Photography and movie making

Discovery Time provides the perfect opportunity for a small enthusiastic group to:

• capture the action happening in the class
• experiment and explore possibilities for themselves
• get teacher guidance if needed
• be creative

In a year 6 class last week a group became enthusiastic about a collection of dolls I had bought. We let them lose with the digital camera and these are some of the photos they came up with.

They now plan to use the movie maker software to put the still pictures into a digital story.

Movie Maker is on windows XP. Go into 'start' / 'all programmes'. If you can't see it there (the icon is a film reel) then look under 'accessories'. Right click on it and select 'send to desk top'. The icon will then appear on the desktop so that students can find it easily.

The programme is very user friendly and with minimal guidance your techno savvy juniors will soon master it. Older students should just about be able to work it out for themselves.

Modern life leads to more depression among children
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 110 teachers, psychologists, children's authors and other experts express their concern at the rising incidence of childhood depression and children's behavioural and developmental conditions.

They write that children... " still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with real-life significant adults in there lives.

They also need time. In a fast-moving hypercompetitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum."

In response the Daily Telegraph has launched a campaign, Hold on to Childhood. Letters and emails of support have poured in.

Check out the website above for the letter in full.