Northern Grid has been working with Northumbria Police to develop teacher resources within a web resource that contains a wealth of crime prevention information and personal safety advice aimed at youngsters. Issues such as alcohol, awareness, drug misuse and bullying are all featured on the site, with information on where to get help and what is and isn't legal.
More about ebeat
Young people, parents and teachers can now get information about Northumbria Police at the touch of a button after the launch of a new youth website.
Called ebeat, it's been designed with help from school pupils and teachers and features interactive sections, advice and information and a range of educational resources.
Resources available include specially developed lesson plans which teachers can use in school. The first lesson plan, covering alcohol awareness was launched earlier this year, with an interactive tie-in game also available on the site.
The second set of lesson plans have just been added and cover anti-social behaviour.
The new site also contains a wealth of crime prevention information and personal safety advice aimed at youngsters. Issues such as alcohol, awareness, drug misuse and bullying are all featured on the site, with information on where to get help and what is and isn't legal.
There is also advice on a career with the force, including how to go about becoming a Northumbria Police officer.
Web Services Team Leader Ian Sparham, said: "We're always looking at ways of making our information as accessible to as many as possible but before now we've had no dedicated site for young people.
"Teenagers can be a challenging audience to reach and that's why young people have been closely involved with the content."
"Our aim with the new website is to make it as interactive and informative as we could and we hope young people will go online, have a look around and let us know what they think of it."
SCHOOLCHILDREN are being encouraged to take part in an online meeting with police officers.
Pupils from junior and senior schools are being invited to use the virtual meetings to pose questions to officers and find out how their community is policed.
Officers will also ask the young people what they think about policing.
Inspector John Smith, from Killingworth neighbourhood policing team, said: “This is the first time we’ve involved schools in North Tyneside in online meetings just for pupils.
“We want to encourage young people to get to know their local officers and find out what we do to help them and their families.
“Our officers see schools, pupils and staff as very much part of the community we police and want to continue to build strong relationships with them.
“We think that asking pupils to contact officers online from school will help us do that.”
The meetings will take place on Wednesday, October 19, via the Northumbria Police website for young people, specifically designed for children.
Officers have set up two meetings, one for six to ten-year-olds and a second for 11 to 16-year-olds.
The youngsters will take part via the youth police site ‘Ebeat’, which is aimed at teenagers and ‘My Pod’, which is an interactive portal for children, parents and teachers to learn about policing and what officers do to protect the public.
The website contains fun games and activities aimed at different age-groups with key messages to help inform children about their police officers and the importance of their safety.
Insp Smith added: “We hope to get a good response to our first school on-line meetings and then aim to run them on a regular basis in the future.”
Northern Grid knows that many schools in the region are producing outstanding animations. Many of these were entered in the Northern Grid Awards. If you are one of those schools, or if you missed the deadline, why not enter the national competition just launched by Filmstreet?
The Stop Frame Animator competition enables young people to use real film making techniques to create their own short animation, without the need for any expensive equipment using a free, fun, interactive online activity.
Choosing from a range of exciting sets, characters and props, children can add sound effects and capture each movement of their animation with a virtual camera. www.filmstreet.co.uk/flashapps/stopframeanimator
Two lucky winners will receive Flip HD digital cameras to help them to continue their filmmaking careers.
If you’re not already animating the Filmstreet website http://www.filmstreet.co.ukhas lots of video, interactive games and workshops to encourage, inform and support teachers and children to create their own films and animations both in and out of school.
Listed below are a list of website that contain lots of useful resources; content of the sites listed below is entirely the responsibility of the website authors.
Choices is an e-safety film for young people, which forms part of a comprehensive e-safety pack. Following the on-line exploits of Chloe and her mum, the film centres around the activities and choices that many of our teenagers make and deal with on an everyday basis. Written, acted and directed by industry professionals, the whole process has involved the young people from Darlington secondary schools throughout.
After months of planning, doing and polishing, Choices is now a "wrap!"
