The Dream Lab is a new national design competition for schools. It’s being fronted by Sir Trevor Baylis (inventor of the wind up radio) and Ortis Deley (presenter on Channel 5’s Gadget Show) and it’s inviting school children aged between 13 and 18 to enter their ideas for sleep related gadgets. You can find lots of advice and downloadable resources here.

The winning child’s school design and technology department will win a prize of £20,000 and the winning child or team (up to 4) will win £10,000 to help them get their idea made. Find out more and get involved at thedreamlab.co.uk.

Here are links to some of this week’s education-related news:

• Too many design and technology teachers in England are failing to keep pace with global technological advances, education inspectors have said.
• Thousands of children are being turned off maths and science at school because of “tedious” lessons, according to one of the world’s top physicists.
• Thousands of teenagers will learn a trade at a new generation of technical schools under Government plans unveiled in the Budget.
• A major two-year study found that student teachers in England had a weaker grasp of maths than trainees in nations such as China, Japan, Ireland, Finland and Russia.
• Teachers should receive bigger paypackets, according to one of Britain’s most influential businessmen, who argues that increasing their salaries would be good for the economy.
• The School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB’s) recommendations on pay for those unqualified teachers who earn a full-time equivalent salary of £21,000 or less have been published.
• Children at a comprehensive school are to become first in the country to be sent home early every Friday in an attempt to save money.
• More than 30,000 pupils from around the UK turned their classrooms into newsrooms as they made the news for real.

• A third of schoolchildren who took part in a UK-wide BBC survey say they do not believe in God, a majority help adults to use the internet and at least one in three is feeling the effects of the economic slowdown.
• Schools could be ranked by the number of pupils gaining university degrees under Coalition plans to drive up education standards.
• Students and academics at a world-leading London university want to build bridges between the Wikipedia website and formal research.
• A controversial “nappy curriculum” for under-fives will be radically overhauled after a Government review concluded almost half of children were starting school lacking basic social and language skills.
• Ministers are pressing ahead with a trial of a new-style phonics test designed to identify pupils lagging behind after a year of compulsory education.
• Children as young as 11 should be expected to read 50 books a year as part of a national drive to improve literacy standards, according to Michael Gove.
• Headteachers have accused the education secretary of being driven by an ideological agenda after it emerged that almost half the schools he has visited since taking power are – or have applied to become –academies.
• Plans to allow teachers in to search pupils for mobile phones and examine the phones’ content have been called “reckless” by a teaching union.
• Ofsted has launched a consultation on the inspection of maintained schools and academies in England. The changes aim to re-focus school inspection on what matters most: the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom, backed by excellent leadership and management, and good discipline and behaviour in schools.
• The process by which parents and other groups apply to set up so-called free schools is being tightened up.
• A walk around a Sheffield school has become a heroic quest to find weapons and magical items to defeat a monster.
• A third of 11 to 16-year-olds say their families have cut back on spending amid the economic downturn, according to a BBC survey about UK young people.

Next week’s Teaching Events include:

• 1st to 31st March- Tenner 2011
• 14th to 27th March- Cambridge Science Festival
• 26th March - Earth Hour
• 27th March - World Theatre Day
• 27th March - Census Day 2011

Wallace and Gromit’s Cracking Ideas site is a fantastic resource which covers lots of concepts, including patents, trade marks, design and copyright. The Learning Zone has a number of activity packs, innovation packs, lesson plans and a booklet which explains about intellectual property.

The site is also running a competition, which is open until 31st March 2011. The competition is open to those aged between 4 and 16 and requires children to take part in lots of challenges which are all linked to the creation of an exciting new theme park. Find out more in this Youtube video:

Wallace & Gromit are back with their World of Invention and they need help to put their inventions right. The Crackers pair are in trouble and need some inspiration to build their designs.

Gromit just can’t get Wallace’s wake-up machine to work and has crashed their entire workshop! Could your pupils design a better machine? Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/wallaceandgromit to enter and they could have their design featured in the show. Their contraption could be re-created into clay and appear in an animated production from the creators of Wallace and Gromit.

