colours and 3D. She suffers from a rare brain injury, which was not diagnosed until she was 11. She started at Hermitage Academy in Helensburgh in 2005, but her parents became increasingly concerned she was not getting an educational package tailored to her needs. Worried for her safety after two serious accidents at the school in which she fell down a flight of stairs, they realised she needed specialist help.
In August, the family won the case, held in private at Dumbarton Sheriff Court. Their daughter now has a residential place at the Royal Blind School and enjoys specialist speech and language therapy, returning home at weekends. The case brings into sharp focus the issue of how best to educate children with special needs. While parents naturally want the best for their children, specialist facilities do not come cheap, and education authorities can find themselves facing a bill in excess of £100,000 for each child educated outwith mainstream schools.
More on Modern Foreign Language Learning September 2, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, Curriculum, inclusion , add a comment‘Anybody can learn’
Let’s adopt the teaching methods of legendary language guru Michel Thomas, a new book pleads. Anthea Lipsett finds out why http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/02/languages.schools
There’s a belief that languages either come naturally to a person, or they don’t. But to the late Michel Thomas, the “world’s greatest language master”, there was no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher.
It’s a view that grates with prevailing educational opinion. These days, children’s inability to learn is often blamed on a variety of learning disabilities. If teachers are brought into the equation, it is usually by ministers either claiming the workforce is the best trained it has ever been, or declaring that inadequate teachers must be fired.
Thomas believed his method, applied faithfully, would work with anyone. Students saw him as a magician. Now, in his new book The Language Revolution, the educational psychologist Jonathan Solity reveals how Thomas set about teaching foreign languages and the psychological principles behind his methods. He thinks they could revolutionise teaching, and help schools meet targets.
Modern Languages and Dyslexia September 2, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, Curriculum, Dyslexia, inclusion , add a commentI had an interesting meeting at a high school last week with the parents of a boy who has just started S1. They felt that his dyslexic difficulties meant he should be withdrawn from French and he should receive extra tuition in English language skills.
I re-read a couple of excellent papers by Margaret Crombie, (Cognition and Learning Difficulties and Foreign Language Learning and Dyslexia), before dipping into LT Scotland’s superb resource, Maximising Potential. I also referred to Moira Thomson’s work for Dyslexia Scotland, Supporting Dyslexic Pupils in the Secondary School.
While all are agreed that foreign language learning presents young people with difficulties unique challenges, it is also the case that they have a right to be exposed to a different language and culture.
The conclusion we came to at the meeting was that the student should be able to access a variety of learning experiences, with a multi-sensory, cumulative focus, with an emphasis on talking and listening. He should have to write in French only rarely. When I have worked with teachers in MFL departments I have often been struck by their ability to make learning fun, to motivate young people with games and technology, to appeal to all different learning styles. They seem to know that variety is the spice of learning!
Rich conversations about learning recorded by infants August 19, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, Additional Support, Literacy, inclusion , add a commentMy-E http://www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/my_…
My-E (My Education) is a prototype online visual environment that can support very young students to explore and express their own personal learning experiences, interests and aims.
The software application allows young children (aged 5 and 6) to construct stories about their learning experiences and preferences through multi-layered representations (such as shapes, icons and sounds), which teachers, adults and parents/carers help them to develop. The aim of this is to encourage children, parents/carers and teachers/adults to be more involved in rich conversations about learning that can help foster greater links between homes and schools and support a more personalised educational approach.
Wouldn’t it be good if it were suitable for older learners with literacy / communication difficulties?
Accessible sites for visually impaired learners June 24, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, Visual Impairment , add a commentThis link retrieves sites with good usability for visually impaired.
http://labs.google.com/accessible/
Thanks to David Gilmour for the link.
Time to see things from a different point of view June 24, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, Additional Support , add a commentThe Herald Society features the experiences of Natasha Stevens, a 14-year-old pupil who suffers from complex vision problems - in fact she has several, including colour blindness and night blindness as well as cone rod dystrophy and retinitis pigmentosa - two progressive eye conditions.
‘If school work given to Natasha is not perfectly formatted - in the right font and size, and on a white background, then she can’t use it. Pictures also need to be separate from text. For the most part, her schoolteachers try enlarging handouts onto A3 paper - but, according to her mother, that can make the letters fuzzy and hard to read. “They think they’re doing good, but they are just making it harder for Natasha…’
Unfortunately this experience is common for blind and partially-sighted children, according to the Royal National Institute of Blind People in Scotland (RNIB) which launched a campaign on the issue of educational materials at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre yesterday.