The film package, including a framework of teaching and learning materials with over 60 lessons for students from EYFS to KS4/5 sourced from best practice providers, is priced at £45, inc VAT
Discounts are available as follows:
1-10 film packs £45 each
11-25 film packs £39 each
26-50 film packs £30 each
50+ film packs £20 each
These can be obtained by sending a Purchase Order or Cheque* to:
Matthew Hargraves, Learning Technologies Team. The Studios, Lingfield Point, Darlington, DL1 1RW
* Please make cheques payable to ' Darlington Borough Council' * Please note this offer is based upon a 'not for profit' model, and all funds received will be re-invested in future productions.
Developing Student Improvement Leaders is one of our Schools Innovation Projects and it aims to make use of new technologies to impact on teaching and learning.
All Saints VA CE School in Stockton will be developing a Moodle VLE with areas for curriculum, care and guidance, student leadership, governors, parents and community.
GCSEPod has an important role in this project regarding the investigation of the use of new technologies and how they integrate and work alongside the All Saints VLE.
The ‘Student Improvement Leaders’ will be developing their own podcasts for embedding the use of assessment for learning.
About GCSEPod
The largest resource of audio-visual podcasts for GCSE learning and revision.
Over 2,000 curriculum-relevant podcasts
Over 150 hours of learning
Covers 8 subjects (inc.English,Maths and Science)
Fantastic VLE content
Mapped to forthcoming exams
Use in school, at home or on the move
New: Students can put podcasts into their own iPods
Infocow from Futurelab and icould have joined forces to offer a competition open to 14-19 year-olds in the UK for a chance to win an exciting opportunity to spend a day with one of six people at the top of their game.
Ever wondered what it would be like to be…
a journalist on a glossy magazine
an advertising exec for a London-based agency
a football coach and football marketing manager for a top team
a racing car designer
a film buyer for a national cinema chain
a production manager at a busy TV production company
You are invited to take part in an International School VC event on Immigration and Human Movement.
The event, for students aged 8 to 18, will consist of a series of expert presentations from the US and UK between 20 September and 15 October 2010. Students groups are also invited toprepare presentations for an international videoconference on 19 October.
A flyer is attached and more information is available on the project website. To register for the expert presentations or to provide a student presentation visit http://k20.internet2.edu/immigration
Many of you will have seen the news headlines, but here is some additional info from CEOP about their new app in collaboration with Facebook.......
CEOP and Facebook have developed a new free application that will make young people safer within Facebook. ClickCEOP is a new app which links the young user and parent directly from their Facebook home page to help, advice and reporting facilities of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre
The 'CLickCEOP' app is a three stage application that asks young people to:
Add the app - and the ClickCEOP tab will appear at the top of your profile page
Share the badge - and you can share the app with your friends via their newsfeeds
Bookmark the app - and an icon will appear on your profile page making it easy for you to access the help and advice from the ClickCEOP app
By adding the app, young people and parents can get support from CEOP on a range of issues - viruses, hacking, dealing with bullying online and they can report someone who is acting inappropriately towards them online.
The app is the outcome of collaboration between CEOP and Facebook who have combined Facebook's expertise in connecting and communicating online with CEOP's expertise in helping young people stay safe.
Once added to their profiles, young users will receive regular messages from CEOP and its partner organisations who operate 'behind the button' to make children safer. CEOP's new Facebook page
ClickCEOP will also contain polls, news alerts and status updates. The page will look at topics that teenagers care about, such as celebrities, music and exams and will link these subjects to questions about online safety. The move is also being supported by an advertising campaign on Facebook that will encourage take up. This will include an automatic advert appearing on every profile of users aged between 13-18 years inviting them to add the app.
We would like to ask you that if you have a Facebook profile, app, share and bookmark the app. If children in your care are on Facebook, get them to search 'ClickCEOP' in Facebook and give them to chance to be one click away from help - if they should ever need it ClickCEOP
The project will support a day-long “Constitution Day Student Summit” for students in 15 southwest regional school districts. The students will apply the principles of the US Constitution to the regulation of the Internet by creating a “Bill of Rights for the Internet”. Students at Cornell High School for the event will work with students in (four) other countries through videoconference. Participating students will share ideas prior to the event through a webpage modelled after the “Letters to the Next President” site (http://www.letters2president.org/).
Outcomes:
Students will analyze the relationship between national and international laws.
