Editorial #162 – Strategic planning for autumn 2021

New online media literacy strategy

The government published its new Online media literacy strategy yesterday. It aims to tackle the spread of misinformation and disinformation by giving people the skills to think critically about what they see and read online and help children navigate the internet safely. The UK is currently 10th out of 34 European countries for media literacy rates and studies by the National Literacy Trust have shown that just 2% of children have the critical thinking skills needed to tell fact from fiction online. The headlines from the strategy are £340k to upskill teachers, library workers, youth workers and carers in media literacy and the creation of an Online Media Literacy Taskforce, bringing together key stakeholders to take collective action to remove the barriers to increasing people’s media literacy. There is also an online portal of media literacy and online safety resources, which we heartily recommend (you’ll see that the CLC appears high up on the list of recommended resources). We’ll be covering the strategy as a whole in more depth in a blog post next week. For now, read the strategy, go to the resource list

ProjectEVOLVE evolves

The very useful ProjectEVOLVE, which we’ve mentioned in previous newsletters, from SWGfL and UK Safer Internet Centre, now has a Knowledge Map feature for years 1,3,4,5,7 and 10. Its aim is to reduce workload by recommending resources relevant to the children you teach while giving valuable insight into the strengths and weaknesses in their online development. Find out more

Discover Story Seekers

The National Theatre and the Unicorn Theatre have got together on a free online project available to all UK state primary schools. Story Seekers, a six-week creative literacy project, includes filmed theatre performances to guide pupils through the Story Seeker quest, workshops and performances by professional storytellers and training and resources to support teachers to lead the project. It focuses on supporting children to develop their communication and language skills post-pandemic, promoting self-expression and wellbeing. It sounds great – find out more

Phone bans, again

A couple of weeks ago we highlighted ministerial moves to ban mobile phones in schools (even though most schools already have policies). Parent Ping has found out what parents think about the matter. They support a ban on phones in the classroom, although 8 out of 10 say this is already not allowed so, as PP says, ‘it’s a bit like making a law against diving in the shallow end of the swimming pool!’ Only 4 in 10 do not support an outright ban given that lots of parents of secondary school students think a phone is necessary for the journey to and from school. There isn’t even overwhelming support for banning social media on phones in schools. See the PP bar charts

In other poll news, Teacher Tapp revealed that 31% of primary teachers and 38% of secondary teachers have to bring their own coffee to school… Don’t worry, at CLC HQ we always provide teachers with good quality coffee for free!

Mozilla Explains

We like this series of YouTube videos explaining different technologies (and their issues) without using jargon. From ‘what is AI?’ to ‘Is YouTube watching me?’ there’s some good content for all ages. Be explained to

BlendEd – latest resources

Discover the latest BlendEd webinars and self-paced courses. These bite-sized resources are packed full of ideas that can be applied in the classroom.