The Health and Safety Executive is running a new campaign to reduce slips, trips and falls in the workplace. Throughout 2008-2009, across the Education sector in the UK, there were 948 major injuries and a further 1865 that resulted in workers having to take more than three days off work as a result of slips, trips and falls – resulting in costs in excess of £60million.

In response, the HSE has launched a new phase of its Shattered Lives campaign. As part of this, people can visit the Shattered Lives website for practical advice and guidance.

www.hse.gov.uk/shatteredlives

On the website, people can find out information on how they can easily reduce the risk of slips, trips and falls in the classroom and see what other organisations have done.  Advice ranges from how to deal with spills and other slip risks, to the importance of using ladders correctly to reduce the risk of falling from height.

I have recently been sent an email about a petition to reduce excessive paperwork in schools…

“We are a Primary School in Cambridgeshire whose Head teacher outreaches to many other schools in the locality and beyond. For many years he has been involved in a mentoring/coaching role with other heads and has been appalled at the amount of teachers/head teachers who are going through emotional trauma due to the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy involved in education today. Having previously spoken to Tony Blair about the state of the education system, he has recently visited Westminster once again to voice these issues on behalf of educators everywhere.

Image – Closing

He is very concerned about the effect that this bureaucracy is having on people’s professional and personal lives, having been told by many excellent heads that it is their reason for leaving education!

The time taken away from teachers being able to teach our children and costs involved in these excesses of bureaucracy are staggering and therefore we feel it is relevant for parents to also be involved in our protest.

We have recently produced a petition REPAIR (reduce excessive paperwork and irrelevant regulations) (in schools) which has been signed in various ways over 700 times in just a few weeks – as you can see, the comments made echo our Head teachers concerns.”

If you would like to sign the petition online, visit:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/kbconcepts/signatures

Following on from yesterday’s post about The Little Book of Goodness, here’s another resource linked to food and healthy eating…

National School Meals Week is the biggest national healthy eating awareness week about school meals in Britain. It takes place from 9th to 13th November 2009 with the support of the School Food Trust and ASSIST FM. It encourages everyone to “Get Involved” in promoting healthy school dinners in Primary and Secondary Schools.

The NSMW site offers lots of ideas, resources and activities for schools to use during the week, and throughout the rest of the year too!

How do you feel about having a code of conduct for teachers? The General Teaching Council says that teachers must “maintain reasonable standards in their own behaviour that enable them to uphold public trust and confidence in the profession”.

You can read the Code of Conduct here (PDF).

However, the NASUWT union has started a petition against this, because they feel that it intrudes into teachers’ private lives. Find out more in this article from the Guardian.

What do you think? Is the code of conduct a step too far, or is it something that teachers don’t need to worry about?

Teachers’ TV are offering CPD training workshops to support schools in making the most of Teachers TV as a resource for CPD. Tailored to the needs of different practitioners, the sessions are free and provide an interactive and informative learning environment.

Download this PDF leaflet to discover more or visit the Teachers TV site to find out how to book a session.

By Alistair Owens http://www.keen2learn.co.uk

An essential element of our teaching resources in schools has to focus on renewable energy to achieve the goals we need to survive. As the technology advances we are seeing developments in efficiencies of equipment but also some strident considerations. It seems our quest for wind energy could be misplaced. The real salvation lies with giant mirrors. 

Professor Jack Steinberger, a Director of the CERN particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva and Noble prize winner, advised that wind energy represented an illusionary technology that will prove uneconomic and an ultimate waste of resources. “Wind is not the future” he told fellow Nobel laureates at the Royal Society.

Urging the promotion of solar thermal energy Professor Steinberger stated the world resources of fossil fuels would be depleted in 60 years. Yet 80 per cent of Europe’s energy needs could be generated in the Sahara desert. Using giant parabolic mirrors to focus heat energy to generate steam to drive conventional turbines, the power is virtually pollution free and an exhaustible supply.

