If you haven't already, take a look at Routes, our multi media science game – it's live through February and March (click here)
C4 Education is now planning its teen projects for 2010 and beyond. We've learnt a lot about cross-platform commissioning, how to get the attention of teens, and how to turn this into action, participation and learning. We've also learnt a lot about collaboration with partners like The Wellcome Trust, Myspace and Bebo. So what's next? This edition of the Education Newsletter outlines some of our future plans as well as detailing what's happening this month.
One of Channel 4's tv highlights in February is Boys and Girls Alone – do watch to see what happens when ten boys and girls aged between 8 and 11 get the opportunity to create and run their own communities away from the control of mums, dads or teachers.
JANEY WALKER
Head of Education,
Channel 4
C4 Education is now planning its teen projects for 2010 and beyond. We've learnt a lot about cross-platform commissioning, how to get the attention of teens, and how to turn this into action, participation and learning. We've also learnt a lot about collaboration with partners like The Wellcome Trust, Myspace and Bebo. So what's next? This edition of the Education Newsletter outlines some of our future plans as well as detailing what's happening this month.
One of Channel 4's tv highlights in February is Boys and Girls Alone – do watch to see what happens when ten boys and girls aged between 8 and 11 get the opportunity to create and run their own communities away from the control of mums, dads or teachers.
JANEY WALKER
Head of Education,
Channel 4
We're talking to potential partners about continuing Yeardot and Battlefront after Summer 2009. Both projects have created a huge buzz in the press, amongst teens, and amongst teachers working in Citizenship, PSHE and other areas of the curriculum. We plan to run the projects online throughout 2009 and return with a new bunch of Yeardotters and Battlefront campaigners in the 09/10 academic year.
We want a mix of new projects and returning formats, and if you're interested in partnering with us please email Matt Locke.
We want a mix of new projects and returning formats, and if you're interested in partnering with us please email Matt Locke.
We've got an exciting slate of games in production, and some really intriguing ideas in development for 09/10. Games have become one of the most important media platforms for teens, and we're developing projects that deliver real educational value as well as hitting some new innovative highs. We're particularly interested in developing on new platforms that bring social and collaborative play to the fore. This could mean mobile and handheld games, web-based virtual worlds, or even games for the networked consoles, e.g. Xbox Live Arcade and Wiiware. Again, if you're interested in partnering with us on gaming projects, please email Alice Taylor.
So far we've launched projects looking at campaigning, developing personal goals, careers advice and sex education. This year, we're looking at genetics, online privacy and media literacy. Now we're looking for new ideas. What do you think are the most important issues facing teens in the coming year? How will the global recession affect teens just coming into the world of work? Are new social media technologies helping all teens get on in their lives, or are there new barriers to progress? What about the new and emerging spaces teens live, work and play in?
We're looking for innovative and engaging projects that will address issues like these. If you are an organisation working with teens, or a production company with a fantastic new idea, please email Matt Locke or Alice Taylor.
We're looking for innovative and engaging projects that will address issues like these. If you are an organisation working with teens, or a production company with a fantastic new idea, please email Matt Locke or Alice Taylor.
On 26 January Channel 4 launched its first educational game of 2009; Routes, a genetics-themed thriller, in association with the Wellcome Trust.
Over eight weeks Routes players will enter a world of mystery and play, discovering the impact of full genome sequencing and other important ethical debates along the way. On the website, teens will be able to play against each other in a series of challenges and flash games and to follow comedian Katherine Ryan as she explores her own DNA via her weekly video shows.
Scientific consultant Markus Schoenberg best sums up this project: "I predict that in the next ten years teenagers will be able to own a copy of their own genome for a few hundred pounds. What they do with this information will be the greatest challenge. Routes can be the beginning of an engagement with this big and important question: will we become conservationists, protecting human DNA from perceived interference? Or will we build new genes and strip out the faulty ones, defeating disease and rearing smarter, healthier, longer-lived children?"
To explore and play (click here)
Over eight weeks Routes players will enter a world of mystery and play, discovering the impact of full genome sequencing and other important ethical debates along the way. On the website, teens will be able to play against each other in a series of challenges and flash games and to follow comedian Katherine Ryan as she explores her own DNA via her weekly video shows.
