Tag: school

Writing in ink

My eight year-old came home recently with a request. She needed an ink pen which she would start to use in October in her literacy classes. An ink pen. Only after pushing her on what she thought was meant did we arrive at the idea that  the teacher wanted her to have a fountain pen. I was pleasantly surprised. In a world dominated by the keyboard, Emily was to experience the craft of writing through flowing ink. She’ll have to master that flow, inscribing her thoughts in ways that will force her to develop her own individual style. That style will remain with her in a way that is denied in the ascquisition of ‘typing skills’ where the only individual variable (although fascinating for other reasons, font selection is only a choice amoung pre-selected standards) is speed.

Instead, she’ll struggle and eventually gain a fluency which will be her fluency. Allied to an idiolect (her idiosyncratic way of speaking) she’ll also have an … ‘idioscript’ through which she will express herself in writing. Whilst this might be a romantic throw-back, there is also evidence that connects the physical inscription of ink to paperwith developing the brain in unique and important ways.

Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says handwriting differs from typing because it requires executing sequential strokes to form a letter, whereas keyboarding involves selecting a whole letter by touching a key.

She says pictures of the brain have illustrated that sequential finger movements activated massive regions involved in thinking, language and working memory—the system for temporarily storing and managing information. (WSJ Oct. 5 2010)

 

So, Emily’s physical and cognitive development continues with fountain pen in hand. The question is: how long will she keep using it? Will it become, like so many of those activities which we begin at school only to subsequently give up, obsolete as she manipulates the next generation of digital inputing devices? And if so, what will her brain lose in the process?

BBC News – Your teacher has now joined Facebook

For children e-mail is “something your dad does” and their search engine of choice is as likely to be YouTube as Google.

But with many of the disruptive technologies that drip-feed children in their leisure hours banned within school buildings, what hope do teachers have of engaging their tech-savvy pupils?

At Bedford Primary School in Liverpool, social networking is embraced as part of the daily routine of school and learning.

It has joined Radiowaves, a dedicated school-based social network, which now boasts 13,000 schools in 22 countries.

via bbc.co.uk

Surveillance in schools

The total number of local authority maintained* secondary school pupil enrolments (include all enrolments, whether on or off roll at the census dates, which have been on the roll for one or more sessions at any point during the reporting period. Do not include any enrolments with zero possible sessions for the reporting period and exclude any enrolments not aged 5-15 at the start of the relevant academic year.)

* Academies are not included within this indicator and this will need to be taken into account in year-on-year comparisons ie where schools move from local authority maintained to academy status.

Project Title Project Description

Motiv
 		Various initiatives to improve attendance at school, some involving mobile phones and also provi.sion of bluetooth transmitters to enable playground communication

2NC Alert Text Based Truancy System & Anti Bullying
 		System enabling texting of many parents in a few seconds. Parents can call school back for information. Truancy Tracker can be used to communicate truancies to parents

The Accipio School
 		Live lessons delivered via an online classroom to pupils who cannot be in mainstream schools for a variety of reasons.

Wifi School in Wales
 		Implementation of a £10,000 wireless network has enabled the school to install a cashless canteen and a swipe card system which helps parents monitor their child’s diet and attendance at school.

Cyber Mentors
 		The CyberMentors website uses social networking and allows people at different levels to mentor each other To help tackle bullying.

To obtain further details about the above projects click on the project title.

via esd.org.uk

9 Out Of 10 Students Text During Class, Study Shows

According to a recent Wilkes University study, 91 percent of students text during class.

Two Wilkes psychology professors, Deborah Tindell and Robert Bohlander, circulated a survey that questioned respondents on their text messaging habits and attitudes toward texting in class among 269 students. They found that:

  • 99 percent of students think they should be allowed to have their cell phones in class
  • 95 percent bring phones to the classroom
  • 62 percent believe texting should be allowed in class, provided it doesn’t distract others
  • Around 10 percent have sent or received texts during exams>
  • 3 percent used texts to cheat during exams

Close to 25 percent of respondents said that others’ texting has made it difficult to focus in class and 75 percent reported being distracted by a ringing phone.

via huffingtonpost.com