Dan Moorhouse

Received this yesterday. I can't credit the person who sent me yet as they didn't include their name. I've asked if they'd be willing to add to this.

I remember my father and mother telling me stories of the war,as I was born in 1943 which was the end of hostilities.  They lived in Glasgow near to a power station and so it was a very dangerous situation.  On nights when the moon was full the river Clyde would light up like a silver ribbon and lead the German bombers to the power station at Dalmarnock.  Funnily enough the station never really got hit but a street very close by called Allan Street took a direct hit one night and many poor sould lost their lives.  For many years after the war the scars were still visible and my father used to take me down there to see where the bombs had hit the big tenament buildings. 

At the time of the blitz my uncle and his family lived in a town called Clydebank which was a great ship building centre and word famous for ships like the Queen Mary and so on.  My uncle was a fireman during the blitz on Clydebank and the German bombers would come over night after night in waves to try to destroy the ship yards in Clydebank.  They never really managed this but the town itself was very badly hit by the bombs.  My mother and her sisiters along with my grandmother went along after one particularly bad night and the town was completely shut down and nobody could enter.  There were ambulances and fire engines running everywhere and the town blazed from end to end.  Fortunately my uncle and his family survived but many people did not and to this day people who were only children at the time can still tell the story of the droves of German planes flying over the town of Clydebank.  It is a sight that would never be forgotton.  Clydebank is now a modern place but has been very badly hit by the closure of its main industry, ship building.

Some very interesting resources for vocational education there Chris. I'm aware that there are quite a few Australian resources available for the more traditional academic subjects - or so family in Perth, WA tell me. Can you recommend any Australian ELearning sites for more academic subjects?

Bradford, the West Yorkshire city I live in, has a recent history that is chequered with racial problems and is an area in which the political extremists are attempting to develop their support. In 2001 we had race riots, covered in depth on the BBC website. These riots were the worst Britain has seen for 20 years.

In recent weeks we have seen The White Nationalist Party apply for permission to hold a political march in the city. It, along with all other gatherings within a 5 mile radius of City hall, have been banned. See the telegraph and Argus Website for further details).

Extremist parties in the city have polled relatively well in recent elections, at the last national election over 1600 votes were cast for the BNP in Bradford North, 1100 votes went to extreme left wing parties in Bradford South. At the most recent local elections in he region of 8000 votes were cast for extremist parties.

To put things into perspective: Labour polled roughly 28,000 votes across the region, having a candidate in every constituency. The BNP stood in 9 of the 31 seats contested.

In some areas it was clear that tactical voting did occur to prevent BNP success, in the constituency I live in many Conservative and Labour supporters voted for the Liberal Democrat candidate to ensure that she, rather than the BNP, was returned:

*Ann Ozolins (Lib Dem) 2,266

Stewart Williams (BNP) 874

Harry Sissling (Con) 596

Shofiqul Islam (Lab) 497

Judith Wever (Green) 119

Majority 1,392

If the local election voting pattern was replicated in general elections the half dozen local wards that make up the Westminster constituency would return a Lib Dem candidate by a massive majority - in Westminster elections they usually come in a poor third, occasionally fourth behind the Green party.

And I got the notification mail so it works.

Try the 'track this topic' option. You should receive an e-mail notification of replies to a thread if you have selected this. You'll find the option to do this on the bar underneath the thread title, top rght of the page. (Unless Andy has disabled this option?)

I think I've found the answer to this one:

"A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, explaining the various Crimes and Misdemeanours which at present are felt, as a Pressure on the Community, and suggesting Remedies" Patrick Colquhoun, 1796.

See this site for a detailed history.

Curriculum Online

Do you have a link for me to find more information about Curriculum Online? And what is Ofsted???

http://www.curriculumonline.gov.uk/

Ofsted is the organisation that inspects schools in England and Wales. Schools, typically, are inspected by them every 4-5 years and a public report about the schools strengths and weaknesses is published. http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/

The Seminars on Schoolhistory.co.uk are intended to be a more formal discussion about teaching history and different approaches to this. The topics are suggested by the membership and chosen as a result of their perceived usefulness and interest to history teachers. Many of the topics are quite broad in their approach and are certainly not limited to the History curriculum: John Simkin, for example, led a very successful seminar on 'The student as teacher.'

