One of the key roles in government opposition is to say it as it is. But it is a great shame that the current situation follows 13 years of Labour party governance which also failed to address the educational inadequacies despite Tony Blair’s now infamous “education, education , education” chant. The problem now is with a coalition government vast energy is lost to the needs of constant compromise. Ed Miliband should not give up the cause but the solution may be a while away yet in the UK. More…

The World Wide Web, Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple  et al. have fundamentally transposed our accessibility to knowledge and communications. What we need now is an entrepreneurial eureka moment that will lay the foundation stone to a revolutionary method of education and learning. Maybe as elusive as the Higgs Boson particle and could be the subject to an incentive reward, we need a clever group of individuals to evolve a form of learning with global application. The effect could revolutionise our world of learning and generate massive wealth for the developers.  more…

No wonder the intelligent schools have spotted loopholes in the system. Enrolling children in esoteric exam subjects to improve the schools’ pass ratings can leave the students with worthless qualifications to support higher education or have any vocational relevance. At last the department of education is to close this door and give children access to core subjects that are crucially in their centre of learning. No longer will bricklaying with dance be regarded as a worthwhile exam course. More….

The class-pack is supplied as 6 packs of 12 dice and has the advantage of variations on the game that allow you to choose to allow players to compose words crosswords-style, by crossing words. When adding points, letters used twice are counted twice. OR After throwing the dice, each player writes a list of words using the letters. The player with the longest list wins the round. OR having chosen a topic such as animals, countries, makes of cars, roll one die or several dice. The first player to call out a word starting with the letter or one of the letters on the dice gets a point.  OR after throwing the dice, each player composes a sentence or poem using words starting with the letters available. All letters must be used.

The list is growing and can be extended with your own ideas. The fun helps stimulate children to learn.

Developed by teachers as a quick and enjoyable way to get students practicing their language skills. A simple throw of the picture-based dice gets your students instantly speaking, thinking and listening. You can add more dice based on the ability of the group. The dice can be used to teach any first or second language in a variety of ways. The range extends across a wide selection of curriculum based topics. Students roll the dice and say what they see in the target language. There is no other product that matches Talking Dice’s Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic properties. Talking Dice are used by thousands of language teachers, primary school teachers and speech therapists worldwide. Talking Dice can fit into your current lessons plan in minutes and the variations are almost endless.

The games have been developed to make learning easy. With a little patience and practice by parents and teachers the involvement and confidence of children is easily achieved. The Feel Good board game is a non-competitive team game for use as a PSHE teaching resource in the classroom or at home. By helping children become familiar with different feelings and emotions and ways of expressing them they will learn to be sharing, caring, laughing and smiling whilst focusing on their own and others unique qualities. A fun way for children to gain confidence and boost their self-esteem.

Discussion around the meal table can be a little terse with teenagers. Where do you start the conversation? By turning this impasse into an educational game can start the ball rolling to open a topic which the rest of the family or classroom can join in. Breaking the ice is always the difficulty but the PSHE games such as Discussion Cards and Fink cards have been developed by learning specialists to open the flow and stimulate the conversation.

In November 2011 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the statistics from a study of 15 years old children living  in the principle industrial countries. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that children whose parents and teachers discuss the news, social and political affairs on a weekly or daily basis scored 28 points higher in reading than those who do not. Spending time together develops social skills as well as reasoning powers which is the bedrock of practically all learning.

There is a further hidden advantage to the art of debate and awareness of a subject. Not only does it give you a sporting chance in quiz shows, by participating in the discussion keys facts are retained and opinions formed.The skill of putting an argument across developed. This can be enhanced by a new educational game called Thinking Dice which presents students with question which develop a higher order of thinking by asking key questions to stimulate a structured answer.

The couch potato or child who spends hours on computer games can be transformed socially and educationally. The skills learnt early on can format the reasoning ability that can change a child’s option s for the rest of their  lives. And it all begins with talking about the news.