The ventriloquist braves watching one of her performances to show how she picks who to bring on stage. First, make sure their head is the right size
Each week, the Guardian Weekend magazine's editorial team choose a picture, or set of pictures, that particularly tickle their fancy. This week, their choice is Ugne Henriko's Mother And Daughter series.
Each week, the Weekend fashion team pick a range of outfits that represent a current trend and style them for different age groups. This week that look is slogan tops, which are huge on the high street at the moment, and show how this potentially tricky look can work whatever your age
The Guardians picture editors bring you a selection of the best photographs from around the world
Villagers from Wang Nuea in northern Thailand look for gold in the river every year during the dry season. They can make about $15 a day, though two years ago they reached $200 in a single day when the river level dropped more than usual. The workers begin to search at 10am and work until sunset, often doing second jobs in order to survive
Whether it's an integral part of daily life or only used on special occasions, traditional dress is a matter of pride in most countries around the world. Can you name the countries where you would see these costumes? Click here for answers
A new project uses vintage photography to explore race in US history. From mock lynch mobs to Ku Klux Klan members and people in 'blackface', here are some of the most astonishing and disturbing images from America in the 1800s
Mirror of race: antique photographs show the history of race in black and white
Hairy frogfish, hatchling turtles and a puffed-up owl are among the pick of this week's images from the natural world
The gay lifestyle magazine Attitude was launched in 1994 and to celebrate its 20th anniversary, the editor Matthew Todd, who says it feels serendipitous that Attitude turns 20 just as people of the same sex can begin marrying in England and Wales, has picked some of his favourite covers from over the years. They include the Harry Potter star, twice, The Voice coach Kylie Minogue and stars such as Lady Gaga, David Beckham, Ian McKellen, plus the five collectible covers for the anniversary, one of which features Ed Miliband
As vintage shopping becomes increasingly popular charity shops are seizing the opportunity to get involved. Organisations are making the most of recycling and offering revamped pieces in their stores. They are also picking up tips from the high street stores on how best to showcase their products. Oxfam, British Heart Foundation, CLIC Sargent and Ty Hafan have all adopted new methods and ideas to sell their stock and make the most money for their causes.
The Guardians picture editors bring you a selection of the best photographs from around the world
Union leaders, politicians and hundreds of guests and wellwishers gather for Tony Benn's funeral at St Margaret's church in Westminster. The former Labour cabinet minister and leftwing firebrand died on 14 March at the age of 88
We asked you to show us your retro holiday snaps to capture how things have changed for holidaymakers over the years. Last week we looked at the 60s. This week it's the 70s, with photos of Greek ferry trips, a day at Warwick castle and lots of flares
We want to see your holiday snaps from the 80s and 90s. Click here to submit them for next week's gallery
What do we mean when we say someone is cool? A new exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery will explore this very theme, through photography, history and popular culture
'Cool is the opposite of innocence or virtue. Someone cool has a charismatic edge and a dark side.'
All photos courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Do your students know their commas from their semicolons? We have teaching resources to help students of all levels use punctuation correctly
It can be a heartbreaking experience for teachers when students present them with a page of writing which could be brilliant, if only it were punctuated correctly.
These resources offer a ray of hope in the battle to help children cut the chaos in their writing and translate the gems inside their head from a jumbled mess to perfectly manicured prose.
Continue reading...Do your students know their commas from their semicolons? We have teaching resources to help students of all levels use punctuation correctly
It can be a heartbreaking experience for teachers when students present them with a page of writing which could be brilliant, if only it were punctuated correctly.
These resources offer a ray of hope in the battle to help children cut the chaos in their writing and translate the gems inside their head from a jumbled mess to perfectly manicured prose.
Continue reading...It's time for Ed Miliband and Alan Milburn to grasp the nettle on charitable status, says Fiona Millar
• Response: Independent schools deserve their charity status
Which school sector has most reason to feel quietly satisfied as we start 2012? Free schools, benefiting from a high profile and capital investment at a time of cuts? Early converter academies with their artificially pumped-up budgets? The good fortune of both must surely be trumped by that of the private sector.
No mainstream politician appears interested or willing to challenge the role it plays in the national education system, it has the media firmly on board, its failing institutions can now be bailed out by the state, and attempts to use charitable status to make it more socially responsible appear to have been watered down by the high court.
The recent judgment in a judicial review brought by the Independent Schools Council against the Charity Commission marks a new chapter in a saga that has had as many twists, turns and false dawns as Downton Abbey. But it doesn't have to be the last one.
To understand why, it is necessary to go back to the early noughties when the Labour government, to its credit, started to think the unthinkable about private education and introduced a bill that removed the presumption that fee-paying schools should be charities, unless they could prove public benefit to a sufficient section of the community.