Scientific consultant Markus Schoenberg best sums up this project: "I predict that in the next ten years teenagers will be able to own a copy of their own genome for a few hundred pounds. What they do with this information will be the greatest challenge. Routes can be the beginning of an engagement with this big and important question: will we become conservationists, protecting human DNA from perceived interference? Or will we build new genes and strip out the faulty ones, defeating disease and rearing smarter, healthier, longer-lived children?"
To explore and play (click here)
This month sees the return of the YearDot 15 to Channel 4's morning tv schedule. The second series of programmes sees just how far they have managed to fulfil their goals so far. What will Sam do now that entry for Eurovision has changed? Can Chloe manage to keep going with her sporting aspirations? And how is Akilah's journalistic prowess coming on?
The series runs each weekday morning from 23 February. To follow all 15 as they share their blogs, videos and video diaries, (click here)
The series runs each weekday morning from 23 February. To follow all 15 as they share their blogs, videos and video diaries, (click here)
Dispatches examines how the children of Congo are being affected by the latest fighting that is tearing their country apart. An entire generation has been scarred by the conflict – in the last twelve years at least three million children have died as a result of fighting, hunger and disease.
Reporter Deborah Davies hears children across East Congo describe their horrific experiences. A 5 year-old boy thinks soldiers threw a rock at him because he's too young to understand that he's been shot in his chest and an 11 year-old girl hides behind her hands as she describes seeing a woman raped and slashed to death.
There's been a huge increase in the number of children being kidnapped by armed groups and forced to be soldiers. Many of them were taken by the CNDP rebel group, and Dispatches meets its leader Laurent Nkunda, to challenge him on his illegal use of children and his role in causing the latest crisis.
Congo's Forgotten Children: tx 2 February 8pm
Reporter Deborah Davies hears children across East Congo describe their horrific experiences. A 5 year-old boy thinks soldiers threw a rock at him because he's too young to understand that he's been shot in his chest and an 11 year-old girl hides behind her hands as she describes seeing a woman raped and slashed to death.
There's been a huge increase in the number of children being kidnapped by armed groups and forced to be soldiers. Many of them were taken by the CNDP rebel group, and Dispatches meets its leader Laurent Nkunda, to challenge him on his illegal use of children and his role in causing the latest crisis.
Congo's Forgotten Children: tx 2 February 8pm
This is the moment of conception – when one single sperm fused with the mother's egg. If another sperm had got there first this baby would be someone else. So what made that winning sperm so special? Why did it succeed over billions of others?
To find out, we are going to take you on the epic journey sperm undertake through the human body, and we're going to do it by scaling the whole thing up to human size. For the first time we'll be able to appreciate just what an extraordinary journey sperm face as they try to reach the egg. There is no going back, no surrender, and only one winner.
A sperm is just one five hundredth of a millimetre long, so to make things easier Dr Allan Pacey and a team of experts have helped to scale them and their world up 34,000 times. They'll give us practical advice on how to give sperm the best chance of reaching the egg, what kind of sex to have and when to have it to maximise the chances of conception.
To find out, we are going to take you on the epic journey sperm undertake through the human body, and we're going to do it by scaling the whole thing up to human size. For the first time we'll be able to appreciate just what an extraordinary journey sperm face as they try to reach the egg. There is no going back, no surrender, and only one winner.
A sperm is just one five hundredth of a millimetre long, so to make things easier Dr Allan Pacey and a team of experts have helped to scale them and their world up 34,000 times. They'll give us practical advice on how to give sperm the best chance of reaching the egg, what kind of sex to have and when to have it to maximise the chances of conception.
Ten boys and ten girls aged between 8-11 years old are being given the opportunity to run their own communities away from the control of mums, dads or teachers.
Living in two separate villages, they will create their own mini-societies and decide everything about how they live: what they do, what they eat, when they get up, if they clean and wash up and how they organise and entertain themselves. The series hopes to answer some perennial questions. Do girls excel without boys? Are boys as badly behaved as is made out? What can we learn from them? What will they – and their parents – learn from the experience? And what can the communities they create teach us about our own society and the way we bring up our children?
