Entrepreneurship is transforming education and here are guides to foment it, the means to fund it, ideas to get social with it, and how to rub shoulders with it.
news
Entrepreneurship with rigour
It's all very well encouraging young people to be enterprising, but there is a hard-commercial context within which such ideas and practices must function if they are to go beyond classroom simulation to 'real-world' development and exploitation. This makes The Bright Idea Handbook - just published by Which? - a potentially helpful resource. It is also something school senior managers might need to refer to as their institutions seek more commercial engagement with the world.
Shadow an entrepreneur
A network for entrepreneurs, TiE UK, has recently budded up with Career Academies UK to launch the Shadow an Entrepreneur Programme. Through it students from London schools are able to shadow high-profile entrepreneurs for a day – gaining an insight into the challenges and excitement involved in growing and managing a successful business. This first time around there are eight schools involved.
Launchpad to learning
Learning Launchpad is a fund managed by the Young Foundation in partnership with Edge. Its goal is bankrolling ideas that will release the potential of young people aged 14-25 by helping them gain hands-on experience doing positive things and developing their 'soft' skills. Investments of up to £30,000 are on offer for people starting out with a new idea and up to £100,000 for organisations or initiatives that are already underway and wanting to grow. Applications will be accepted throughout 2009/10 with the following deadlines: 31 March 2009, 11 June 2009, 3 September 2009, 24 November 2009, 16 February 2010.
Run with value
It came out of a Guardian-hosted 'social innovation camp' designed to elicit the best examples of community-focused project design from a group of young social entrepreneurs. The Good Gym has a simple premise: getting people who run for exercise to inject a bit of purpose into their fitness regimes by offering to carry out errands for local services such as daycare centres or simply dropping in on old and isolated people. If it came to fruition, a digitised online map using pictures pulled from Flickr would show where the runners are and what they were prepared to shift and when. The scheme is only in its infancy but deserves to succeed.
X48 – check out the game camp legacy
A recent two-day game-camp was held at Derby University. X48 gave students the opportunity to have their game designs reviewed by experts from both the sponsoring organisations, Microsoft and Channel 4. Participants were asked to work to a brief that enabled them to showcase games that might move beyond traditional puzzle and shoot-em-up formats and open up new and interesting 'conversations'. In the end the Huddersfield Green team carried off the main prize with Seavolution. You can check out their idea and other playable versions of the X48 games online - add your feedback to the mix.
Test out the film industry
Just announced is a three-year collaboration between the Co-operative Group and the British Youth Film Academy (BYFA). It aims to give students an insider's glimpse at film careers as well as providing an opportunity to receive hands-on experience. The roll-out will take the form of nationwide summer film schools, with each group of students expected to emerge having made a feature film. The scheme's goal is currently to engage 300 secondary schools, 50 further education establishments and eight higher education institutions. For more details e-mail richardcaunt@byfp.co.uk.
Live life in sketches
Spying into an artist's sketchbooks is always a compelling element of an exhibition - a chance to witness process in action - the essence of creativity. Now there is a pilot for primary children, to get them into the habit of using sketchbooks too. Sketchbooks in Schools, coordinated by AccessArt, is being run in five schools until October. A key part of the scheme is the Digital Conversation Space where children, teachers and all involved will be able to share ideas and good practice associated with the sketchbooks. Over the next few weeks AccessArt will be issuing calls for submissions/contributions. You can register online for updates. The project has been funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation's New Approaches to Learning Strand.
Lifelong learning - public value and plugging gaps
The benefits of lifelong learning to individuals and the broader community, particularly in areas such as financial literacy and health, are explored in a recent 'public value' paper by Dr Ricardo Sabates. The paper looks at the impact of adults' lifelong learning on their children's fortunes and makes the case for a more joined-up relationship between welfare benefits and ongoing education. It arrives ahead of the findings of an independent enquiry into the future of lifelong learning sponsored by National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) due to be published in June 2009.