Before that, there had been little opposition to the idea that private schools just had to exist: educate an elite few and open their swimming pools at the weekend to justify their tax breaks of £100m a year.
A joint committee of the Commons and Lords, chaired by then backbench MP Alan Milburn, was tasked with scrutinising the bill and went further, recommending that private schools should be stripped of charitable status altogether, but given tax breaks if they could prove sufficient public benefit. For a split second it appeared that change might actually be on the way.
But the 2005 general election got in the way, and by the time the charities bill finally became law in 2006 (piloted through parliament by the then Cabinet Office minister, Ed Miliband), it had become victim to a classic piece of woolly New Labour triangulation, probably designed to keep the Daily Mail happy. Schools would have to prove public benefit, but the government wouldn't legislate for what that meant in practice.
Instead, the Charity Commission was given the job of issuing guidance on the public benefit test and monitoring how fee-paying charities performed. But the private schools didn't like the guidance – in particular, the requirement to provide bursaries, which were too costly. Hence the judicial review.
The judgment at the end of last year was more nuanced than the outright victory for the ISC suggested by some headlines. The Charity Commission must rewrite sections of its guidance. But the court also found that private schools must provide more than "tokenistic" benefits for those who can't afford the fees, especially if they "gold plate" their services by offering luxuries such as beagling, polo and private golf courses.
In one sense we are back at first base. Individual school trustees will be free to decide what constitutes more than tokenistic benefit in their area, and legal challenges to certain schools may be the only means of holding this small but powerful sector to account.
But in response to an intervention by the Education Review Group, a group of education experts, academics and lawyers, about the "disbenefits" of private schooling and their impact on social mobility, the judges made two powerful statements. The first was that these were contentious issues that "should be of concern to all members of society". The second, that they require a political, rather than judicial, resolution.
They were right – the private sector is a serious policy issue. It affects the intake of many urban schools; provides an unfair advantage to better-off families in a highly competitive higher education sector and jobs market; and divides, rather than brings together, young people from different backgrounds.
Coincidentally, the two men who were pivotal to the debate in 2004 – Ed Miliband and Alan Milburn – are now in positions, as leader of the Labour party and social mobility adviser to the coalition, to say something about this. They could and should restart the debate where it must be rooted – in the political and legislative, rather than charitable and regulatory, arena.
Some universities are using force and the courts against their own students. Are they going too far?
"Five people were sleeping there that night. At around 6am, I start hearing noises outside. I'm on the top floor, looking up, and the roof hatch is barricaded. They're trying to smash it in and it's not going, so they start smashing in the ceiling. They entered through the roof. There were around 15 bailiffs, all in black, one or two wearing balaclavas, with sledgehammers."
This is an account of the forced eviction on 22 December of five University of London students sleeping in a previously unused building leased by the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas). The building, known as the Bloomsbury Social Centre, was being occupied by up to 60 students and used as a hub for campaign organisation.
The student who spoke to the Guardian says that, despite considerable experience of taking part in heavily policed demonstrations, this was "one of the most intimidating and traumatising" responses to a non-violent protest he had ever encountered.
The eviction followed another on 26 November at the University of Birmingham, in which students occupying a bungalow as part of the national solidarity action in the runup to the 30 November strikes were ordered to vacate.
As well as asking the court for a possession order, Birmingham's university management also applied for an injunction to prevent those students from protesting on any part of the campus. The injunction was granted and is effective for 12 months.
Travelling northwards, Sheffield University recently applied for a high court injunction after students occupied a lecture theatre on 30 November. The application was withdrawn after the student union argued that the wording of the injunction would curtail protest on any other part of the campus.
Sheffield's management backed down, but, despite a statement saying it "certainly would not wish in any way to constrain legitimate debate, discussion and protest", the university obtained a possession order, which means it is now able to evict students from any buildings "which are occupied for the purpose of a sit-in protest or any other unauthorised occupation".
It has been uncommon until now for UK universities, which regard themselves as liberal bastions upholding freedom of expression, to involve outside authorities – essentially the state – in their internal governance.
Given the radical policy changes affecting higher education, the harsh economic times and unemployment figures, it doesn't seem likely that students are going to stop demonstrating any time soon. So should we expect to see more such action from universities? And how should university leaders take decisions about which protests to support and which to stifle?
All three universities above were asked if their vice-chancellors or other senior management would be interviewed to explain how they reached their decisions to involve the courts. None agreed, preferring instead to issue statements.
The issue seems to touch a nerve, and other senior university leaders seemed reluctant to discuss the ethics of universities battling against their own students. Many vice-chancellors may be wondering what action to take, waiting to see how far others go – and whether court actions are successful.