Living in two separate villages, they will create their own mini-societies and decide everything about how they live: what they do, what they eat, when they get up, if they clean and wash up and how they organise and entertain themselves. The series hopes to answer some perennial questions. Do girls excel without boys? Are boys as badly behaved as is made out? What can we learn from them? What will they – and their parents – learn from the experience? And what can the communities they create teach us about our own society and the way we bring up our children?
One of the greatest strengths of the web is connecting and aggregating supply and demand. Landshare, a new initiative from Channel 4 and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage, plugs into exactly that power – it links people who want to grow their own fruit & veg but can't get an allotment, with people who have bits of land they can grow it on. This could be an elderly lady who can no longer do her garden, a property developer with some wasteland, a hospital with overgrown former gardens, a church with glebe land, anywhere where unproductive land can be safely used to grow your own and the resultant produce shared between growers and landowner. Over 20,000 people have registered their interest on the temporary pre-launch site at landshare.net. The full site is due to launch this Spring.
We have never had more or better learning technologies than we have now. But are we making the most of them?
In the inaugural debate – held in honour of the much loved former Channel 4 Head of Education, Naomi Sargant – a panel chaired by Melvyn Bragg and including David Puttnam, Rt Hon David Blunkett MP, Professor Christine E. King, Anthony Lilley, Helen Milner and Alan Tuckett OBE, discussed whether technology is the answer to an ever widening gap in educational attainment opportunities.
Over the past decade, new technologies have been central to the thinking around lifelong learning, but has this investment paid dividends?
Is there a danger that the concentration on technology is creating new cultural elites and a new cultural underclass and is it contributing to the decline in social mobility? The next newsletter will include a full report of the event.
In the inaugural debate – held in honour of the much loved former Channel 4 Head of Education, Naomi Sargant – a panel chaired by Melvyn Bragg and including David Puttnam, Rt Hon David Blunkett MP, Professor Christine E. King, Anthony Lilley, Helen Milner and Alan Tuckett OBE, discussed whether technology is the answer to an ever widening gap in educational attainment opportunities.
Over the past decade, new technologies have been central to the thinking around lifelong learning, but has this investment paid dividends?
Is there a danger that the concentration on technology is creating new cultural elites and a new cultural underclass and is it contributing to the decline in social mobility? The next newsletter will include a full report of the event.
Launching in April, this new and exciting initiative will give 160 young people an all round view of our industry, helping them to understand the many different roles available in the media. It's about inspiring people by showing them the skills and experiences they need to progress – as well as innovative ways to strengthen their own career prospects. We will be partnering with Media Box, BAFTA, The Guardian, Pinewood Studios and Skillset to deliver a truly inspiring experience. We start the programme with two open days on 18 and 19 February, and then young people can apply to attend Inspiration Week during the Easter holidays through the new 4Talent website (click here)
Channel 4's Innovation for the Public Fund (4iP) will shortly launch a new arts aggregation platform, with the working title of Central Station. Amateur artists and those already making moves in art schools around the country will find a place to share their creations, with the chance to win regular prizes that money cannot buy such as studio time and study tours... The final award will be a major cash art prize, the world's biggest for social media creativity.
The site will also feature interviews with established artists, the chance to be mentored online by them and exclusive video content on the recent history of contemporary art. The action starts this April.
The site will also feature interviews with established artists, the chance to be mentored online by them and exclusive video content on the recent history of contemporary art. The action starts this April.
Channel 4 has announced that Oona King will be starting as our new Head of Diversity in March. She was previously MP for Bethnal Green & Bow from 1997-2005 and is currently Senior Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister on Equalities and Diversity, as well as being a distinguished writer and broadcaster.
Oona will be championing diversity across all our activities and ensuring our suppliers apply similar standards and policies. She'll be supporting Channel 4's chairing of the Cultural Diversity Network to drive some significant changes across the sector, encouraging new and diverse talent into all levels of the industry.
Oona will be championing diversity across all our activities and ensuring our suppliers apply similar standards and policies. She'll be supporting Channel 4's chairing of the Cultural Diversity Network to drive some significant changes across the sector, encouraging new and diverse talent into all levels of the industry.
For more information about any of these projects, programmes or events please contact:
Rachel Postgate | email: rpostgate@Channel4.co.uk | Telephone: 020 7306 8282