Coming soon to a school near you?

Political Correctness gone mad.
This time (for a change) it's not in the UK - yet!

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party. The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament. The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination. The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.

How long before this reaches the UK and, as teachers, we are deemed responsible and therefore open to prosecution?

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The Final Countdown

"So snow comes after fire and even dragons have their ending..."

A quote from The Hobbit, and one that sprung into my mind when I received a phone call from my previous school asking me if I was able to attend the final get together of former staff before the school closes its doors for the final time after 100+ years of educating children.

So, I'll be catching up with staff there in a few weeks, sharing a smile and at the same time shedding a tear as the school becomes another statistic in the councils closure lists.

Check mail first!

I knew something funny was going on when I checked the stats for the school website tonight. The number of visitors today was as expected - but the pages (or page rather) that they were going to wasn't. There was a large proportion going to the Yr6 girls latest computer club project.
Even more strange was the fact that most of the referrers to that page were coming from webmail links.

Of course, once I checked my email and saw that the latest newsletter from ICTeachers mentioned the girls project it all made sense. Oh, if you don't get the ICTeachers newletter, all the fuss is about this project here.

3c or not 3c

It's been analysis day today (Inset - no kids in the building) and we've been looking at how much progress the pupils have been making this year. We've started using a new grid system that shows the level a child arrives from the infants with - and where they should be each year following on from that.

Well, year 3 did not look that good at all. Many of them were positioned below where they "should" have been, but we then did a bit of back checking. If we re-aligned them to the level they got when we retested them on the Yr2 SATs paper back in September, then suddenly all the children were working at the level expected of them, or even working at above expected levels.

That opens up a conversation - why did they arrive with such inflated levels? (we knew they were wrong a week into term - and our retesting proved it). Was it because they were assisted in their tests? did the staff inflate them to make their progress look good? (and drop us in it as a result), or is there a discrepancy between marking levels at KS1 and KS2?

Fortunately now we have evidence to back up our claims if ever Ofsted question us because they will - of course. They'll just look at the level a child left infant school with, add at least 12 points to it and expect them to hit that in Yr6. We're stuffed, but gathering evidence in our defence.

Firefox 3

It's arrived! Today is Firefox 3 day. Help set a Guiness World record for the most downloads of a piece of software in 24 hours. Download FF3 here

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Virtually £396

If only ICT coordinators were able to charge staff for those "call outs" that happen each and every day.
Take today - between 9 - 9.30am I ...

• Mended a broken memory stick and backed up the data on it for a T.A.
• Sorted out a visualiser / projector display image
• Fixed a laptop with a mousepad that wasn't functioning
• Assisted a T.A. who couldn't log into the network

Now if I was able to charge a standard "£99 call out fee" for each one of these problems - I'd have made nearly £400 in half an hour!

And to think of all the other problems that I've previously fixed, I'd now be looking at a very healthy bank balance :-)

Sparklebox goes Free!

Have you visited the Sparklebox website before, seen the great resources but then wished you could get to them without so much cost involved?  As of the start of this month everything they produce is now freely available!

See http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/ (resources for KS1) or http://www.sparklebox2.co.uk/  (for KS2)