At the University of the West of England, the deputy vice-chancellor, John Rushforth, notes that institutions may take different approaches to protest depending on how they perceive themselves. "I don't say this in a negative way, but we're not Birmingham – our focus is on our students, whereas theirs is on their research," he says. "What we're here to do is encourage people to become citizens and if citizens in a democratic society can't protest, then there's something that's gone wrong."
Rushworth says, however, that UWE would not tolerate protestors creating significant disruption to other students or staff. The same reasoning is expressed by Soas, Birmingham and Sheffield. But there is a growing tension between this position and the view of those students who believe that for demonstrations to be effective, some level of disruption is required, or inevitable.
Dannie Grufferty, NUS vice-president, says: "Those universities that have cracked down on protest claim it is for health and safety reasons, but this seems like an excuse. It feels much more like they're trying to have a very authoritarian level of control on campuses. Part of the role of universities is to foster a culture of debate among students, and banning protest does the complete opposite."
Meanwhile, student representatives are disillusioned at what they feel is the way some university managers have dealt with protestors in bad faith.
At Soas, students' union co-president Arianna Tassinari, who was involved in mediating discussions between management and occupiers, claims that students had offered to vacate the Bloomsbury Social Centre on 23 December and that there was no indication in their final meeting with Soas that bailiffs would be used, and therefore the forced eviction on 22 December came as a "huge shock".
Soas says its reason for wishing to end the occupation was that a planned refurbishment was unable to start and contractors still had to be paid. But Tassinari says that while "occupations are always difficult situations, putting the interests of some parts of the school against another, I think it was irresponsible and disproportionate to send in the bailiffs. Soas should have done more to achieve a peaceful exit."
Universities clearly have a duty of care, and a central point on which Birmingham University depended in its application to the court relates to "significant safety issues" at the bungalow being occupied, given the number of students inside.
But Birmingham's decision to seek an injunction against occupying property on any part of its campus against this group of students is described as "aggressive" by human rights group Liberty. "Universities should be places where ideas and opinions can be explored and they should be engaging with the students in their care – not criminalising them," says Liberty campaigns co-ordinator Sabina Frediani.
However, it may be that students will start to find themselves prevented more often from the traditional means of protesting. Soas says plainly that it "does not accept occupations of its buildings as a legitimate form of protest". Birmingham says that its injunction only affects those who were subject to that particular eviction, but the students' lawyers disagree, saying that the wording of the order – the defendants were termed "persons unknown" – could be interpreted far more widely than that.
Reputation, disruption, unlawful actions, health and safety, and heavy financial cost, set against youthful idealism and some of the most dearly held principles of a free society – it's a tricky set of interests to balance at a time of social and economic upheaval, and universities and students will doubtless be watching the courts and their peers keenly to see which way the scales will tip.
Out of 28,000 teachers who qualified in 2010, just three individuals had a computer-related degree. What is going wrong in ICT teaching, and what can be done to remedy it?
When her laptop stopped working recently, 15-year-old Hannah took it apart and diagnosed the problem, before ordering and fitting replacement parts. She is visibly proud of her achievement, something she says she wouldn't have been able to do had she not studied computing at school. "In the past, I just used computers," she says. "Now I'm interested in how they work."
Hannah is a pupil at Townley grammar school in Bexleyheath, Kent, one of just 150 in the country currently offering computer studies at GCSE. In just over a year pupils have learned programming skills in Microsoft's Visual Basic and JavaScript, which has helped them to develop their own games, websites and online tools.
"What really appeals to me is the problem solving," says year 11 student Krupa, who is swotting up on the binary numerical system (the "language" of computers). "There's a lot of interaction with the programming language – not simply writing it, but you also have to understand how and why things work or don't work, troubleshoot the code, and find out how to make things move and function on screen."
Hers is the first cohort of pupils to take the GCSE, which is so new that the examining board, OCR (the only one to offer the subject), hasn't yet produced a textbook. The school has also introduced programming for years 7 and 8, in the hope that more pupils will be inspired to go on to GCSE. Students start by stripping down a computer, before moving on to games and website development using visual programming software such as Scratch and basic html coding.
The decision to introduce computer studies at the school came about because teachers were concerned that the ICT curriculum – centred around "Office-based" applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel – was not preparing young people for the jobs and careers they might go on to in the future. "The emphasis was on students as consumers rather than designers and developers," says Nevita Pandya, deputy director of learning for computing at the school. "But children are digital natives – they are already using all of this technology. We felt we should be making more of that, rather than making them study what they already knew ... and if schools aren't promoting computing, where is the next generation of developers and programmers going to come from?"
Teachers and industry professionals have spent years lobbying the government on the need to have computing on the curriculum – with limited success. The turning point came last August, when Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, publicly attacked the UK for failing to capitalise on its record of innovation in science and engineering, saying the country that invented the computer was throwing away its "great computer heritage" by failing to teach programming in schools.