The Right to Learn campaign is calling for a National Education Transcription Service which would transcribe curriculum material to a consistent professional standard, at the same time as it is being produced for other pupils.
RNIB Scotland launches ‘Right to Read’ campaign http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_scotnews08_ia485fe654-8.hcsp
Launch event highlighting shortage of educational material in accessible formats.
RNIB Scotland says blind and partially sighted schoolchildren can still struggle to access textbooks in a format they can understand.
They have launched a new campaign to highlight the dearth of educational material available in braille, large print, CD or audio. A giant poster was unveiled in Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre yesterday by young people who themselves have sight loss.
RNIB Scotland is proposing that a National Education Transcription Service be established that could transcribe curriculum material to a consistent professional standard, and be a single point for liaison with educational publishers.
The campaign is being supported by a youth forum, ‘Haggeye’, set up by and for 12 to 25 year-olds with sight loss in Scotland.
Supporting diversity and equality through improved access June 20, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, ICT, Resources, inclusion , add a commenthttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2008/06/techdis.aspx
JISC reports on groundbreaking work that will provide support for delivery of resources to disabled students and staff.
The JISC TechDis Service has joined forces with the Publishers Association to provide resources which have the potential to transform the delivery of learning materials to disabled students and staff.
These two resources, developed in collaboration with the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) and several major publishers, will support the delivery of materials in alternative formats to meet the needs of people with a range of disabilities, a crucial requirement for equality of access for all students and staff in education and research. One of the resources – Publisher Lookup UK - will enable education providers and publishers to source electronic formats of textbooks for students with disabilities more quickly and efficiently than existing processes allow.
Good news for people needing to circumvent the barrier of print. And good news too, ultimately, for learners in countries whose libraries and schools are shockingly short of resources because of poverty and/or conflict. How terrific it must be to be a teacher in an African classroom to come across text books online. It will revolutionise children’s learning world wide. (And yes of course there are issues about connectivity and access to computers but that is being addressesd too, not least by the World Bank.)
A Poor Deal for Special Needs June 17, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, ICT, inclusion , 1 comment so farSoapbox | E-learning | EducationGuardian.co.uk
Mick Archer, editor of Special Children magazine, maintains that pupils with special educational needs are not getting adequate access to suitable ICT resources, and nowhere is this more pronounced than in mainstream secondary schools. According to a recent survey by the British Educational Suppliers Association (Besa), more than half of secondary Sencos (special educational needs coordinators) felt they were under-resourced in appropriate curriculum software and digital content. This reflects a more widespread resource crisis, as technological innovation gathers pace and schools struggle to keep up. This month a new survey from Besa will highlight the huge discrepancy between the use schools believe they will be making of new technologies in 2010 and current use.
…
Organisations representing children with SEN are tired of being treated as the Cinderellas of an education system that claims to be “inclusive”. Increasingly they are arguing for SEN funding to be ring-fenced or for individualised funding where the money is attached to the child.
The article does not clarify whether the survey pertains to the whole of the UK or to England alone. The reference to SENCO’s implies the latter - no surprises there. However, it is an interesting question as to whether children with ASN are being appropriately provided for.
Better access to learning resources for people with visual impairments May 12, 2008
Posted by Hilery Williams in : Access, Resources, reading , 2commentshttp://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2008/05/09141804
The Scottish Government has announced that young people with visual impairments, or other print disabilities, in Scotland will have access to the best educational material available from next term.
From August, they will be able to use the Scottish Books for All database powered by SCRAN, one of the largest educational online services, to access learning materials.
The database will contain a list of adapted materials which teachers can access to ensure that all pupils with additional support needs receive curriculum materials at the same time as their classmates in a format that meets their needs.
Adam Ingram, Minister for Children and Early Years, announced the move during a debate around a call by RNIB Scotland for a national transcription service for young people.
He said:
“RNIB have been very helpful in drawing this issue to our attention but we believe that with the steps we have taken there is no need for the type of national transcription service they propose. We are totally committed to ensuring that all our pupils can access the curriculum. The Books for All report has enabled us to identify gaps in provision and take positive steps to ensure that we can achieve this aim.”
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