Continuing to build wind farms especially offshore will be hugely expensive and need conventional back up to produce energy on windless days. But whilst wind energy is politically free the thought of energy being supplied across many country borders posses a ransom threat. Our gas supplies are becoming more reliant on the supply from Russia. The pipeline crosses other countries and we have already seen supply interruptions due to political arguments upstream. The concentration of our energy in sunnier climes could see a battle royal between the oil rich countries seeking alternatives as their current source of income dries up.

The situation is fascinating, and as the action will take place in  the next 20 – 50 years, it will be our children that will ultimately become the power masters. Strategically we need to ensure their education contains the correct focus. The solutions will be a combination of science, engineering, maths, economics and politics. The developments are highly dynamic and public opinion has yet to be fully swayed.

Professor Sir Harold Kroto a Nobel prize winner in 1996 said a new era of science education is needed.

“There’s is no point in looking for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the future. They’re already here, and climate change is only one of them”

Professor Kroto believes the solution to renewable energy is a combination of education to attract good teachers and enthral children, and to change people’s behaviour. He has also been amassing free educational science teaching resources on his website www.geoset.info

As we plan for the future perhaps we can influence  children to take a commercial interest in science. The long run of top flight graduates being lured from vocational aspirations to move into finance could be at a cross roads. The banking crisis has reduced the potential for personal wealth at any odds. The new wealth could move to renewable energy. Now that could attract a whole new tranche of scientists to develop new ways to save the world and maybe become an energy baron.

By Alistair Owens Managing Director keen2learn educational games

Food labels are now awash with details of the ingredients,
what’s good and bad, high in this, low in that and percentages of daily
allowances. Could this extend to video games to show the percentage of educational
content contained in the games.

The skills of the games developer have grown immeasurably
over the years. Graphics and realism matched to the growing power of the
computer and the demand of the consumer. This is a huge market where the
development costs of a game are equally large. It is this that prevents the
full adoption of the techniques in most educational games where the volume of
sales are proportionately lower and cost recovery less feasible.

As a consequence the amazing skill of the games developer is
predominately lost to education. Yet this is the one area where an amazing
breakthrough could be achieved. Certain manufactures are making incursions such
as Wii, Nintendo and Microsoft. The danger is that their commercial might could
swamp the smaller, and potentially more innovative developer. The risk of a PC
versus Mac, VHS versus Betamax battle emerging, where the better version lost
out could develop. Equally the possibility of a paradigm shift in education could
occur, it needs both encouragement and control.

The advent of the iPod took the market established by the
Sony Walkman and turned it on its head. Perhaps Apple never dreamed of the
influence and market changes that would occur. The music industry has spun
through vinyl records, cassettes, CD’s to downloads in 10 years. The
application now is huge and versatile; even Churches use iPods to play organ
music during services where organists have disappeared. But strangely all is
not what it seems. The sound mixer of the original recording has apoplexy when
the final version is released. The master recording quality has to be
exceptional, but whilst the sound reproduction of a vinyl recording is very high, technological difficulties means a CD has to clip the wave
form reducing the quality. An iPod clips it further. A case of one forward and two steps back perhaps.

The control of educational content in video games needs equal care. It is
pointless if the established skill of the educationalist is clipped in the
final reproduction of an educational game. It is probably safe to assume that
market forces will drive some existing educational games companies under.
Unable to afford the huge development costs to enter the mass market potential
they will simply disappear swamped by the big guns. Yet their knowledge base is
phenomenal.

The ideal would be to harness skills from both the games
developer and educationalist camps. In reality the end product has to have
commercial potential and involve an inevitable compromise. Perhaps the ideal solution
would incorporate a minimum educational content in all games. This could be revealed on
the packaging in similar fashion to food ingredients. Minimum content,
recommended daily doses and key benefits clearly stated in coloured bands.

We are at a crossroads in education. Conventional teaching
has developed skills that could be better applied through new technologies. The
current approach is not necessarily working. Changes in society, disruptive
children, manipulative effect of targets, SAT’s and GCSE conspire to confuse
and divert the impact of teaching. We are no further advanced in the overall
achievement than 30 years ago. Whilst
technology has advanced at the speed of light, learning appears to have moved
at the speed of sound. There is huge potential to embrace educational games, or
educational content in video games as a means of “learning in disguise.”
Playing games on the modern platforms now available,  and those yet to emerge, means that some of
the 85% of time children spend outside of school can be captured. Practice has
the greatest influence in retention of learning. What better way than to make
it fun. As Plato said: "Do not, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion, but by play."

