Tag: When

How can we best use Kindles in children’s education?

How can we best use Kindles in children’s education in the UK or even just in Adur?

They cost £111 each, inc Vat. They are monochrome and have no images, just text – loads and loads of text.

Let’s say we (a school) bought twenty of them, who would we give them to or lend them to and how would they use them? If you damage one, presumably then that child would miss out for say three months.

Or children could download the Free Kindle reader software to any PC (possibly not portable) so that those users can download what they want, provided that it’s free (500,000 books.) Could the education broadband facility cope with this, both speed and permissions.

Range of books is from Winnie the Pooh to the complete works of Shakespeare. But they can also be used for ‘white noise’ for very young children.

With six devices per Kindle unit account a group of six six-formers could be allowed a subscription to the Economist, say. They could also download possibly all their academic study books. Amazon are trialling a library service in America, where a book can be lent (electronically) to someone else for two weeks, not available in the UK yet. Then again we could give the six-former groups a budget for them to spend as they will.

What do schools and colleges spend on books each year?

Are there any charitable trusts who could help us?

Does it need to be part fo an overall strategy or is it just a tactic we should just get on with.

Some schools have already started.

As always the full question has to be sub-divided into Who, What, Why, When, Where and How and for each sub-group at the various stages in school.

Cliff Jenkins’ Policies, Independent prospective local councillor

Cliff Jenkins’ Policies

Independent prospective local councillor

Objectives. Cliff wants to:

  • Improve the aspirations and opportunities for our children,
  • Improve public transport services
  • Increase housing available for young people locally
  • Support local personal involvement
  • Reduce Council Tax by ten per cent whilst improving services

Cliff’s comments o local and Concerns.

When asked about three important topics…

  • Solving local problems with the local authority. “Too often genuine grievances are met with a combination of arrogance and ignorance. I intend to change that.”
  • Children’s education and welfare “Our children are our future, we need to give them as good a start as we can. I intend to do just that.”
  • Efficiency and effectiveness of the council “As a monopoly, it has no competition and therefore has no need to improve. I intend to change that.”

Cliff replied “In my opinion the key areas for debate and then action are:

What can we do to help society reduce their use of energy, fuel, electricity and other natural resources?
What can we do to improve the success of our schools and our children?
What can we do to help people to respect each other more?
How can we help people improve their self-esteem, to be proud of themselves, of their family and their community?

Finally how do we create the extra houses for our young people to buy or rent.”

As always the underlying questions are Who, What, Why, When, Where and How

Extra cost-effective housing in towns and villages,

Extra cost-effective housing in towns and villages.

Update 16th Oct 2010. What space have we got in the centre of our towns and villages? For me the answer is the carparks whether as part of a shopping complex or the civic ones or corporate or office car parks, even better over pub and railway station car parks.. We could offer existing owners the planning opportunity for residential or small office or retail. In the event that they do not go ahead then the opportunity could be open to anyone to …. (see below.) And then again we could build over the traffic islands and the adjacent roads.


Original entry, 7th September 2010:

I was travelling through Steyning this morning and saw the large car park at the medical centre and also the fairly substantial village car park. Then in Shoreham By Sea I passed the staff car park for the Adur Centre and there are various shoppers car parks. Then there are the hospital car parks in Worthing and Southwick, plus the shoppers car parks at Holmbush. All full of cars.

I have been aware for many years that we are in desperate need of houses which can be reasonably afforded by our young people.

So I wondered if there might be a way to bring these two thoughts together.

I wonder whether we could offer a two hundred and ninety nine year leases (ninety nine years is too short) for the air above the car parks. The idea being to build structures where the ground floor is car parking, as at present, though with the upper floors available for housing. Let’s say three floors of housing. There should be no so-called “affordable housing” as these are effectively only available to ‘key workers’ (civil servants) which therefore makes it even more difficult for everyone else.

Whatever sites are chosen they must be served by public transport.

The result will be to bring people to live in the shopping areas, bring life into villages and enable our young people to buy their own homes locally.

Who, What, Why, When, Where and How. Options need to be created without preconceptions, indeed challenging existing habits.

Scroll to top