Thursday, September 29, 2011
Have your say. October 2011
Consultations, opportunities and free resources for schools, teachers and learners.
Consultations
Ofqual have announced a consultation on plans to reform GCSEs from September 2012. The consultation document covers the changes being made to current GCSE specifications in England. The specifications are to be made linear rather than modular and greater account will be taken of spelling, punctuation and grammar in some subjects. Have your say before November 4th.
The Children’s Commissioner for England, Maggie Atkinson, has the remit of making sure the voices and views of children and young people are heard and taken into account by decision makers. On The Children’s Commissioner’s website there are lots of opportunities for children of all ages to express their opinions, ideas and points of view. These are designed to give access to children of all ages – including very young children who can create a shape to show an idea or feeling they have. Views and ideas remain on the website for others to read.
Rights 4 Me is the website of the Children's Rights Director for England (CRD) – Roger Morgan. The website encourages and supports young people and children living away from home to share their views, ideas and points of view. The website also has lots of information explaining the rights of "looked after" children and the expectations they can have of the adults who care for them.
As part of a Review of Personal, Social, Health and Economics (PSHE) Education in schools, the UK government has opened a consultation seeking views on the content of PHSE provision in England. Have your say before 30th November.
Free Resources and competitions.
The School Games 2012 have been launched by the Youth Sport Trust with government and National lottery funding. The games are a series of inter and intra school competitions in 30 sports open to all schools in England to encourage an interest in competitive sport in children of all ages in the follow up to and beyond the 2012 Olympic games. To register, visit the website.
The Royal Mail Young Letter writing competition 2012 has been launched. The theme is, “What the Olympics means to me.” The competition is open to children aged between 7-11 with a maximum word limit of 250. Closing date is 25th November 2011. Regional winners will be announced and then an overall national winner who will receive a prize of a weekend in London for four people, including transport, accommodation and £200 in spending money. The winner will receive their award from Olympic Gold medalist Sally Gunnell OBE. Teachers can also print off a certificate for every child who enters the competition from the website.
BBC School Report is inviting schools to register now to take part in the next annual school news day, on March 15th 2012. On this day the BBC supports the school reporters to simultaneously create video, audio and text-based news reports on the events of the day. BBC Television and radio programmes have on past School News Days, used the school reporters on their regular programmes. To prepare for the day, schools need to register now and use the resources including free access to journalists and news professionals to train their student reporters. The website has details of the opportunities and resources available. School Report is open to students aged 11-16.
Zooniverse is a web-site full of opportunities for individuals to take part in real science research. Projects are added by Universities who need help analysing data. Registered users can take part in a range of science projects. For example, currently there are requests to help deciphering hieroglyphics on ancient Egyptian Papyrus for the University of Oxford, look for new planets by monitoring light differences around a star and transcribe old weather reports to build a climate model among many others. Everything is done online and all projects are designed to enable anyone without prior knowledge to take part.
Poodwaddle.com is an archive of free Flash gadgets, clocks, and applets, including the earth clock which keeps a running total of world population, deforestation, climate etc, health apps, games and education tools. As well as being free, all apps on the site have been tested and are virus free. There is no sign-up, or membership and no advertising.