Alistair Owens Managing Director keen2learn

By the time a parent receives
the end of term or year school report a huge chance to help correct a child’s performance
may have been lost. A recent survey by BECTA* shows 82% of parents want more
information about their child’s progress at school.

The survey involved 1000
children aged 7 -14 years, and 1000 parents. It showed 43% of parents found it
difficult to get to know how their child had progressed at school that day and
only 16% of children talked about their day. Currently 31% of parents felt
“excluded” which can lead to them hassle their child for information, and 24%
of children felt they were under pressure to talk about their school day. Children
reported that:-

 They don’t want their parents to hassle them

• They don’t want to share information with parents
• Over a third found it difficult to speak to their
  parents about their education.

The conventional end of term
report or teacher contact potentially leaves a gap between a problem being
spotted by the teacher and the report publication. Perhaps we should ignore
those parents nights when only a handful turned up. But there is a lot of time
that could have been used by parents to help correct the situation.

The demand to improve the interface
with parents through greater teacher communication needs careful handling. The
information could easily go into electronic overload. To engage parents there
needs to be a common ground where they and their child feel comfortable. Real
support can be given at home from playing the fun based educational games and
puzzles played in class. Learning retention is greatly enhanced just through
practice.

The advice from the teacher can
be given through a simple pupil support form, a
paper document published as the need arises. The document shows simply where a parent
can help – rather than the electronic and highly detailed facility that could
overwhelm both teacher and parent.

There are a number of school
based electronic systems that can link parents to the school. Unfortunately
some are overly complicated, the facts hidden in volumes of detail and jargon.
They also need email links to get the information and – a further rub for
teachers – the system needs continual data input placing an additional load on already
stretched teachers.

Professor Tanya Byron who led
the survey on behalf of Becta said "This report highlights how fundamental
positive communication within and after school hours can help raise
attainment and build a child’s sense of self-worth. By creating a
collaborative, three-way dialogue between parents, school and children; by
harnessing the new and exciting technologies that enable seamless communication
between school and home; and – most importantly – by involving children in
after school communication that is fun, relaxed, open and well timed, we can
all help them to maximise their academic potential and enjoy their school and
further education years."

The ideal outcome is a
positive interface that mobilises parents to support the schooling process, something
the DCSF are keen to improve. The “Every Parent Matters” objective published in
2007 by the then DfES urges the active involvement of parents in the schooling
process. The mutual objective could lead to a huge boost in schooling support
from the 13m parents with school aged children.

* The British Educational
Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) was established in 1998 through
the reconstitution of the National Council for Educational Technology (NCET). A
review showed everyone referred to the agency by the acronym of Becta – now
adopted as it main name. A positive sign that such an organisation can take a
lead in technology and the modern needs of education.

By Alistair Owens Managing
Director keen2learn

The recent influx of
recruits from the banking sector into teaching could be the best thing in
educating our children to understand money. Reducing the shortfall in teachers,
these recruits may also be ideal candidates to take on the role of business
mangers to support or take on a Head teacher position.

The ultimate role of education
is to prepare children for adult life. The dramatic effect of the global
banking collapse has probably changed the financial markets for some
considerable time. The National Curriculum needs to focus on the dynamics that
have evolved and the educational changes needed to bring children’s knowledge right
up to date. The immediate need of children as they leave school is an ability
to organise their finances. Seeking employment or further education places instant
demands on financial skills. Help and advice was traditionally available from
parents, banks, building societies, insurance companies and pension schemes.
But all these sources are experiencing difficulties. No one really knows what
advice to give. Best they have a sound education in finance to enable their own
decisions.

Who better to teach children
practical mathematics, money management, and pension investments than a “poacher
turned gamekeeper.” The current flood of bankers seeking teaching roles should
be welcomed. Not only do they swell the recruitment drive for more teachers,
their practical banking prowess, perhaps tainted by greed and targets, is battle
honed. They may not have all the answers, but they can certainly describe the
pitfalls which have equal importance.

