Blog :: All

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Edcompblog/~3/-x-acYPH7LY/are-phones

What ever way you look at it, the recent Peter Harvey case is both disturbing and tragic: for the boy who was injured, for the other pupils in the class, for the school and for Mr Harvey himself.

The NASUWT has called for "tighter controls on the use of mobile phones in schools" (see the BBC report: Case prompts mobile crackdown call). In a quote reported in same BBC news item, the union's general secretary says:

"What we had in that classroom was an explosive situation of a combination of a teacher who was in a fragile state, of pupils who were set to exploit that fragile state and mobile technology that acted as a catalyst to make the whole situation escalate extremely quickly."

Up to "...exploit that fragile state" I was in broad agreement. I'm not convinced though that the absence of mobile technology would have changed the outcome. Pupils have always exploited weakness. Pupils have always egged each other on so that pupils within a mob behave in a way that they wouldn't if they were on their own. I remember classes acting like this, deliberately winding up a teacher, when I was a pupil and there wasn't a mobile phone in sight. (Mostly because they hadn't been invented!)

That the behaviour of all concerned was unacceptable (and I include the school authorities here) is beyond dispute. That mobile phones are the catalyst of such behaviour seems less clear. However, I'm just guessing. I have no evidence to support or refute my assertion. But I suspect that the NASUWT's has no real evidence for its claim either.

Does anyone know of any evidence one way or the other?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Edcompblog/~3/uMRMIsjZ3MA/fun-on-fri

Last week, I posted a link to some animated movies. However, as was pointed out by Chris in her comment, creating stop-motion animation is a very time consuming process. I quoted in my reply the chap who did the Michael Jackson video who said his five minute animation took him "About 2 1/2 weeks, 4 or? 5 hours a day." That's a lot of time to invest in producing a five minute video! Can you imagine producing a feature length movie?

Perhaps the solution is to crowdsource the whole thing. ...And that's what Star Wars Uncut has done. They took Star Wars: A New Hope (which despite George Lucas' best efforts, I still think of as the first Star Wars movie) and split it up into 500 clips, each 15 seconds long. People were then invited to recreate up to three 15 second clips.

To give you an idea of what people did, here are two of my favourites:



My only problem is, I can't decide if this is crazy, or a work of genius. What do you think? And, what's your favourite scene?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Edcompblog/~3/2qBCQ8fdZK4/fun-on-fri

Meet the sloths. That's it. It doesn't get much more fun than this:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Edcompblog/~3/IRA4LBC0500/fun-on-fri

World energy crisis? EepyBird come to the rescue with a Coke and Mentos powered car:


Perhaps not as much fun as some of their previous escapades (see for example Fun on Friday #6: Post-its) but something that could lead to classroom experiments... or at least playground experiments? What about building a Mentos powered skateboard? Or looking at other sources of energy, like water powered rockets, soda straw rockets, or balloon powered cars?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Edcompblog/~3/ENyNnvSVT6g/fun-on-fri

By turning a shape through 180°, it gets bigger. Impossible I hear you say. The camera never lies. Not impossible, just confuzzling.


If you want, to try it for yourself, there's a set of instructions on how to make your own confuzzle on the Instructables site.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PublicoRSS/~3/g2oj62pqwx8/noticia.as

A selecção portuguesa perdeu na Noruega por 1-0 e continua sem vencer na fase de qualificação para ...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PublicoRSS/~3/g2oj62pqwx8/noticia.as

A selecção portuguesa perdeu na Noruega por 1-0 e continua sem vencer na fase de qualificação para ...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PublicoRSS/~3/g2oj62pqwx8/noticia.as

A selecção portuguesa perdeu na Noruega por 1-0 e continua sem vencer na fase de qualificação para ...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PublicoRSS/~3/g2oj62pqwx8/noticia.as

A selecção portuguesa perdeu na Noruega por 1-0 e continua sem vencer na fase de qualificação para ...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PublicoRSS/~3/g2oj62pqwx8/noticia.as

A selecção portuguesa perdeu na Noruega por 1-0 e continua sem vencer na fase de qualificação para ...