Lighting the Spark: Teaching Awards
The Guardian, June 25 2009
Tobermory’s Tweecher
The Herald June 16 2009
NEW HORIZONS: Social networking and blogging are an increasingly important part of classroom life for both pupils and teachers.
The pen has always been a mighty instrument. But in this internet age, when daily musings are so freely dispensed through Twitter, Facebook and blogs, it is easy to forget the power of the written word. The brightly painted town of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull has recently been reminded of this, after the local paper published a series of messages that had been sent by Lynne Horn, a principal teacher at the local high school, through the social-networking site Twitter.
Teachers banned from Twitter after indiscreet tweet
Council imposes ban after teacher’s comments cause outrage in rural community
from the Guardian Education online
Fellow ‘tweechers’ have responded angrily to the ban
Tweeting teachers in Scotland are incensed by reports that Argyll and Bute council has banned teachers from blogging about their work.
The move came after tweets written by a teacher appeared in the Oban Times.
Comments made by the head of the language department at a local high school, to her friends on Twitter – “Have three Asperger’s boys in S1 class: never a dull moment! Always offer an interesting take on things” – have caused outrage.
Mechanical enginering at Dundee
From the Guardian University Guide
The University of Dundee has motored up the mechanical engineering tables, coming from outside the top 20 last year to third place.
This is the first year that students have built a formula student racing car to race in a university competition at Silverstone – a project that the department head, Robert Keatch, says they are hugely enjoying and which is helping their team-working skills.
Cracking cocaine
Most of the pupils at Girvan academy are smartly dressed in school uniform, shirts and ties, and it seems an unlikely place to find juvenile cocaine experts.
But this school in Ayrshire has piloted an anti-drugs programme on cocaine that is to be rolled out across Scotland. Pupils have worked with the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and Learning Teaching Scotland (LTS), the government-funded body that develops the curriculum, to come up with a programme that focuses not on the health risks of cocaine use but on its environmental and social damage.
Kathleen Marshall Interview
What they long for is people who care’ – Education Guardian
Kathleen Marshall, the first UK children’s commissioner to leave office, tells Jackie Kemp she has never been a fan of playing safe
The ground-floor office a few doors up from the Scottish parliament on Edinburgh’s Holyrood Road has neat venetian blinds and two doors. One is unashamedly dull. The second, smaller door, is shiny, has a bejewelled handle, and is painted with images of mermaids and enchanted forests. Just inside, where other offices have coatstands, is a cardboard wishing tree. Someone has written on one of its paper leaves in a round, firm hand: “I wish I had more one-to-one time with key children.”
Louise Richardson Interview
Education Guardian.
Louise Richardson, the new head of St Andrews, will bring ‘American attitudes’ to admissions and to red tape, she tells Jackie Kemp.
St Andrews University … Louise Richardson was previously the dean of a Harvard college
Island Children’s Hostel Problems
Some island children must stay in a hostel to go to school – and not all hostels are a home from home. Jackie Kemp reported in the Education Guardian in 2007.
Alison Hargreaves
Mountaineer’s parents grieve for children’s loss
The Independent
Katie Ballard – Alison Hargreaves’s four-year-old daughter – still does not know that her mother died climbing K2, the world’s most dangerous mountain, her grieving grandparents said yesterday.
Joyce and John Hargreaves broke down in tears at the news conference organised by their son-in-law, Jim Ballard, at a ski centre 700 metres up Aonach Mr in the shadow of Ben Nevis in the Highlands yesterday.
The couple who travelled from Derbyshire to be with their grandchildren were told that their 33-year-old daughter had finally been confirmed dead this weekend. “Katie just thinks she is lost, she doesn’t know her mummy is dead,” Mr Hargreaves said. The grandparents admitted that they do not wish Katie and Tom, six, to travel to see the peak where their mother died.