Since then, the education secretary, Michael Gove, has "sat up and listened", says Ian Livingstone, one of the founders of the gaming company Games Workshop. He co-authored an influential report for the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts on the future of the UK gaming industry, which concluded that it was losing its edge on the rest of the world.
According to Livingstone, Schmidt's speech has opened the door for campaigners to have "meetings with senior people at the Department for Education" but, he says, this isn't enough.
Both David Cameron and Gove have said publicly that computer science should be taught in schools, but have yet to make a firm commitment to adding it into the curriculum. This may be because the government is currently reviewing the national curriculum, with findings expected next year for implementation in 2014.
The irony is, says Livingstone, that until 20 years ago, computer studies was taught in schools. So what went wrong?
The shadow education minister, Stephen Twigg, was quick to point the finger at the coalition when a recent Ofsted study criticised the quality of ICT teaching – despite the fact that this government has been in power for less than two years. When the Guardian contacted Twigg's office, a spokesperson said he didn't want to comment on Labour's role in the demise of computing. In a speech last week Twigg called for more rigour in ICT, saying: "For too many pupils, computer teaching can be little more than a glorified typing course."
But experts say there are a multitude of reasons why the teaching of computing has fallen out of favour. Some, like Brock Craft, from the Institute of Education's London Knowledge Lab, say economics could be to blame. "In the 1990s and early 2000s, there was this shift towards the offshoring of IT skills. Companies thought they would save money by sending coding to be done by the sub-continents or cheaper markets – and, to some degree, that has proved true."
Others think changing demands from employers could have a part to play. "Over the last decade or so, many employers have been keen to attract school-leavers fluent in simply using computers … so this may well have influenced the way the curriculum has developed," says Professor Simon Peyton Jones, chair of Computing At School, a working party made up of parents, teachers and industry professionals. What experts do agree on is that specialist teaching – or rather a lack of it – has been a major factor.
Peyton Jones points out that since the PGCE in IT has only been around for a decade, the perception of the subject hasn't really developed beyond a "low-status, low-achieving subject, often taught by geography teachers with a spare period". As a result, computing graduates are far more likely to go into programming or software development than into teaching. The figures are staggering – according to the General Teaching Council, of the 28,000 who qualified as teachers in 2010, just three had a computing-related degree.
An overhaul of teacher training in the subject is also vital; if new entrants to the profession are not encouraged to venture beyond spreadsheets and presentations, then progress is likely to be slow.
If the government acts promptly, progress could be made in a matter of years, say campaigners. So with the government expected to announce its digital strategy for schools this week, what have campaigners got on their wish list?
The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment recently launched the Next Gen skills campaign – an initiative that has the backing of big industry names such as Microsoft, Google, Sony and Nintendo and also the Guardian – calling for fundamental changes to the secondary education system, including the introduction of a computer science course within the national curriculum.
Peyton Jones would like the government to go one step further, adding computer studies to the list of science subjects eligible for the Ebacc, which measures how many pupils achieve a good GCSE in English, maths, science, a language and a humanities subject.
For many of the girls at Townley grammar, studying computers has been life-changing. Many say they have their own web development or programming projects on the go at home. Hannah says she definitely wants to be a software developer, while Krupa says she wants to work in nanotechnology. Her classmate Ebi had been set on studying medicine at university – now she's thinking about computing.
As staff at Townley grammar have found, big changes can happen on small budgets. Introducing computer studies to the school hasn't required any new resources – just enthusiasm and commitment from teachers.
Emma Mulqueeny, co-founder of the Coding for Kids movement – a group of young people, teachers, parents and developers – says one thing schools can do, inexpensively, is to set up computing clubs. Her vision would be a nationwide network of clubs in every school, starting at primary level. "Most schools have huge IT suites. Teachers are keen to learn, industry professionals are keen to help. That – along with government backing and support – could go a long way."
This week on the Guardian Teacher Network, there are resources to use in the classroom, but also plenty of other ideas to inspire pupils about computing
This week on the Guardian Teacher Network there will be a collection of blogs and info for any teacher wanting to bring the world of computing into their classroom – to engage pupils in code and programming and to de-bunk the myth that computing is only for geeks, nerds – and boys.
As part of the Guardian's Digital Literacy Campaign, the network has teamed up with some of the foremost thinkers and educators to bring you not only resources to help you in the classroom, but ideas, opinions and more.
There will be a blog from Manchester Girl Geeks – a not-for-profit group that arranges workshops and events for girls (and women) interested in science, technology, engineering and maths. In addition, the GTN has the top 10 resource treats to share with you from teacher Alan O'Donohoe. O'Donohoe has included in his top 10 resources Scratch – a programming language that can be used in primary and secondary schools to create games, animate, or basically to get anything to walk/talk/sing/dance/bounce/fly. You can take a look at it here.
