http://y62011.heathfieldcps.net/

This website leads to a blog produced by Simon Haughton.

It focuses on a celebration - schools have found a new way of making writing cool by blogging how they feel/hobbies/stories. As these videos progress, so does the situation as it evolves in to more of a problem with boys lacking behind their female classmates at school.

Visually, it's not generalised right at the beginning the presenter is quick to point out the younger and older students.

Bolton Bloggers on BBC North West Tonight

Heathfield's blogs

It's important for kids to be rehearsed when you film them as they need to know what's going on. Like with the Heathfield Primary School video it was clear that the children had been told what to expect and so it ran smoothly.

It was also filmed live with the filmers leaving the kids for a while, then coming back to see what they blogged. It was good they did this live and not recorded as it ment the presenters could keep on referring back to the school and keep on being updated on the children and their blogs.

Each child was being filmed with blogging something completely different. There was a boy called Matt who was talking about writing about football or hobbies and a girl named Alice who was blogging her experience of being on tv. Also, some of the younger children were being interviewed. There were 2 boys about 7 years old who were talking about a ghost story they had created. Each child had something new to talk about which was refreshing.

http://clc2.uniservity.com/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupId=274987

Here, you can access the children's blogs plus the some of the staff's blogs from the link above.

Blogging at Heathfield School

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-12448932

BBC Breakfast News. Broadcasted Monday 14th February 2011

This is about boys in year 6 at Bolton Primary School who untill recently, have hated writing. It all happened when the school was closed due to a snow day, and so they children and teachers had to communicate interactively via their website. Blogging has become a huge hit with the children - especially the boys who now think that it has made writing become "cool".

There has been an increase in the results in year 6 SATS which is positive as this could make children start to be more interested in blogging, which later improves their writing. It has also been introduced to different year groups so that younger children have the oppurtunity to join in.

"the number of children achieving level 5 and above in SATS writing tests had increased from 9% to 60%".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12000886

This link shows there is evidence of boys lacking behind in writing. But, in my opinion if more schools do what Bolton did which is to use blogging to incourage writing, then maybe it wouldn't be such a big problem.

Production Diary

Production diary Friday 11th february
We went to my old primary school, Milton Road to ask some of the kids some questions on what kind of media they use - the majority answered computer. When we got in, we had to sign in and get visiter badges. The kids were co operative and we mostly got what we wanted, although there were certain things we forgot to ask them but that can be arranged next time we go visit. We hadn't got permission at the time to start filming, so we hope we'll be able to start this Thursday when the kids will be in a lesson on computers. Also we have a different set of questions to ask the teacher which might not be possible, but we hope it will be.

Wednesday 16th february
We still haven't heard anything from the school, so we won't be able to do any filming any time soon. We might have to try a different school like Sancton Wood or Parkside.

Friday 4th March
Yesterday we went to Sancton Wood Primary School to ask if we could possibly do some filming there for the documentary. We spoke to the head of art (Darin Mount) as the principal wasn't there and told him an overview on what the documentary is about. Hopefully we'll hear back from him!

Monday 7th March
Today we went to Sancton Wood - this time to do filming. When we arrived we signed in and started to interview 5 of the children: Ed, Robin, Amy, Susanna and Emily. We interviewed them in the libary and then we went to the computer room in the hopes of doing some filming in there. Unfortunatly that was not possible as our camera battery kept running out, so had to go back and film another day.

Thursday 10th March
Went to Sancton Wood again today for some more filming, we had 3 extra batteries so that nothing could possibly go wrong. We decided to change the setting of the interviews because when we did it previously in the libary, a window was behind the children making the light shine in the wrong direction which made the video look a bit too dark so decided against filming there again. We didn't get to film the kids today as we got chucked out of the ICT room as it was about to be used by another class which was unfortunate, but we did get to film a teacher. She was helpful in our interview, but she didn't have the knowledge needed for our questions so we are returning to the school again before easter on the 21st and 24th of March to interview some of the ICT teachers of the younger children, and hope to get more filming done with the 5 children too.

Thursday 17th March
Milton Road finally got back to us. We did some filming of the children in their ICT lesson plus a few interviews. We also managed to get an interview with the teacher which was very useful. We were told that the kids were on Photoshop last week putting up their own photos and then manipulating them in to a Budda for their work. This was interesting to know as I am a regular user of Photoshop and the teacher gave us a copy of a child's work to keep which was nice. We did come more prepared this time, but same thing happened again the battery died. However we brought 2 video cameras this time plus batteries and luckily one of the cameras managed to survive.

Monday 21st March
Today, we went to Sancton Wood to interview the children in their ICT class. It went well - we got what we wanted, which was things that we missed out last time like asking them about the after school media club. Was nice filming them during a lesson as we could film what they were doing and to talk to them about it, we also interviewed their ICT teacher which was good so we got her input as well as the children's. We did have a problem with the mic - it kept on not working which was annoying but hopefully we got the sound in the end. We didn't really use the tripod that much because we wanted to get right up close to the kids as before we didn't really do that.

Thursday 24th March

Today was our last day filming at Sancton Wood. This time, we didn't interview the children instead we just interviewed the ICT teachers of the enfants and how it differed if anything and what was the same. We managed to interview them in their office so it was away from any noise and we sat behind the window to get the lighting right, as first time we interviewed the children in front of the window it didn't turn out so well on camera. We also filmed an introduction to the school

We have had to negociate to film the children in both schools due to the Child Protection Act. There were some concerns about where the footage of the children would go, we explained that only us the teacher and the examiner are to view it. We have also had to wait to get permission from the school and the parents which is why this has taken so long to get filming. Another problem that has occured is that we can only film the selected few who were chosen, so we have had to be careful that we dont film any other children. Sancton Wood allowed us to film without our teacher present - but Milton Road asked for our teacher to be present during the filming process, which was fine.

Intro of our doc to kids

We have made a new documentary, called ilearn, about new media and how children use it. It will be a four part series with each focussing on something different, like the first part could be about creativity the next part could be about learning. This documentary is to see what kids use the internet for - if it's for social reasons or educational reasons.