Using YouTube in schools?! Isn't it banned? Well, yes it is in many schools. For understandable reasons.

So when we saw this article in the New York Times (posted by Andy Smith of TSL Education - thanks again Andy) it caught our interest. The article is about how schools in the US have found ways of filtering content on YouTube to access in class for educational purposes. And now YouTube has developed an educational portal to show specific videos within its own network. It only shows related educational videos too. The comments are removed too - we're not so sure about that aspect, as surely debate is a good thing, and you can set comments to be approved before they are published. But Google (YouTube's parent company) is fine tuning the portal and the general move in this direction is to be applauded.

I'm sure YouTube has its reasons for developing YouTubeEDU, as does Apple with iTunesU. But when they both offer the potential to access a range of useful resources, it would be churlish to complain.

Working on a web project - the Museum of Mystery - for schools last year we found that using YouTube in schools was more of an issue than we'd realised. YouTube was a great way to serve up the video content on the project - short clips of experts from the Manchester Museum talking about areas in which they are acknowledged experts - without pupils having to download clips from the website.

But when we trialled the site in schools we found that all of the schools blocked YouTube, so we had to move the video to a private media server. We kept the YouTube channel we'd set up live, even though the videos were no longer fed to the project website, and we've kept an eye on the traffic too. One of the videos - about the dodo - has had 28,210 views and counting! It would have been even better if they'd all been viewing that video through the project website!

 

We're really pleased to be working with Ocean Maths, the educational charity, and a group of local schools to develop interactive maths activities for Year 7 pupils with special eduactional needs.

This audience is not very well served currently with digital maths activities. Teachers report that they have to cherry pick nuggets from standard maths programs (which don't have an SEN focus) or that other materials for SEN for this age group can be patronising in their graphical style and content.

It's been a real challenge making the visuals 'age appropriate', whilst also making the maths and language used appropriate for the abilities of the pupils. But it's also been a lot of fun.

The materials are in development for a pilot in the summer term. If your school would like to be involved please get in touch.

Thanks to the teachers and Year 9 pupils at All Hallows RC Business, Enterprise and Sports College, Salford for an interesting 'World of Work' Day. We spent the school day talking to groups of 13-14 year olds rotating between different employers, e.g. the Army, Royal Air Force, HSBC and Manchester United. Sadly we couldn't compete with the RAF's high tech flying helmet and Man Utd's freebies, but we had fun and learnt a few things too.

The pick of the questions were:

• Have you ever made a big mistake and had to fix it? As the dog in the 'Churchill' advert says: "Oh yes!"
• Do you like the people you work with?
• Do you get stressed in your job?
• Where do you see yourself in 10 years' time?

Some very savvy business questions about things like how we structure payments from clients, the costs of design and development and what qualifications are useful in this industry.

Thanks to the Salford Foundation as well for organising the day and arranging for us to be there.

Phase Two of Bolton Council's Education Exchange was launched recently. A great collaborative effort with Bolton's School Improvement Team. The enhanced site enables schools to communicate with each other by publishing posts, commenting on and sharing others' posts. They can also create their own profiles highlighting their priorities and successes so that it is easier for schools addressing similar focus areas to collaborate.

The feedback from schools, governors and training providers has been really positive and the web stats are very healthy. A similar 'Exchange' resource is in development for Early Years providers in Bolton - watch this space! 

As a business we like to tap into some alternative activities from time to time. One such activity is illustrating for fun. We don't get many requests for painting off-screen, so when we were asked to create a personalised mural on the theme of Giraffes we jumped at the chance to get messy, and tap into one of the core skills of the business... creating fun visuals.

The semi-abstract scene depicts various types of giraffe in a style designed to appeal to children. The recipient is over the moon with the results.