Project HappyChild NEWS

November 2002

[for ongoing updates, see Latest Site News]

Hi there! It's been the busiest few weeks imaginable here, since the last Newsletter, with pagebuilding progress and preparations in many areas of the site. Coupled with a huge upsurge in visits - over a quarter of a million "visits" recorded and over two million "hits" for the month as a whole, our highest ever.

Our thanks go as ever to the many people who've publicised the site, or passed details to friends - and also to "Care in Practice" which featured Project HappyChild in their autumn edition, and to Maria Brunt who arranged this.

ACCELERATED LEARNING: Michael's Feature Article for October is now on line, "My Top Ten Tips for Exam Success". Due to the massive demand for Michael's book and tapes on "The 77 Habits of Highly Effective Students", this title is currently out of stock, so we've included an e-mail link at the foot of the article to enable visitors to let Michael know if they want an e-mail notification when more tapes, booklets and E-book versions of "The 77 Habits" become available.

CENTRAL FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE: We're very close now to being able to upload a large number of pages for this area, for which lists have so far been sent in; a couple of minor programming items to be dealt with plus the templates for the index pages, but we're hoping to have the first hundred or so Word Search grids on line in a week or two. Keep an eye on the Latest News page for updates.

Thanks go to everyone who's been sending in new lists - we'll be updating the CFR index page in due course, as well as sending out e-mail confirmations of acceptances.

ENGLISH RESOURCES: As many of our visitors will know, some while back we set up the beginnings of an area for "Spellings, Sounds and Meanings". Initially we had to defer pagebuilding for a while because so much else was going on across the site, but we're very happy to say that the "template" pages are now on line for poem writing, mc lyrics, making crosswords, and lateral thinking (a total of seven worksheet masters in all).

The first prototype worksheets have also been designed, for writing/spelling, wordsearches, dictionary meanings, sentence construction and making crossword clues, all available for viewing so you can begin to see how this huge resource is going to fit together. We're more than half way through building the database of 10,000 English words and, with the help of Mario Becroft in New Zealand who is tackling the programming requirements, we're hoping to have the full resource of *5000* free worksheets on line within the next few months.

You'll find some basic background info on the English index page, a detailed overview of all that's planned for this resource on the SSM Intro page, and the prototypes and templates on the Sounds Database index page.

SCHOOLS INTERCHANGE: The scheduled massive overhaul of the resources of Schools Interchange has now begun. We've started with Schools in Africa, where resources have been updated or added for Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa.

As well as access to university and schools' websites, there are links in place now to Government Education departments and linked items such as the Malawi Millennium Project (Strathclyde University) and the ground-breaking "African Virtual University" project.

Updating and expanding Schools Interchange is likely to take some considerable time, but we've identified many new resources and will be adding these whenever the ongoing pagebuilding schedule allows.

SPONSORED EVENTS: The SENSE City Speed Skate on Thursday 24th October 2002 was a resounding success, with teams participating from companies like Bloomberg, Slaughter & May, and The Royal Bank of Scotland. Click here for reports and photos of this year's City Speed Skate, and enter your details to register your team for next year's event .....

VIRUSES: A few days ago we received a slightly unusual e-mail from Sophos, about an "e-mail nuisance". Not a virus, not a worm - but still potentially causing problems, and presenting itself as an "e-greetings-card" along the lines of what all of us receive from time to time. You may wish to check out the Sophos page at http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/greetings.html for more details.

WILDFOWL & WETLANDS TRUST - Our thanks to Mark Austin for writing to us mid-month about this new educational website which offers (free!) a comprehensive range of National Curriculum-linked, cross-curricular materials about water, wetlands and wetland life.

The site includes lesson plans, factfiles, data sets, images and online games, and has been designed for use at both home and school - click here for more details. An ongoing project at the site is following the migration of the Brent Geese to Canada from Iceland, and their return journey to WWT Castle Espie later this year.

A delightful site which we've now added to the "FOCUS" area on the site here. Our thanks to Mark for forwarding this graphic for our use (graphics on the WWT site itself are copyrighted).

Previous visitors to the FOCUS page will have seen the entry from HEAF (Harlem Educational Activities Fund) whose ongoing funding problems (in the wake of the Twin Towers tragedy) were mentioned in our July newsletter.

Daniel Rose wrote to us again yesterday - "Our programmatic successes contine wonderfully, but in this year of post September 11th trauma, the funding climate in New York generally is poor, and we would be profoundly grateful for any help we can get." So if anyone reading this would like to support this astonishingly-successful project - and the hope its example provides for other areas implementing similar measures - please contact Daniel direct - drose (at) rosenyc.com .

GUESTBOOK: We've added a couple of items to the Guestbook this month, the first a letter from Michelle Tomkinson in South Africa, writing about help needed for Sanele, a little Zulu boy with Prune Belly Syndrome.

The second item for the Guestbook is an update from Ken & Katy Cloke, both secondary school teachers who, as many of you will recall, wrote to us back in March 2000, when they were planning to move out to Romania to help street children there ... well, they did indeed move from Glasgow, Scotland to Arad, Romania - click here for more details.

Project HappyChild DIRECTORY: We're delighted to say that FunForLife have joined the Directory this month. This theatre charity works with disadvantaged children and young people to produce theatre performances, spectacles, and theatrical giant-puppet processions, aiming in the process to impart specific creative, social and life skills which can be of real help to young people in adverse circumstances. Click here for their Directory entry, and here for details of resources they need for their scheduled "Fly Phoenix" programme in March 2003, in Croatia, supported amongst others by the well-known actress Emma Thompson.

Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa - our thanks to Anthea Westlake for advising us of a change of telephone number; we were somewhat saddened to learn that this charity no longer have the Arethusa sail training ship. We've amended their Directory entry (click here) to take account of the changes, and added their new e-mail address. If you have a cached or printed-out version of the Directory, you may wish to amend this.

OPERATION CHRISTMAS CHILD: Countless thousands of people across the globe are even now making up a shoebox full of gifts for a disadvantaged child somewhere in the world. We've updated the Directory entry for OCC (click here) to link direct to the page which gives full details for preparing your box (what to include, what not to include, and where to take it, and when).

We're informed that in England, Kwik-Fit tyre & exhaust centres are accepting loads of up to 50 boxes at a time from individuals or groups, from 6th-19th November - check the site for the precise arrangements for your country (those shown at top of page include UK & Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands) - we're told the last day has passed in the UK for booking special collections of more than 50 boxes, but if you and your friends/colleagues have large quantities to send, talk to your local centre and find out how many they will accept at any one time.

Operation Christmas Child is hoping to deliver six *million* shoeboxes this Christmas ..... so if you'd like to send one of these special gifts, don't miss the deadline.

Best regards,

Penny.

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