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Plan schools link

Plan schools link

Summary

Plan Schools Link connects children from Africa and the UK together via an online social network system of messaging, blogs and profiles...

Supporting an international education program linking schools in the UK with schools in Malawi, Sierra Leone, Kenya and China, the Plan Schools Link website fosters discussion and learning about global issues. We approached the project with longevity in mind, enabling a sustainable communication link between schools, and to date, about 200 schools have registered through the site.

Schools and students have personalised profiles where they can upload images and film within the safe, moderated environment, participate in discuss forums, make comments and create blogs. A key community feature is the interactive mailbox system and message walls. Users can use the sophisticated private messaging system via a simple WYSIWYG interface. RSS feeds have been added to the site for the school, classroom and news updates. Our content management system means that Plan UK can manage and administer their site independently. User friendly workflows have been used to simplify registration, content moderation and overall site maintenance.

Special thanks to Alex M., Alex B., Hamish, George, Caroline and the team at Plan UK/Plan International.

Project information

http://www.planschoolslink.org/
  • RSS feeds
  • Secure user accounts
  • Forums
  • Blogs
  • Sophisticated private messaging system
  • Multimedia support
  • Embedded flash video
  • CMS workflows
  • CMS staging area
  • Semi-automated moderation of user-generated content
  • Drupal
  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • Ajax
  • XHTML
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Images
  • Documents
1,000
Greetings to Kakwale
18 Mar 2010 - 12:32pm
Hello to staff and students in Kakwale and greetings from myself and all the students at Sir William Robertson HIgh School in Lincolnshire, United Kingdom. I now have a team of students who are collecting news and information about music, drama and sport at school. on Monday 22 March we will be sending a package of information to Plan for them to send out to you.
With all our best wishes
Nigel Roberts
Answers to questions from the China club
12 Mar 2010 - 2:18pm

1)      The climate is moderately wet and in summer it is nice and sunny but not really hot. This year has been especially cold and wet and the coldest since records began.

2)      Our most important festivals in Scotland are Christmas and New Year. At New Year we count down from 10 on the 31st of December and welcome to New Year.

3)      The places of interest in our country are Edinburgh, where you can shop and eat and even visit the Edinburgh Castle.

4)      No we learn other languages, like French, German, Spanish, Latin, but not Chinese.

5)     

        This is what our national flag looks like

6)     some of us walk and most of us get the bus and some take cars

7)      No we don’t, but we do PE a couple of times a week and in Primary School we used to brain training to wake us up in the morning.

8)      No we don’t but we have different religion and polish people.

   9) No we don’t live in the school, only boarding schools have.

   10) Our time arrangements are school starts at 8:45 and each period of class is     53 minuets and we have 6 periods per day. We finish school at 3:25. Some of our subjects are Drama, Math, English, Science, Art and design, Modern languages, Physical Education, Craft and design, Home economics, ICT and RE. We have many, many more     

Book Week
22 Feb 2010 - 9:57am
From Monday 8th to Friday 12th February we celebrated Book Week. This is an event that happens every year at our school. Children read to each other, authors come and work with the children and theatre companies come and perform plays. We have fun dressing up as book characters. This year was extra exciting for the children as they were allowed to wear their bed clothes one day and have drinking chocolate while listening to stories.
 
    Antony Lishak, an author, reading his story to the nursery children.             Nursery children making puppets out of old socks.
Hello!
8 Feb 2010 - 9:40pm
My name is Clare Flitter and I teach in year 5, with Sue Whitfield, at Belmont Primary School in Chiswick, London.  We are really looking forward to communicating with the pupils and teachers at your school.  We are both new to the Plan UK project but are very excited at the prospect!

We have shown our classes photographs of your school and they have begun to find out about Malawi.  The children are very interested in learning about where you live and what life is like for you.  We are working on letters (which we will email) introducing ourselves and our school.  We would love to hear from you and answer any of your questions about where we live and our surroundings.

We hope to hear form you soon and look forward to enjoying the next few months communicationg regularly.

Best wishes

Clare and Sue
Hello!
3 Feb 2010 - 11:14pm

Hello there, I am a student here at Easingwold Secondary in North Yorkshire. I’m 13 years old and will be writing in this blog to let the world know what our school is up to.

At the moment, the school is trying to establish a closer link with Ma Jia Secondary school in China. We will be starting a collaborative project with them in the coming moths and look forward to being able to communicate better with them in the near future. So far, we have arranged that for two classes in year 8, everyone will have a penfriend to talk and write to, over in China. Everyone thinks this will be a great opportunity for us to see what living in another county is like and to find out about their culture and way of life.

I hope to be writing again soon but for now, thankyou for reading.

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