Get Set Olympic Media Teams

Our budding reporters in training pitchside at Glanford Park.

This week we have been feeling all sporty and excited about the upcoming Olympics in summer. As you might expect, many local schools are ‘limbering up’ with their own events planned to celebrate the games arriving in London in July this year. A cluster of these schools including Althorpe and Keadby Primary, Willoughby Road Primary, Scunthorpe Church of England Primary, Wooton St. Andrews Church of England Primary and Eastoft Church of England Primary have approached us recently. The outcome was for us to train a media team consisting of pupils from all the schools to cover two major events planned by the schools. The two events are a Winter Olympics, to be held in April at North Axholme Academy and a Summer Olympics planned for June and hosted at Quibell Park. Prior to the games, the schools will be exploring the cultures of the many nations involved in the 2012 games through a series of visits to each school, focusing on arts, music and dance and other cultural aspects.

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve had a few pupils from each school come down to Glanford Park and become roving reporters: learning the basics of script writing; interview techniques; filming skills; the importance of good lighting; sound recording and editing skills. Theory is all well and good but the youngsters then had the chance to test their new-found knowledge out and about around the stadium, interviewing each other and recording the footage. Later, they brought their videos or “VTs” into the TV studio where they were able to practice live presenting and cutting to the footage they’d recorded earlier in the day.

Come April, it is hoped that the newly formed media teams will be able to cover the first of the two planned events with multiple cameras to mimic their BBC and Sky counterparts in the real 2012 Olympics. The budding reporters will bring their footage from the day back to us at Study Parks to put together in the form of a sports programme celebrating the achievements of the athletes and also the fantastic multicultural aspects of the modern Olympic games.

We will be publishing these videos on Study Parks TV which you can find on YouTube and we’d also love to hear what your plans are to celebrate the coming London 2012 Olympics. Why not let us know on our facebook page.

Local Resident Donates Sports Books

Pupils from Oakfield Primary school holding some of the books kindly donated by Mrs Greenfield (pictured, back row, far right)

Sheila Greenfield, a local Scunthorpe resident contacted us recently to offer her support. Mrs Greenfield’s son-in-law, John Wilde, was a massive rugby fan and had playing and coaching roles at Wyke Sixth Form College, Hessle Rugby Club and Hornsey over his lifetime. Sadly, John passed away a few years ago and left behind a wealth of rugby and football related books such as biographies, autobiographies and coaching manuals which he’d collected over the years. Mrs Greenfield recognised that others could share in her son-in-law’s passion of the game of rugby and kindly offered to donate the books to Study Parks after hearing about us in the local media.

We invited Sheila down to Glanford Park this week to meet a group of children from Oakfield who were taking one of our audio production modules. The group were creating their own radio shows, recording their own music in a sound-sampling program and presenting their show as the DJ. As part of the session, Mrs Greenfield came for a tour of the facilities, met the children then presented her son-in-law’s books to them. Sheila explained: “I was very impressed with the children’s behaviour, particularly their politeness. Young people get a lot of stick these days so it was nice to meet such a nice group of children.”

Sheila, now retired has an education background, teaching at North Lindsey and 18 happy years at the former Scunthorpe Leisure Centre as a qualified “keep-fit” instructor. John, her son-in-law died from a sudden heart attack a few years ago. “John was in his early 50s at the time. I think it is important that everyone at that age and above to get their health checked regularly, especially those who are overweight or don’t exercise regularly.”

Photo of Sandra Hill holding four of the donated books.

We’d like to put on record our thanks to Sheila and her family for being kind enough to share her late son-in-law’s beloved literature with us and new readers from across North Lincolnshire. The books will be used in sessions with many of the school groups who come in to our study centres with possibility of loaning some of them out in a library system to some of our longer-term learners.

If you would like to celebrate the life of one of your loved ones by leaving a legacy to help us support children and young people in North Lincolnshire we’d be delighted to hear from you. You can contact Sandra or Sue on (01724) 747686.

TV Times

Michael ready and raring to go with the TV studio equipment at Messingham Primary School.