Students will assess how other countries view and interpret fundamental freedoms.
Students will draft an international agreement defining what rights individuals should have on the Internet.
Schedule of Events:
9:00 – 9:15 Welcome
9:15 – 10:00 Panelist Discussion forum on Fundamental Freedoms and the Internet (Students will have the opportunity to backchannel during this portion of the event).
10:00 – 10:30 Q&A with Panelists
10:45 – 11:45 Breakout Sessions (Students will work though scenarios and develop a component of a “Bill of Rights for the Internet”. Each breakout session will develop language for the “Bill of Rights for the Internet” related to one of the following concepts: Free Speech, Privacy, Content Filtering, and Access.
12:00 – 1:00 Break-out Groups Report to Group (Students will have the opportunity to backchannel during this portion of the event).
Clark Rogers of the National Flag Foundation shares…(from the China hearings of the Congressional Executive Commission on China)…
"The recent Google controversy with China raises the question of whether China's regulation of the Internet is both a human rights and a trade issue. Witnesses will examine the challenges and hazards China's regulation of the Internet poses both to advocates of free expression and to foreign companies doing business in China; and possible ways for policymakers and private actors to respond to China's regulation of the Internet from both the human rights and trade perspectives. Witnesses will include technology industry representatives and human rights advocates."
That may sound a rather strange question. After all, the internet is there, and young people use it every day.
But what we (the National Education Network and Lancaster University) want to know is, “How do young people and schools use the internet?” “Have they had any bad experiences?” “Do they understand about filtering and e Safety?” “And how do their views of digital technology relate to the views of their teachers?”.
We also want to know about their attitudes to social networking sites. Are they worried about what can happen through the use of these sites, or do they see them as an unremittingly good thing?
Going further, there’s also the question of their mobile phones - how do they use them? When do they use them, and again, do they have any concerns? And indeed should we, as educators, be concerned with how these devices are being used.
At the moment no one is quite sure what young people feel about these digital devices, and how their feelings accord with those of their teachers? Because of this we can’t be sure if current approaches to such issues as filtering and e-safety are the best approaches, or whether we should be working in different ways to ensure that pupils and teachers remain safe when using digital technology.
This new research, (to be conducted across the UK), is being undertaken by the National Education Network (the UK collaborative network for on line education funded by government), and Lancaster University. It consists of simple surveys, one group directed at teachers and personnel in schools (head teachers, safeguarding officers, teachers, nonteaching staff, and governors), and one at pupils – obviously with different questions for each different age group (14-19, 12-14, 10-11, 8-9, and 5-7 years of age).
If you have any questions regarding the survey please contact Mick Young at Northern Grid for Learning by emailing mick.young@northerngrid.org.uk or phoning at 0191 4611844
Yours
M.G Young
E Learning Officer
All schools that arrange for pupils to take the survey can receive an analysis of the findings for their specific school.
The Northern Grid for Learning's ICT in Education Awards 2010 was a huge success!
On Thursday 10th June, we had over 200 children and over 130 adults from almost 30 schools around the region turn up to see who had won in our 11 categories.
Congratulations to everyone who entered and especially to those who were highly commended and winners!
We're in the process of finishing our Awards mini-site so keep an eye on www.northerngrid.org for a chance to not only see who won, but to take a closer look at the entries themselves.
Pupils from a school in Redcar and Cleveland know all about the opportunities the Internet provides. They also know about the risks.
The pupils, aged from 6-8 years old, worked with their class teacher and Creative Partnerships to produce this powerful message about how to stay safe online.
The SEGfL Bird Box Project 2010 is providing schools with an opportunity to share video and data streams collected from nesting boxes fitted with video cameras and other data gathering equipment.
The SEGfL also supports PuffinCam on Burhou Island, 1.5 km off the coast of the channel island of Alderney. The Alderney Wildlife Trust reports that Puffins should be arriving during April.
More about ebeat
Also labeled: 
Oddizzi is a new, primary school focused, multimedia website. We wanted to find out more so we asked the creators to tell us a bit more about it.
Download Information Guide
Constitution Day Student Summit
The Northern Grid for Learning's ICT in Education Awards 2010 was a huge success!