If you would like to know more about code, O'Donohoe suggests taking a look at Codeacademy – a website that helps people to discover what computer programming can be like. For older pupils there is the chance to be a "code hero" by taking part in a game that teaches you how to make games and save the world with a code gun that shoots Javascript. This software will help students to master code from the inside out, to make games and apps of their own. You can find out more about it here.
O'Donohoe, who is the founder of Hack 2 the Future events, which encourage children, parents and teachers to find out more about creating games, programming and computing, will also be blogging about Hack 2 the Future and how to get involved.
Emma Mulqueeny from Rewired State will also be talking about other great resources to use, including Alice. Alice is a website offering free educational software that teaches students computer programming in a 3D environment.
But most of all, the network is hoping that Guardian readers – teachers, educators, parents, techno-freaks and techno-phobes – will take part: log on to the blogs, share resources, explain what things you need – and we will do what we can to provide them.
The Guardian Teacher Network has almost 100,000 pages of lesson plans and interactive materials. To see and share for yourself go to teachers.guardian.co.uk. There are also hundreds of jobs on the site, contact us for a free trial of your first advert: schoolsjobs.guardian.co.uk.
Children would rather learn to design games in school ICT lessons than do 'boring' stuff they know how to do already
David Whittaker, 12, Birkdale high school, Southport, Merseyside
ICT is boring. At school we go in, sit down, the teacher explains what we are going to do, and then we just get on with it. Every lesson we are learning how to use Microsoft and Excel and making documents. I'm not really good with computers so it's not fun. But I like using my laptop at home to go on Facebook and play games – I'm good at that. I've always wanted to design my own game, I really wish we could learn how to do that at school; I'd make a really good one and share it with all my friends.
Stephanie Wieder, seven, Devonshire House preparatory school, Hampstead, London
At school they teach us how to type very fast and let us draw pictures on the computers using something called Colour Magic. I'm quite excited because our school is going to get Skype soon, which lets you to talk to people through the computer – you can even see their faces.
I want to be a vet when I'm older and it would be really fun to learn how to use the internet to find animals. And you know how you do paintings like Picasso? I want to learn how to do that on the computer. I wonder if they'll teach us in high school.
Billy Wharmby, eight, Lostock primary school, Greater Manchester, Lancashire
On the computers at school we draw pictures and, once, we had to write a poem and then save it on the laptops. I don't like it that much because it was too much like hard work. Watching videos and playing games on the computer at home is much more fun. I play this one where you've got a python snake and you have to feed it once a week – that's really cool. I've also got an Xbox 360. I play football games and I'm very good actually. I have about 26 computer games but I only play on about two of them.
Abigail Dodwell, 13, Warden Park school, Haywards Heath, West Sussex
Our IT lessons at school are mainly on Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, PowerPoint. I find the lessons tedious because we know quite a lot of those things already. I have a Mac at home so I'd quite like to learn how to use more stuff on that. Pages and Keynote are the Mac equivalent of Word and PowerPoint, which I use all the time for my homework. The only way I know how to use that stuff is by asking my parents and looking on the internet.
Avril Cosh, nine, Lenzie Moss primary school, Glasgow, Lanarkshire
We use the computers at school to find information for different subjects and we do Dance Mat typing, which helps you to type faster and better. We also use this thing called Colour Magic where we can do drawings and stuff. My favourite subject is art and if I could make my own computer game I'd probably make an art game. We've got four computers at home. I use them for playing games and homework. I also know how to take pictures off our camera and put them on the computer.
Oliver Hancock, 13, Dorothy Stringer school, Brighton, East Sussex
Students need to be taught more about the history of computing. Many of my peers have never heard of Steve Wozniak (the Apple founder) or the Altair 880 (the first personal computer), but they happily use their iPods and Macs oblivious to their roots and the people – who they would probably call nerds – involved in creating them. If we can understand those roots then we can work toward a better and more exciting future in IT.
Ellie Magee, 12, Rivington and Blackrod high school, Bolton, Lancashire
We are taught how to save documents and search for simple information, but we are on the internet at home and do most of our homework on the computer so we know how to do that. So IT lessons are kind of boring and we all really want to say to the teachers that we already know what we're being taught. I wish we could learn how to do graphics, how to make a game or how to use Facebook safely – then we'd feel like we were actually learning something useful. I want to be a dancer or an actress when I'm older, so I'd like to learn how to look up videos to help me with my acting.
A tiny computer called Raspberry Pi and costing £20 is the big hope for this year. But most of the orders come from private schools
Eben Upton was an academic working in computer science at Cambridge University when, five years ago, he began to notice a disturbing trait among the applicants he was interviewing for degree course places. "None of them seemed to know enough about what a computer really was or how it worked," he says. "I found it worrying."