With the more successful Seminars you find a large range of ideas based on one aspect of teaching and learning. This tends to differ from threads in the 'normal' part of the forum as good topics can easily be forgotten and / or bypassed. The structured nature of the programme also makes it easier for people to prepare ideas in advance, makes advertising the forus work easier - John notes the contents in his weekly newsletter and, as it is formal, allows people to concentrate on the issues without worrying about frivolous responses. Few threads in the normal section of the seminar have gone into as much depth as these seminars, the teaching the holocaust thread - also now a topic on this forum, is a rare example of a 'normal' thread becoming so detailed.

The authorities would be much better off creating LEA sites that guided teachers to available online resources and lessons, had central message boards and forums that could be used for collaborative projects and central e-mailing systems so that staff across an authority could communicate.

That sounds a lot like an EUN community. I have been using two myself and from an administrator viewpoint it works. Yes i know that the software they used to use was archaic, but this has changed recently!

One question; what does LEA stand for?

LEA - Local Education Authority

Just a thought - given the international flavour of the forum, would it be worth having a guide to educational terminology somewhere on the forum? Many of the things that teachers take for granted are unique to one countries education system afterall.

My school participated in a trial run of one VLE model two years ago. 3 of us, all of whom run websites, went on a 5 day course learning how to set things up, create activities that were compatible etc. The only advantage any of us could see in the software when compared to activities already online, was that scores were recorded and could be manipulated in a variety of ways. However the time taken to set up these activities was much greater than it would be to create a decent decision making game, investigation lesson or series of tasks with open ended outcomes. The marking facility could only test recall of knowledge. Fine for revision purposes but hardly what is needed in day to day teaching and learning. In short, the VLE was an extremely expensive waste of money. None of the learning functions of this model were any better than things that can be found online free of charge and the recording systems were little better than those available on things such as mygradebook.com. Also, it was an extremely complicated system, the vast majority of our staff, who are fairly well versed in ICT things, couldn't understand the lesson creating tools, nor did they have the time to create.

The only benefit that we have seen from this form of E Learning has been with our Post 16 students. We have a joint Sixth form with another local school and the communication tools make life a lot easier. That said, it was obvious that this function could be fulfilled free of charge via e-mail lists provided by smartgroups.com or yahoogroups and the message board facility seemed a rather silly expense given that there are umpteen free providers of forums: invisionfree.com being the free version of the software powering this forum.

The authorities would be much better off creating LEA sites that guided teachers to available online resources and lessons, had central message boards and forums that could be used for collaborative projects and central e-mailing systems so that staff across an authority could communicate. If advisors collected materisls from schools there would then be a central spo from which people could grab resources. Cheap, saves time, enables online collaboration with neighbouring schools and doesn't waste time or money on pointless thrills that benefit nobody. All you'd have to do is teach people how to log on...

I'm Dan Moorhouse. I am Head of History and a Year Leader at Laisterdyke High School in Bradford, West Yorkshire. I run schoolshistory.org.uk and have produced materials for Learn and ProQuest history.

I've toyed with several methods of ensuring security. For some work I use a forum that has been installed onto our network, advantages are that its well within the walled garden and outsiders can't get near it. The downside to that method of course is that students can't access it from home.

E-mail lists, such as the ATW one are easy to set up for students, assuming they have e-mail addresses. These can be hidden from the general public and membership and posting rights can be set at any level that the administrator wants to use. On mine I choose to not list the groups publically, all members must be invited and the first 5 posts are moderated before they hit the list.

On public forums it is a little harder to ensure security. The tools on this forum, for example, could allow you to limit access to Private Messaging, e-mail can be blocked and / or limited and the amount of detail in member details can be limited. In that way the only means of communication is via the forums - ie, where its visible to all. Moderation then allows any suspect posts or breaches of student security to be deal with promptly. again, its possible to set member types to have differnt posting restrictions - so new members could be set to 'moderated posts' for whatever period, especially useful if you don't now who the person is. The restriction can then be lifted once the identity of the person has been verified.

In general I always include the following as rules for students in any online project:

- No pictures

- No addresses other than that of the school (and only that if absolutely neccessary)

- No phone numbers

- Usernames to be initial and surname, not full name

On public forums:

- No e-mail addresses in posts

- No PM function available

- Identity of all users verified before they can post (In my case the 'unknown' people tend to be cousins / friends of my students who have been told about what we're doing and want to join in, very easy to check who they are)

The forum works well Andy and should improve in terms of the quality of student posts as they get more used to it. I've run a forum via our intranet for several years and its always worked well, and has got a LOT better as the year has progressed.