Speaking out in Stoke
The organisation Stoke Speaks Out has been pioneering multi-agency approaches to supporting those children in the city coping with language acquisition problems. And it's a big issue; with the national incidence of language difficulty estimated to be around 10-12% of the population, in Stoke-on-Trent local research in 2001 suggested that seven in ten children entering nursery had a language delay. Much has happened since these shocking findings prompted the organisation's establishment - its website is full of resources for parents, teachers and children.
Save the redhead recessives
Channel 4 Education is taking its wares direct to students – directing content online and onto social network sites. This is true of Routes - born of a collaboration with the Wellcome Foundation. It's a project combining an eight-part mini-series with a mass of background briefings, case studies and games. The films feature Canadian comedian Katherine Ryan investigating her own genetic characteristics and tackling key genetic debates. There are games including Breeder, in which players adopt a species and then hunt for mates likely to improve their creatures' evolutionary chances. Ginger Dawn deals with the extinction of the redhead, with players on a mission to ensure a flame-haired hero spreads their recessive genes.
Is 'nothingness' an invalid concept?
The Greek philosopher Parmenides thought so, and lots of children in Lewisham have been pondering the issue thanks to Peter Worley whose mission it is to bring 'proper' philosophy to schools. Worley says what he offers is not about 'thinking skills' – rather he aims to develop dispositions that will last whole lifetimes. One child attending a free after-school club Worley runs for the most gifted thinkers he has encountered in his school work said: "Normally at school I know what I am doing or people tell me – here I am out of my comfort zone." The Philosophy Shop’s website is rich in solid advice and background information, including a helpful reading list for beginners.
Picturacy and intellectual property
It's not in the OED yet, but the word 'picturacy' is an abbreviated way of expressing the visual literacy skills young people often have in abundance and yet don't often get to use in school due to the busy curriculum. Film Education is tackling this with Picturacy - a resource for the very youngest primary pupils. Early adopters have been highly complimentary and a further edition for Key Stage 2 is in the pipeline. Also check out Switched On – a new website aimed at teaching the broader social, ethical and economic questions associated with ICT, and exploring questions of authorship, ownership and control.
New curriculum – the movie!
There is quite a cache of support materials accumulating at the new secondary curriculum support site - the latest additions being a set of 22 new video masterclasses exhibiting innovative practices across all subjects. These have been up for a few weeks, and fresher still is a new 'support package' for PSHE designed to boost the teaching of economic well-being in schools. But while up-to-date information about debt and money is welcome, the resource has yet to be written that addresses the emotional side of money, and which might start to help young people map the personal needs that excessive spending often masks.
"If I wasn’t more confident...
...I wouldn't be speaking with you now," says the Year 7 pupil on the video account of the personal, learning and thinking skills work well advanced at Top Valley School and Engineering College in Nottingham. On the same film a deputy head describes how an audit of staff opinion revealed how dependent their pupils were as learners. In fact they felt that over 50% of the dispositions with which they felt children should emerge from school were probably non-existent. The exercise gave the school the mandate to change the curriculum and its delivery. One sign of the shift is teachers team-teaching while working with larger groups of children (75+) in sessions developing their self-reliance as learners. The film and the new PLTS framework are available on the National Curriculum website.
Get sticky with media
There is an online forum on the horizon (4-5 June) that will give participants the opportunity to explore different approaches to using media to enhance the engagement and 'stickyness' of e-learning. The session will include opportunities to see various 'real-life' approaches for using audio, video, animation and other technologies in action. As we write there are still slots for speakers available.
Is it a plane? Is it a classroom?
Kingsland Primary School in Stoke-on-Trent could have had a portacabin to meet their outdoor learning needs. Instead they bought an aeroplane. This is the kind of thing that happens with Creative Partnerships 'change school' status, acquired when a school is seen to be making systemic change that affects learning across the school. The idea itself originated with a Year 7 child. Every year group has been involved in the build-up to the plane's arrival; tackling its design (interior and exterior), creating a dedicated KingsWings website, and also participating in the planning permission process.
Small primaries are beautiful...
...and how they might remain so is at the heart of two DCSF regional conferences coming up on 1 April (London) and 23 June (Birmingham). The conferences will be looking at the challenges facing rural primary schools and how federation can help. They are aimed at headteachers and governors interested in federating, or who have already federated, and LA officials who have an interest in collaboration. The conferences will be workshop-based and offer delegates the opportunity to listen to the experiences of heads who have already travelled the federation route.
