Childnet Film Competition

Childnet International, a registered charity whose mission is to work in partnership with others around the world to “help make the Internet a great and safe place for children”, is running a film competition. Here are the details:

You don't have to go to quite these lengths...Positive and inspiring use of the internet is at the heart of Childnet’s Film Challenge 2011. Two separate projects are in place for primary and secondary aged children. They are asking secondary pupils to consider ‘A day in my digital life’ – what does the internet mean to them? How can we all look to be good digital citizens and use our online presence to grow and shape the world in a safe, creative way? How can they create a positive story about the internet?

For the primary pupils the theme is ‘What does the internet mean to you?’ – thinking about all of the fun and creative uses of the internet. How can the internet be used to learn new things and talk to people you know from all around the world?

All shortlisted finalists will then be invited to a private screening of their film with our judging panel. The competition closes: Monday 6^th June 2011 at 5pm. It’s open only to UK schools at the moment. If you decide to enter the competition, ignore the bit about needing to register by 26th April – unfortunately, I thought I’d announced the competition a few weeks ago and discovered to my horror that I didn’t. But you still have two weeks to pull the stops out and enter some films. They must be no longer than 60 seconds, so I think this is a really great challenge even if you decide not to enter the competition. It’s quite hard, if you think about it. After all, anyone can make a long, rambling movie, but being restricted to one minute or, in the case of the next item, between one and three minutes, is much harder.

The NetGen Project

Part of the “Flat Classrooms Project” stable, the NetGen project has been based on the recent Horizon Report’s discussion of technology trends, such as augmented reality and e-books. Students taking part had to collaborate with others in their group and produce short videos of between 1 and 5 minute in length. These have now been judged, and the top 3 in each category, plus “honourable mentions” (HM) chosen. My job now is to select the top 3 plus one HM. This is going to be tough, although much of the really hard work has already been done by the other judges: selecting the best 20 or so videos out of 164 entries. Do have a look at the winning entries – scroll down the page as I haven’t started my bit yet!

Ofsted consultation

You have just a little more time left to have your say over the future shape of inspections carried out by Ofsted – the Office for Standards in Education in England and Wales. Look at the Consultation page for more details. While this is not ICT-specific, I’ve included a mention of it here because it does concern the quality of teaching and learning, and leadership.