Monday, 1 May 2017

Send my friend to school 2017

I've been involved in this campaign every year since it first launched, and it's nearly time to start preparing for 2017.

World leaders have promised every child in the world a quality education.
But a key piece of the puzzle is missing - the money to pay for this education - leaving the global picture with 263 million children missing out on school, and many more in school not learning. Now is the time to act to solve this crisis. We have a window of opportunity - 2017 is the year that world leaders can translate their words into action and fund education for all.

As part of the campaign, thousands of children across the country are creating paper jigsaw pieces, to represent that financing is the missing piece of the education puzzle, and sending them to their newly elected or re-elected MPs following the results of the UK General Election. It is important that as many MPs as possible can hear about the campaign so that they can see the strength of support for education.

Last year around 400 000 young people got involved. Can we get more this year?

Teachers can request resources to help them get involved in the campaign.

Digimap - your views wanted

The service is run through the University of Edinburgh, and there is now a project underway to assess the overall impact of the mapping service across those schools which make use of it.

I'm going to be sharing my views, and there is an opportunity for you to share yours.

You can contact Michael Gallagher here if you'd like to be involved in adding your views to the review of the service.
There are now over 2700 schools using the service, which is a real success compared to the numbers when I first got involved, and was asked to write some of the resources for secondary teachers.
Here's Michael's request - you'll notice it is not just Geography teachers that he is interested in speaking to.

I would love to speak to any and all teachers in the UK interested in ICT use as part of their teaching. Not a geography teacher? Not a problem. I want to speak to teachers across the curriculum. History, literature, science, math, and geography. This evaluation is not only about Digimap, but also about ICT use broadly. Not confident in your ICT use? Not a problem. Never used Digimap? Truly not a problem. I want to learn more about your teaching and how ICT enters into that (or not, depending). I want to learn about your teaching approaches, want to know what you think are barriers to attainment and satisfaction, what you see are some of the larger issues surrounding incorporating these types of applications into your teaching.

Remember that the service is updated with new features regularly.
Most recently, there is the chance to view GeoGraph photos through the Digimap service.