Come to the Mediatheque
It's home to hundreds of British films and television collections from the BFI National Archive. Most of the material is not available on DVD, and the Mediatheques on London's South Bank and in Derby's QUAD arts centre are the only places you can enjoy it - free. Each month there are new materials made available or themed highlights helping the visitor carve a path through the bewildering array of cached materials. In June the focus will be on London. Another Mediatheque on the horizon is due to open in Cambridge.
Interested in hats?
Or anything for that matter - then hot navigate it to Museum Collections. It's as simple a search tool as can be imagined, constructed using Google Coop technology. On a far grander scale is the National Museums Online Learning Project (NMOLP), a Government-funded project to develop an e-learning resource for students, teachers and lifelong learners. It's being led by the V&A, with nine other museums all working together to produce a series of over 100 WebQuests. These in turn will open up access to thousands of photographs, paintings and objects held in the museums and galleries, some of which are not normally available to the public.
Can we fix it? Yes, we can!
There are prizes of £15,000 available to nurseries across the country that can come up with a clear and innovative description of their energy efficiency needs and possible solutions. The best of these that meet the 17 April deadline will be eligible for three big payouts or a range of smaller runners-up grants and Bob The Builder paraphernalia. One suspects that projects which involve children in the process might be onto a winner.
BSF – straight lines or curves and butterflies
There's a succinct account of the recent BSF conference held in London on Futurelab's blog, Flux. It highlights Professor Keri Facer calling on schools to be involved in their own design. Read also of John West-Burnham encouraging the delegates to stop thinking about "bricks and rectangles" and open their minds to "curvy lines and butterflies". According to the writer, Bob Harrison: "The two days demonstrated the scale and complexity of the BSF process and the vital importance of learning the lessons to be derived from the early waves of BSF."
Sign up for games in education
Anyone interested in games in education should sign up for membership of the European Schoolnet Games in Schools initiative. One of its first achievements is the formation of an online community for discussing anything related to the subject. Specialists in the field are excited because this is the first times there has been a successful attempt to gather information about the pedagogical uses of electronic games across the continent: everywhere from Estonia to England.
Inanimate Alice
Inanimate Alice is a rich, interactive multimedia fiction written by the novelist Kate Pullinger and developed in Flash for online distribution. Its opening episode concerns the adventures of an 8 year-old girl and her mum as they scour the vastnesses of northern China in search of Alice's dad. Over the next nine instalments (all five minutes or so long) the promise is that we'll witness Alice growing up to become a celebrated animator. It is compelling, rich, gentle stuff. Already teachers from 41 countries have accessed the freely downloadable Education Packs associated with the series. The early episodes of the series are available in French, German, Italian and Spanish. Highly recommended.
Tellus about it
Tellus is a national survey which gathers the views of children and young people in Years 6, 8 and 10, quizzing them about their lives, their schools and their local areas. The survey itself is due to happen in the autumn, but participating schools can be expected to be contacted by LAs after 1 April. LAs can get all their secondaries involved if they want to, and a maximum of 40 primaries. At the 'one-stop Tellus portal', schools will be able to stay in the loop as the survey and its findings emerge. The National Foundation for Educational Research, whose survey it is, are also recruiting PSHE and citizenship specialists to develop pre- and post-questionnaire study materials so the whole process can be embedded in actual classwork.
cool stuff
Google Street View – the educational implications
'Moonlight - a Study at Millbank' by JMW Turner beats the current view hands down! The comparison is possible thanks to an innovative use that the Tate Gallery has dreamt up for Google Street View. Meanwhile, geographers and historians should be rubbing their hands in glee at the application itself – here's the perfect tool for setting up field work and local studies. It should prove a bonus for the special needs sector too – helping pupils become more familiar with their surrounding environments and the wider world. And its potential as inspiration for creative writing and drama are also legion.