What Upton realised was that schools weren't teaching pupils the basics of computing any more – they were just teaching them how to use software. "Children were learning about applications, which are pretty low-value skills. They weren't being properly equipped to think about how computers are programmed, about how they're built and how we make them work."
That, says Upton, had led not only to a decline in the quality of candidates for university degree courses, but also in the number of applicants. "Computing wasn't being seen as the exciting, vibrant subject it should be at school – it had become lacklustre and even boring," he says.
The answer, Upton believed, lay in the development of a computer that would give children the knowhow and inspiration they were missing. "What was needed was a return to an exciting, programmable machine like the old BBC Micro; and it had to be affordable, say around £20, so every child could potentially have one."
Upton gathered a group of like-minded teachers, academics and computer enthusiasts around him, and the dream of the Raspberry Pi – a cheap, credit-card-sized, programmable computer – was born. Last week, the first prototypes arrived at his Cambridge laboratory; by the summer he hopes they'll be available in some schools, and by September he hopes they'll be starting to make a real difference to the teaching of computing across Britain.
The first 10 devices are being auctioned on eBay, with some bidders pledging more than £2,000 for a machine that will retail at around £22. But why? Upton hopes it signals support from the computer community for Raspberry Pi as a concept, as well as speculation that early models will one day be worth high sums. "We're a charity, and our ambition is to keep the costs as low as possible to enable as many schools as possible to invest in it for their students," he says.
Until now, though, inquiries from independent schools have outnumbered those from state schools, by around five to one. "My hope is that businesses will sponsor their purchase for less advantaged schools as well," he says.
At Kesgrave high school in Ipswich, a state school, computing teacher Clive Beale is eagerly awaiting the machines. "There's not been anything like it for 25 years," he says. "We'll boot it up and it will just blink at us – we'll have to tell it what to do. It's going to give pupils a chance to be creative."
He says computing has been neglected in schools for years. "Not only have we not given students opportunities to learn programming, we've also failed to encourage what I'd call computational thinking, which is a way of thinking about and solving problems ... it has applications across the curriculum, so it's something pupils would gain enormously from knowing about."
And the number of pupils choosing the subject for A-level is going down. "I currently have three students in my year 13 class, compared with as many as 20 in year 13 classes in other subjects," he says.
Beale is pinning his hopes on the device – named because of the computer industry's fascination with fruit, and because the program it first used was the Python. "The Raspberry Pi is going to reboot computing in schools, and lots more young people are going to get interested in it as a result."
Professor Simon Peyton Jones, who chairs the Computing at School working group, says one of the key features of the gadget is that it will give children the chance to "mess around". "The computers that children currently come into contact with are mission critical for either their family or their school – they're not computers they can be allowed to mess up. But this is a machine children can fiddle with." He believes every child should have some knowledge of computing. "We understand that physics, for example, is a subject children need to have at least a basic understanding of, because it plays a key role in the world. It's the same with computer technology: do we want the adults of tomorrow to see it as a mysterious box they can't understand, or do we want them to have a sense of how to master it?"
• Additional reporting by Jessica Shepherd
Using a large wok can cause injury to the upper body, research shows
The Effect of Wok Size and Handle Angle on the Maximum Acceptable Weights of Wok Flipping by Male Cooks, a report in the journal Industrial Health, does more than its title reveals. It also shows how to standardise an intricate physical test.
Many professional wok-users use a big one. Almost all of those woks have a straight handle. That's bad, say Swei-Pi Wu and Cheng-Pin Ho at Huafan University, and Chin-Li Yen at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan.
"[We found that] a small wok [about 36 centimetres across] with an ergonomically bent handle is the optimal design, for male cooks, for the purposes of flipping."
Professional Asian cooks are prone to shoulder, neck, lower back/waist and finger/wrist aches and injuries. Wok-flipping brings some glaring risk:
"The repeated action of swinging the wok up and down, to quickly stir the food in the wok, involves extensive arm and wrist movement, especially dorsi flexion, palmar flexion and wrist radial and ulnar deviation. This non-neutral posture, accompanied by high torque and a high rate of repetition is very apt to cause cumulative trauma disorder injuries in the user's upper extremity."
Wu, Ho and Yen had 12 experienced Chinese cooks repeatedly flip woks of three different sizes, with handles at five different angles. The tricky part was standardising the repetitions for all those people over all those wok-size-and-handle-angle combinations.
Their main tool used was a loudspeaker. They required the cooks to follow a strict protocol. The central part ran like this:
Flip the wok nine times, adding or removing soybeans if the wok feels too light or too heavy. The loudspeaker says: "Adjust the weight, for the last time!" Flip once more.