This week we have enjoyed a day with Messingham Primary school as part of their school’s celebration of information and communication technologies (ICT). The school has a wonderful selection of ICT such as iPads, iPods, an X-Box all designed to be used to support teaching and learning. We were asked to come along and bring our live TV studio equipment including the green screen to record a series of news programmes on dinosaurs which were produced by three classes of Year 1 and 2 pupils.

We’ve also been working with Oakfield Primary school as part of a creative media project over the coming weeks. They are experiencing different parts of our creative media programme such as the use of the live TV studio, computer game creation and audio production. The programme will give the children the skills required to present information in a creative way. We look forward to showcasing their work online.

Finally, we’ve had some of our family learners produce their own videos about their experiences with us at Study Parks. The video will promote their work to other potential family learners in future. The group from Crosby school has included parents and their children who have been working with Jo, a tutor from Adult Education as part of a 15 week course. While the children are improving their mathematics skills with our support, the parents work towards a Level 1/2 qualification in maths under the stewardship of the Adult Education tutor.

Busy Start to the New Year

This is Killingholme Primary School's green-screen set-up

It’s been a busy start of the new term at Study Parks with plenty of meetings, events and excursions for the team. At the start of the new year we made the decision to merge the multiple Twitter accounts for the centres (@StudyUnitedFC and @StudyHeslam) to @StudyParks. As a result you now have one quick and easy way to keep in touch with what we’re doing at Study Parks. This also posts content onto our Facebook page to make sure as many people as possible can view any updates we post.

In other news we’ve been working with Killingholme Primary School to install a new “green-screen” solution for them. After visiting our live TV studio at the end of last term, the school approached us with a budget to procure, install and train their staff on equipment for their pupils to use in their own setting. Although it is early days, the initial feedback we’ve received from the teachers has been fantastic and it was great to see after just a few hours training some interesting ideas being generated by them about how they were planning to use the resource. The really exciting time begins next week when we unleash the equipment upon a group of Year 5 and 6 pupils from the school who will no doubt surprise us with their own ideas for the equipment which we won’t have even thought of. There is nothing we like more than being inspired by young people!

We have also been working with Mr. Travis at Burton-upon-Stather Primary School to improve their IT network. The school has been a long term supporter of our scheme and we were only too happy to be invited into their community and bring our expertise with us. The school had been experiencing some challenges with their equipment and wanted us to investigate to make sure they were getting the best out of what they have. In addition to supporting the technical aspects of their computer network we are also hoping to train some more of their staff to improve their knowledge to ensure the children at the school can confidently use the technology to support their learning. If you work in a school and this is something you are interested in talking to us about then please get in touch with us.

Michael has been out and about meeting with new partners as part of the Get IT Together project. It is designed to help people get online and recognise the benefits the internet can bring. Although it is early days, we have held meetings with local community organisations like the Crosby Community Association, North Lincolnshire Homes and other representatives from North Lincolnshire Council to look at ways to support the wider community with their “digital inclusion”. To find out more, visit our Get IT Together page on our website which will gradually be populated with information as the project develops.

Finally, we’ve welcomed some new learners this month in the Reaching for Success programme who we hope will enjoy their time with us. Brian and the gang have been busy investigating new qualifications for them to take to make sure that they are achieving their potential and being recognised for it. Sadly we’ve also said goodbye to tutor Jade who has been working with us for a while now. Jade has moved into a full time position elsewhere so we’d like to thank her for all her hard work and wish her all the very best for her new job. However, as one door closes, another one opens so we look forward to welcoming a new member to the team in the next week or two.

Introducing Family Discovery Learning

Family Discovery Learning sessions are a great way for you to spend time together

Family Discovery Learning (FDL) sessions with Study Parks are designed to help you support your child(ren) with their school work in the classroom or at home, using digital technology.

FDL is based around teaching you skills around researching, creating and presenting information to develop both your own and your child(ren)’s confidence in learning. We call the concept “enquiry based learning” which encourages you and your child(ren) to investigate things more thorougly.

To make it relevant, we always try and link the activities around something currently happening at your child(ren)’s school so what is learnt can be applied straight away. To find out more about Family Discovery Learning, why not visit our dedicated FDL page?