Hail the robotopus
At the moment the main applications for a robot-octopus - the first soft-robot - are likely to be in the depths of the oceans, but you can bet educational applications as yet undreamt of will follow in its wake. Before then the developers at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa have many hurdles to vault, given the need to create a synthetic machine that manages to replicate an octopus's flexibility with 'arms' capable of extending and moving in all directions and a body able to squeeze through the smallest of holes. It may be sometime before they hit the shelves at Hamleys but you heard about them here first.
Chart your cranial activity
It seems Tony Buzan does not have the monopoly over the use of the term 'mind-mapping'. The site Mindmeister is brazenly claiming its system is a simple online mind-mapping tool. The joy of this application is how intuitive it is, enabling the user to create a skeleton map while embedding more detailed notes behind the nodes. It comes free for individuals and there appear to be all sorts of deals on offer to attract academic and school use. Another joy is the facility for building mind-map creations with others or just plain sharing what's been created with fellow users and friends.
It's all a game at Abertay
The University of Abertay Dundee is to become the UK's first ever university centre of excellence for computer games education, thanks to a £3 million investment from the Scottish Government. The majority of the money will go on the development of two new industry-designed postgraduate courses and the spaces in which to accommodate them. Computer games technology research at Abertay is already developing simulation tools for activities such as firearms training for the police, infection control models for the health service, and energy forecasting and town planning for local authorities.
Going greener
It may only be a day long but there is always quite a buzz at the Greener Gadgets Conference recently held in New York. You can track some of the principal debates on the legacy site. Among the most interesting ecologically-sensitive products on display were the solar-rechargeable laptop bags from Voltaic Systems and the latest recyclable desktop computer 'housing' made from cardboard from Houston-based Brendan Macaluso.
Visualise, visualise
In a increasingly blog-filled, socially interactive, online world, how is it possible to separate the wheat from the chaff and render information in ways that others find immediately engaging and yet remain profound? An interesting site that perhaps achieves this goal is the New York Times' Visualisation Lab, where you can find a mass of wordles and tag clouds using IBM Research 'Many Eyes' technology.
Is this a dagger which I see before me?
A latter-day Macbeth experiencing such visions would probably be using augmented reality technologies, such as goggles, enabling him to negotiate the corridors of his castle while seeing and interacting with computer-generated images projected on top. It's a field due to be the focus of $5 million in funding from Media Power Inc. The cash is destined for Georgia Tech's GVU Center, to research educational applications for augmented reality and mobile computing.
Searching made simple and aesthetic
If you spend a lot of time surfing on the web (or your students do), then consider routing your (and their) searches through Kosmix. It's an engine that arranges its finds in beautifully coordinated webpages rather than a Google-like list. It means that links appear in a kind of magazine-like format and one that is decidedly more enticing and stream-lined.
Fine tuning excitement and boredom
Imagine a scenario in which children’s psychological data is under constant surveillance, so that if they are seen to be too excited they can be calmed down, or if enervated they can be stimulated. A bit too Orwellian perhaps - so let us hope for more positive applications in education as yet undreamt of for the innovations being undertaken by the engineers at Nottingham University. They are currently devising just this kind of feedback/adjustment loop in the designs of fairground rides. Knowing how to tell when a person is having fun or not could make it possible to have rides adjust themselves to give the best possible experience. For example, the individual cars of a rollercoaster could each deliver a ride customised to the occupants.
Go virtual – independently
Forget Second Life or other ready-made virtual online worlds – now, thanks to Metaplace, you can go it alone. Those wanting in will currently have to sign up to get a beta code, and once that's achieved the sky's the limit in terms of creating your own discreet online world using the most intuitive of click-and-drop applications. It is possible to create your own playground or turn it into a haven for like-minded friends or even broader communities. The technology is also great for games construction. To find out more, go to the YouTube film about Metaplace provided by its creator Raph Koster.
Open BBC
The BBC has created an open-forum site called Open Lab and has put out the call for contributors – those willing to develop educational online projects in plain view - workings and all. The delight of its being 'open source' means that anything posted is available to all-comers to tweak and refine to their heart's content. As the site's preamble states: "It's about developing a community of sharing. By getting students, teachers and developers together, ideas shared as open source can be built upon by others, transforming the way that educational software is written and acquired."
the dust settles...
