Area 6 : News & Views

LATEST SITE NEWS

10th November 2006: We're aware that this page hasn't been updated much this year! for which our apologies, but we've had our hands full with matters ensuing from the move, and the huge demands of setting up the new areas for the free dual-language worksheets, a number of which are expected to be able to go on line very soon.

10th November 2006: Projects helping children in Africa: A link has today been added from the Projects in Africa page to the Africa Foundation working to help children in Uganda since 1971. For as little as Ł20 you can buy a pig which helps cover the cost of a child going to school, and the site also has a page for setting up school links with Uganda, if this is of interest. The Africa Foundation is currently very low on funds and any help [please contact them direct via their website] would be appreciated :)

18th August 2006: FREE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY?: An extraordinary announcement by Steorn today seems to say that free energy technology will be available royalty-free for water and rural electrification projects in third world countries.

Extracts from their press release follow:

"Steorn develops free energy technology and issues challenge to the global scientific community"

"London, 18th August 2006: Steorn, an Irish technology development company, has today issued a challenge to the global scientific community to test Steorn's free energy technology and publish the findings."

"Steorn's technology is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy. The technology can be applied to virtually all devices requiring energy, from cellular phones to cars."

"... Following the validation process, Steorn intends to license its technology to organisations within the energy sector. It will allow use of its technology royalty-free for certain purposes including water and rural electrification projects in third world countries, details to be announced later."

Read the full press release here.

29th June 2006: CHILDREN IN MOLDOVA: Delightful update yesterday, on the EveryChild news page here. A couple of brief excerpts follow:

MOLDOVA ANNOUNCES WIDE-REACHING CHANGES TO CHILDCARE

[quote]   Moldova is set to completely reform their national childcare policy, practice and legislation, eventually replacing large institutions with child-focused, family-based alternatives  [/unquote]

[quote]   ... I salute the President's decision to put childcare so high on the agenda and take such a great step forward. Children are our future and this new policy is all about putting children first and providing the best environment to give them every opportunity to develop and eventually take their rightful place in adult life." Stela Grigoras EveryChild   [/unquote]

To read the rest of the article (which includes contact details for the Press Office at EveryChild), please click here.

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26th June 2006: PLAY POLICY AND STRATEGY: Just received here, from PlayLink:

PLAY POLICY AND STRATEGY ONLINE FORUM
Now extended to Friday 30 June 2006
http://www.freeplaynetwork.org.uk/playlink/playstrategydiscussion

The PLAYLINK/Free Play Network discussion forum on Play Policy and Strategy development has been extended for one week for participants to post questions and comments. A final endnote will be posted by PLAYLINK on Monday 3 July at which point this site will be closed for further comments. All questions and comments will remain available to view. Our team of facilitators (who are local authority officers with responsibility for play policy and strategy development) aims to respond throughout the week, ending Friday 30 June 2006.

WE WOULD APPRECIATE YOUR HELP IN ENSURING WIDEST POSSIBLE DISSEMINATION OF THIS MESSAGE. PLEASE :
1. SEND this notice to individuals and organisations who might be interested to give them the opportunity to join the emailing list and contribute to the project and to be informed of events and developments.
2. To join our mailing list and receive notification of future events, go to: http://www.freeplaynetwork.org.uk/join/contacts.php.
3. To participate or view the Play Strategy discussion forum, go to: http://www.freeplaynetwork.org.uk/playlink/playstrategydiscussion.

Please do pass on details to anyone you know that might be interested in this - thanks :)

13th April 2006: FREE TRANSLATION WORKSHEETS: Well, we're back! if only, as yet, in a small way. We've found a new property - and moved - and the computer is up and running, if only on dial-up as yet :)

We're delighted to say that the huge "Any Language to English" project (to provide free worksheets for learning English from an increasing number of other languages) has been progressing amazingly well in our absence. As you know, the French/English block of vocabulary and verb worksheets is already fully on line, and German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Finnish and Romanian are all now moving forwards. Work has also started on the databases for Bulgarian, Dutch and Polish ..... and we've recently had provisional offers, from site visitors, for Hindi, Urdu and Japanese.

We urgently need a language professional to check the already-completed English/Italian vocabulary database! and more help would be welcomed with various aspects of Spanish, German and Dutch (you can see the progress on the various languages on the Translators' page here). If you can help in any way, please drop us a line via the 'contact' link below. Thank you :)

11th February 2006: Most of you will have seen the update here explaining why our News page is not being added to, at present. We appreciate everyone's support, at this somewhat difficult time :)

Meanwhile we'd like to say a big thank-you to Patsy at the Google Mini team for allowing us to put up a Google "site search" free of charge at Project HappyChild, so you can find specific resources right across the thousands of pages here.

*SINGLE* words seem to "work best" in generating a range of different options - eg "words" or "numbers" or "coffee" or "cook" or "schools" or "projects" or "plant" or "deaf" - most will lead you into a number of different areas of the site, each of which is pretty well signposted for locating further resources.

[single word only]

If you don't get a "result" to begin with, try another "linked word" ..... or see the welcome page here for a broader overview of the main themes of the site. The search facility is a wonderful way of tracking lateral connections - or finding something you saw here before somewhere! eg key in "ship" or "train" or "square" or "remember" - but it's dependent on the actual words *used* on the site pages, rather than what they describe. Also, keying in "picture" or "pictures" may call up two very different sets of results :) and it's probably worth trying both plural and singular forms of any given word, or other variables, eg "sun", "sunny", etc.

1st January 2006: 2006 EVENTS CALENDAR: The massive Calendar of Events scheduled for 2006 has just gone on line here .... everything imaginable from shark dives to the Hairy Haggis Team Relay, the Gleneagles Golf day, Slimathon 2006, the Forth Rail Bridge Abseil, the Flora London Marathon and much, much more ....

NEWSLETTERS - this website has been on line since 1998 - there have been a lot of Newsletters! The archive is here and the very last Newsletter is here.