The loudspeaker says: "Please hold the culinary spatula!"
The loudspeaker says "Ready!", then two seconds later says: "Begin!"
Lift the wok and shake it, three times, with the non-dominant hand, lifting the culinary spatula with the dominant hand, "to perform the simulated food stir-frying task, first from right to left and then from left to right and from front to back, three times in total". Then put the wok down. Repeat this cycle eight times.
Wu is an old hand at creating such tests. In 1995 he and a colleague published a study called Effects of the Handle Diameter and Tip Angle of Chopsticks on the Food-Serving Performance of Male Subjects.
Three years earlier, he and a different colleague had published a treatise called An Investigation for Determining the Optimum Length Of Chopsticks.
Those two studies left some gaps in our knowledge of chopstick optimisation. A researcher named Tam Chan filled those gaps in 1999 with a paper called A Study for Determining the Optimum Diameter of Chopsticks.
(Thanks to Derek R Smith for bringing this to my attention.)
• Marc Abrahams is editor the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
Tony Blair's former speechwriter, Peter Hyman, is about to recruit staff for his new school. Unlike some that have already opened, his establishment will be all about innovation, innovation, innovation, he tells Janet Murray
When Peter Hyman left Downing Street after more than 10 years, he didn't want to be known as the guy who used to be Tony Blair's adviser. "I think there's nothing worse, if you have done something quite high profile, than to go into something that's on the edges of that, so you are sort of dining out on the fact that you once did something," he says. "I wanted to work my way up from the bottom."
And that is exactly what he did. Having persuaded the headteacher of a north London comprehensive to give him a trial run as a classroom assistant, he trained as a history teacher and worked his way up to become a deputy head in just five years.
His first few days in the classroom left him on a high for weeks. But no amount of political fisticuffs could have prepared him for breaking up fights, trying to persuade students who "couldn't sit still for more than five minutes" to write essays, or, in one memorable incident, dealing with a teenager who was threatening to climb out of a window, six floors up. Looking back, he can laugh about it, but going from "being relatively respected in Number 10 to being humiliated … shouted and sworn at, or whatever," was tough.
Eight years on, though, he is about to open his own school. One of the 55 successful bids in the second wave of free schools, approved to open this year, it will educate four- to 18-year-olds in Stratford, in the London borough of Newham, one of the most deprived areas of the city.
The ambition, says Hyman, is to close the achievement gap between the "richest and poorest" and offer a curriculum that "prepares students for the 21st century", hence its name – School 21.
The biggest inequality is between the literate and illiterate, he says. "The world we mix in … is about written reports, about reading newspapers every day, writing things down and discussing them, and that world is completely closed to a student who hasn't got past the basic level of literacy."
And traditional methods of assessing students are no longer fit for purpose, he believes. "The idea that in any walk of life you would say 'my judgment of you as a person is for you to sit down in a room for two and a half hours and regurgitate facts in a written exam' is utterly, utterly broken as a system."
So Hyman is throwing out the rulebook. Pupils at School 21 – due to open in September – will not follow a conventional timetable, with "one teacher and 30 children" and a set number of periods each day. Instead they'll have a mixture of lessons, seminars, lectures, one-to-one coaching and, for secondary children, even free periods. They'll study fewer subjects in isolation, and do more project-based work (assignments that combine history and maths, or business and languages, for example) and have lessons in thinking and debating skills.
Hyman is self-deprecating and funny on the topic of his early teaching career, but he is very earnest about School 21, which according to its website will be a "place of joy, discovery, wonder and imagination". His conversation is littered with references to self-development books and teaching manuals, all of which have contributed to the philosophy behind the school.
It couldn't be more different from Toby Young's West London Free School, one of the first to open last September, where teachers wear black academic gowns and Latin is compulsory.
One of Hyman's favourite teaching methods, which he is keen to tell me about, is known as the Harkness Table, used at US colleges, where (put simply) students sit around an oval table with their teacher and talk about something they have read. He also believes in starting the day with exercise. "I think something like martial arts … martial arts one day and maybe chess the next. What do you think?" he asks.
As a former teacher, I can't help feeling sceptical, I tell him. What makes him think sitting pupils around an oval table or starting the day with Taekwondo will win them over? He dodges the question, and talks some more about teaching methods, before concluding that size is what really matters. At his current school, which has 1,700 pupils, he says he doesn't recognise half the children. School 21 will have a maximum of 75 in a year group and no more than 25 in a class, which means "no one falls between the cracks".
And with a new school, behaviour policies need to be right from that start, he says. "Every government comes in and thinks that teachers need more powers, but it's not about that. It is about having consistently applied, simple, clear systems. With a new school you can start with exactly the ethos and expectations you want and build from the beginning."
