Excellent news that a project my dad has been working on has received an extension:

We are now going to put a computer , with connectivity, into the house of all Year 3 children linked to three schools in Aston (210 pupils) and some year 7 (probably 90).

It’s a really interesting concept (for me) of focusing on the home environment (in terms of technological support) rather than the centralised school context. What makes this particularly interesting is that Aston (the area this is happening in) “is one of the poorest areas in the UK (the 16th poorest)” and with some pretty encouraging experiences from the first stage of the project this could have a powerful transformative effect.

“Each computer has about ten users. Each family seems to consist of at least five children, two parents , two grandparents and some nephews and nieces who live either next door or across the road. For whatever reason computers didn’t seem to rate highly in their lives even though they had high aspirations for their children when it comes to education. You also had the problem of home language versus English language. When the kids get home they are faced with their home language for communication and entertainment. We must thank Sky for that….” [read the rest]