Find out more in the Youtube video below:

]]> http://www.teachingnews.co.uk/2010/11/wallace-and-gromit-need-your-help/feed/ 0 http://www.teachingnews.co.uk/2010/09/national-baking-week-2/ http://www.teachingnews.co.uk/2010/09/national-baking-week-2/#comments Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:14:12 +0000 markwarner http://www.teachingnews.co.uk/?p=5001

National Baking Week 2010 takes place from 19th to 25th October. The event encourages everyone to get involved in baking and their site offers a huge collection of recipes, ideas, advice and resources for schools to help them take part.

You can download teaching packs include teachers’ notes, lesson plans and PowerPoint presentations for use in your classroom, by registering on the teacher’s site.

BP have a number of free resources for schools to use for children in KS2, KS3 and KS4:

• Young Science Investigators offers ideas which aim to help pupils to learn about Science through fun classroom-centred experiments and activities. The latest addition is called ‘Cool Creations’ and is an online set of materials to teach Science through Design and Technology projects. The materials include skill-builder videos, animations, worksheets, photos and detailed teacher guidance notes – including extensive curriculum and cross-curricular links for Key Stage 2 (KS2) and the Second stage Scottish Curriculum for Excellence.

www.bp.com/bpes/ysicoolcreations

• The Science Skills site offers six challenges for KS3 / KS4 students which are drawn from the real-life context of BP’s business. Video briefings, interactive experiments and information sheets help them to answer questions and ultimately solve the challenges. Each challenge (which includes teachers’ notes) is based around a core topic from the Key Stage 3 (KS3) and 4 (KS4) curricula and the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence.

The Sorrell Foundation is launching the YOUNGDESIGNCLUB to give pupils and their teachers an exciting new resource to inform and stimulate knowledge and debate about design.

The YOUNGDESIGNCLUB is free to UK primary and secondary schools, to run in lunch breaks or as an after-school activity. Each meeting will focus on a piece of design from any discipline, providing a growing menu of over 100 design stories. They will be structured around presentations and supported by flexible resources, including print, film and audio materials and PowerPoint slides (available as downloads). This will be followed by a discussion, and the pupil members will have the opportunity to produce their own crit in response, the best of which will be published by the YOUNGDESIGNCLUB. There will also be an annual awards ceremony at Somerset House, London.

www.thesorrellfoundation.com/young_design_club.php

Are you a teacher interested in running the YOUNGDESIGNCLUB? To register your interest, please complete the online registration form. The club will begin in January 2011 and the Sorrell Foundation will contact you in September with detailed information.

Twitter is an amazing way to discover new and interesting information. Here are links to some of the things that I have found recently:

• Design 2010 – An online exhibition celebrating the achievements of students in Design and Technology. Shared by Gareth Davies.
• Aviary Education – Aviary, who produce lots of fantastic online tools, are now offering a free service for education users. Shared by Paulo Simões.
• History Pin – A digital time machine that allows users to pin their own old photos onto modern Street View scenes. Shared by Claire Jones. Here’s a Youtube video which explains more:

• Diary of an Ofsted Inspection - Michael Shepherd recalls his recent experiences with Ofsted! Shared by Simon Haughton.
• Open ClipArt Library – An archive of clip art that can be used for free by anyone. Shared byProfteresa.
• Augmented Reality – If you’ve heard what augmented reality is, but you’re not quite sure what it does, watch this Youtube video, shared by CommonCraft:

What have you found on Twitter recently?

Image – Run!

Practical Action are a development charity who are offering lots of free resources for schools, linked to their work in helping some of the world’s poorest people to transform their lives for the better.

www.practicalaction.org.uk/education

The Education area of their site has a wide range of content for teachers and pupils, including:

• Videos showing how designers make their sustainable products (useful for DT).
• A sustainability handbook for teachers of Design and Technology.
• Free posters, homework activities, wordsearches, classroom activities, videos and songs linked to renewable energy.
• A selection of experiments, demonstrations and activities which can be used to support work linked to climate change.
• Cross-curricular videos and lesson activities.

www.cbelearning.com is designed to support both students and teachers with the Diploma in Construction and the Built Environment curriculum. This resource will help bring the construction industry, and roles within it, to life through a variety of interactive learning experiences.

www.cbelearning.com

The site allows students to explore real construction situations, engaging activities, tasks and roles. They can follow the construction process from consultation, design, build to operation, applying their knowledge and working together to solve problems as they create their own building. It also has lots of ideas and outline lesson plans for teachers to use.