Children's Plan #1 - milestones just out
Recent significant Children's Plan-inspired milestones include the Steer review report on the effectiveness of school behaviour partnerships and good practice in reducing exclusions of pupils with special educational needs (SEN). Also just arrived is guidance for schools on preventing bullying outside the school gates. And finally, Lord Laming's review of Safeguarding has been published, and while it attracted praise there were those that regretted its failure to consider the protection of young people in custody.
Children's Plan #2 - national mentoring pilot
2009 will probably prove a busy year for the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation as its two-year DCSF-sponsored peer mentoring pilot starts to generate interesting insights and case studies. As a follow-on from the pilot, 6,000 pupil mentors are due to be recruited and trained. This initiative will support the introduction of peer mentoring models into the wider anti-bullying plans of each of the 150 schools involved, tying in also with SEAL and the Healthy Schools Programme.
Children's Plan #3 – the cost of providing for special needs
As a part of the review of school funding for 2011-12 and beyond, PricewaterhouseCoopers is carrying out research for the DCSF. This will cover both the extent and the cost of additional educational needs (AEN) and special educational needs (SEN). All secondary schools throughout England will be able to take part in the research, as well as a random selection of 3,500 primary schools. This is an opportunity for you to feed back on how well the current funding arrangements support provision for AEN and SEN pupils in your school, and on how the system might be improved.
What makes for equality?
11 MILLION, the organisation led by the Children's Commissioner for England, wants to make sure that the voices of children and young people are heard by the Government in its work on the upcoming Equality Bill. They are calling on children and young people to tell them of times when they feel they're treated fairly or unfairly because of their age. As well as registering an opinion, visitors to the 11 MILLION site can also learn more about equality issues as they impact on childhood, and upload their own comments and content.
Joined-up working gets a grant
The word has gone out to all local authority and Primary Care Trust chief executives, inviting applications to the £200m Co-location Fund, which was originally announced in the 'Children's Plan: One Year On' report (December 2008). It is hoped this capital fund will boost the development of local partnerships and the development of facilities that will enable services for children, young people and families to be delivered in a more joined up way. The deadline for the applications is days away but the implications for those areas making successful bids will, let's hope, be felt in the creation of some innovative and collaborative networks and co-working.
G&T goes in-house
The National Strategies has just published the long-awaited Classroom Quality Standards designed to help practitioners meet the needs of their most able pupils. It comes in answer to a broader shift that G&T provision should increasingly move in-school, becoming a part of the fabric of every lesson. The CQS come with specific subject-by-subject suggestions and measures. The Strategies also promises that a DVD exploring the CQS is on its way to schools.
The importance of play
Academics at the Institute of Education and Roehampton University have been busy conducting a comprehensive review of all the research into the contribution play can make to children's well-being. Their work has just been published. It may seem a truism that play is good for children, but the research is an attempt to put this received view on a firmer conceptual footing. The work concentrated on play provision for children aged 8 to 13 years (the target group for the Government’s investment in play), and what 'works best' for this age group. In addition the report focuses on obstacles to play and adult roles in supporting play.
Drink water; green spaces
The three-month consultation period began on 17 March for those wishing to contribute their responses to 'A Children's Environment and Health Strategy for the United Kingdom - Consultation Document', which has recently been published by the Health Protection Agency (HPA). In the end the HPA's recommendations will inform Government about how best to promote healthy environments for children in the UK. Contained in their brief is the need to come up with ways to: improve sanitation facilities and access to drinking water in schools; ensure access to well-maintained green spaces; and build sun protection education.
Rose reviewed
The Rose Review interim report deserved a warmer evaluation than it received at the hands of the media following its publication in December. Far from spelling an end to discreet subjects, it actually encouraged their teaching in a more substantial way – enriched and enlivened by cross-curricular links. Teachers have much to applaud in a document that positively encourages them to be creative while at the same time catering to their pupils in the round – heads and hearts. The emphasis on pupil well-being should have had more praise than it received. Of course there were causes for concern, not least the need for good CPD if the majority of teachers are to benefit alongside their pupils from the greater creative latitude that the full review promises to offer them.