The dynamics of banking; living
on the edge; focus on targets holds many parallels to teaching and the
relevance of their experience a good fit in education. The transition to the
school environment and skills to control a class of 30 children may, however,
come as a shock. Swapping demanding investors for children, 60 hour weeks in
banking for – well actually 60 hour weeks in teaching should match their stamina.
But controlling children can take a while to establish. Let’s hope the experience
does not deplete the number of applicants.

There could be another
hidden bonus. The role of Head teacher has evolved towards that of a business
manager. Promotion to the role essentially “robs” the school of a senior
teacher and their teaching experience. Statistics show this is not everyone’s
cup of tea  with an alarming shortfall in
teachers seeking advancement to Head teacher. The new recruits from the financial
sector are in general experienced business managers. The influx may be the
silver lining allowing Head Teachers to focus on teaching by appointing a
separate business manager to operate the financial control.

But can we adapt quickly to
this opportunity? The curriculum needs to be updated; the examining boards need
to keep pace, and schools need to consider the renewed motivation of their
teachers. Here is a unique opportunity to review the teachers lot, encourage
and stimulate positive change and bring schooling bang up to date. Whilst all
around are reeling from the recession schools could be enormous beneficiaries.
We need to act whilst this, unique window of opportunity remains open. If we do
nothing or take too long to act the new recruits could well move on as soon as
things improve in the general economy.  And
our children will enter adulthood without the street cred financial knowledge
that will be a huge benefit.

The UK government is championing what teachers have always said –children learn more and have greater fun in learning when they are taken outside the classroom and allowed to explore the practical application of the theory. It gives relevance to the text book and entices children to seek solutions.

The learning time in a classroom is limited.  Operational constraints can reduce the core teaching time to around 30 per cent of the lesson length, but outside the class children see the practical reference point to their learning that increases the absorption rate.  A biology game played in the open can reveal the difference in the size, shape and seed dispersal techniques of trees. Arguably so can a text book, the difference is the tactile nature of outdoors learning combing the feel, touch, smell and relative size of the subject and its association with its surroundings. Peter Carne, a former geography teacher with a passion for hands-on practical experience and a champion of “learning outside the classroom” says “Education in more than the acquisition of knowledge. Learning outside is a vehicle to develop the capacity to learn”.

There are some limitations.  Planning a trip for 30 excitable children takes some organization which can sometimes limit the effectiveness. This is where parents can give great support or even take the lead role. Letting 30 children en masse see the inside of a synagogue, mosque or chapel needs tenacity and diplomacy. A parent and child combination introduces greater flexibility. The educational bond developed can turn the process of exploration into an educational game that supports progress back in class.

History, science, biology and geography are obvious choices for practical learning through parks, museums and theme parks. But maths? I recall a class trip to Wandsworth library in London when I was 9. Learning about the reference system and book indexing before ISBN coding still holds memories. But the highlight of the trip was on the way back. A quick detour to the engineering company next to the school had us enthralled. Our teacher commenced to yank out strands of our hair to play a maths game. The slight tear reaction – a little biology, psychology and more than likely now socially illegal the process produced the samples he was after. Using a micrometer the engineering manager  measured the thickness of each strand in thousands of an inch – pre metric days. We queued delightedly to suffer the anguish of the hair tug and record the result. Back in class; the realisation that black hair was on average thicker than blonde. An educational game with a lasting memory, it happened 50 years ago.

Turning a trip out with mum and dad into an educational game is both great fun and mutually rewarding. The practical investigation and the relative knowledge gained help significantly back in class. The fact that the experience was gained outside the classroom provides a strong memory tag association when it comes to exams. What better way to appreciate the scope of the planetary system than look at the physical size of the Jodrell Bank telescope needed to study its detail? Marvel at engineering feats such the Thames barrier and question what  could happen if it wasn’t there, or see history in operation at the Beamish working museum. Whilst teachers need further support, and time to take the lead role wherever they can, the time spent in school only amounts to 195 days per year. The remaining 170 days, or using a little maths game; 47 percent of the total year are weekends and school holidays. Parents take note.

Alistair Owens keen2learn