He criticises the Tories for making children do rote learning and memorise the kings and queens of England. But his will be the first English language specialist school, and he argues for separate punctuation and grammar lessons.
Free schools, he says, are a good thing if they are "teacher-led, by people who have really thought about it, in areas of both need and deprivation" and he says that, under Labour, they would simply have been "an extension of the academies programme". But he criticises the Tories for "effectively nationalising schools".
Hyman was one of the authors of the speech in 2001 used by Tony Blair's press spokesman, Alastair Campbell, to herald a shift in policy away from the "bog standard comprehensive" and towards different types of schools ... the very seed of the free schools and academies programmes now being pursued so energetically by the Conservative-led government, and bringing Hyman's own new school into being.
The phrase "bog standard comprehensive", which was widely regarded as derogatory, still makes him uncomfortable, and he points out at every opportunity that he is proud to have been employed by comprehensives: the three he has worked in have been "incredibly innovative".
But these days Hyman refuses to discuss his politics or party policy, saying pointedly that he is "not a Labour spokesperson". "I am not here to defend every bit of the free-school policy. I am here to say why I'm motivated by the sort of school I want to set up," he says.
He shrugs off the idea that it is middle-class parents who are more likely to take a gamble on a new school with an unorthodox curriculum. But recent data suggests there could be some truth in this. The Department for Education claims that 12 of the 24 existing free schools are in some of the most deprived parts of the country. But in the 23 schools that responded to freedom of information requests on the topic, on average just 9.4% of free school pupils were eligible for free school meals – compared with an average of 18% in state schools across England.
Hyman insists the parents who have applied to School 21 do reflect the population of the local area and says he anticipates 40-50% of his pupils will be eligible for free school meals.
As well as offering children an alternative approach, Hyman believes he is offering teachers – he is about to start recruiting – something different. "I think a lot of new teachers coming into the profession are crying out for a model that is not just the same, lesson after lesson, the same teaching, the same way of doing things." In his approach, "the teacher becomes the specialist, coach, mentor, project-based-learning facilitator, seminar debater … so you have six or seven strings to your bow rather than just 'I'm here to give you nuggets of knowledge'."
One of his biggest concerns is that the Tory right with their "over-romanticised view of their private and grammar school education of the 1950s" could drag education back into the past. "If people don't speak up and say there is a modern curriculum that provides the skills young people need for the future, particularly in deprived areas like Newham … then that is a huge missed opportunity."
This week the Guardian Teacher Network features global wall planners and other resources to help teach pupils about calendars and to plan the year ahead
The New Year is about making resolutions and looking to the future, so where better to start than with a new classroom calendar full of ideas for 2012?
The Guardian Teacher Network has a variety of wall planners that will ensure you don't miss any teaching opportunities over the coming months, along with maths lessons for younger pupils about using calendars and timetables.
The Global Wall Planner is a colourful chart that lists a wealth of international days and weeks between now and the summer holidays. It is ideal for planning lessons, assemblies or whole-school activities with a global citizenship theme. Some of the dates covered include World Braille Day (4 January), Fairtrade Fortnight (27 February-11 March) and World Health Day (7 April). The wall planner can be used in conjunction with an online calendar that has links to learning and teaching resources for each global event.
The Chembakolli wall planner has beautiful pictures and illustrations of the Adivasi people, a tribal group who live in the south Indian village of Chembakolli. Produced by the charity Action Aid, the resource aims to help teachers and pupils keep track of important dates in the UK and India. It also highlights the struggle of the Adivasi to regain their land from government authorities and non-tribal people seeking opportunities for national park land, timber, and tea and coffee plantations. Resources to support the wall planner include slideshows and written information about life in and around Chembakolli.
The 2011/12 year planner features details of awareness days, religious festivals, public holidays and historical events to help you plan topical activities throughout the year. It is one of several resources produced by www.primaryclass.co.uk that are free to download for use in the classroom. Others include name labels, certificates and banners.
For KS1 and KS2 pupils, Use a Calendar is an interactive lesson that enables pupils to become familiar with the layout of a calendar. Pupils complete a drag-and-drop activity to build a calendar, and use a calendar to answer questions such as: "When is the third Monday in the month?" Pupils have 60 seconds to answer as many questions as possible. There is also a calendar template that can be printed out for pupils to complete.
Using calendars is taken a step further in the maths lessons "Use timetables" and "Read simple timetables and use this year's calendar. Pupils are encouraged to read timetables for buses, trains and planes in a variety of interactive activities. There are two supporting worksheets that can be printed out for use in the classroom or as homework tasks.
The Guardian Teacher Network has almost 100,000 pages of lesson plans and interactive materials. To see and share for yourself go to teachers.guardian.co.uk. There are also hundreds of jobs on http://schoolsjobs.guardian.co.uk.