As the main sponsor of 'Making the News', Acorn is providing information packs to explain how computers are used in newspaper publishing and how schools can use their own computers to participate in the project, using wordprocessors, desktop publishing, painting and drawing packages, Photo CD and music composition applications for radio programmes.
Most classroom activity for 'Making the News' is expected to take place in the Spring Term 1995, with the closing date for entries at Easter. Competition entries will be judged by the BBC's Michael Buerk, Radio One's Sybil Roscoe, George Kelly, the national manager of NiE, and Alan Bennett, Primary Schools Manager at Acorn Computers. The two winning entries will be made into a professional newspaper and a Radio 3 broadcast. Other prizes will include recording equipment and VIP visits to a local paper. The awards will be presented at the national NiE conference in Leeds in June 1995.
Peter Talbot, General Manager, UK Education, at Acorn Computers, comments:
"Acorn wholeheartedly supports initiatives like 'Making the News' which are designed to ensure that children become literate in all aspects of the media, both text-based and broadcast. 'Making the News' is particularly relevant to us as it develops children's reading and writing, or traditional literacy, as well as the increasingly important New Literacy Acorn has identified. In essence, New Literacy means being able to understand and communicate with new technologies - computers, broadcast media, telephones and the information superhighway itself, to ensure our children are equipped for life in the future."Acorn is closely involved with numerous other media-related educational projects, including the TES Newspaper Day, a competition allowing schoolchildren to become journalists for a day and the Department of Health's 'Acting for Health' scheme, a project which encouraged schoolchildren to understand the dangers of substance abuse by producing a video or storyboard on the subject.
NiE is a co-operative effort between newspapers and local schools to support and effectively enhance the curriculum. It is designed to motivate students and facilitate learning and teaching with relevance to the local community to ensure today's young people will become literate and educated readers of tomorrow.
Founded in 1978, with 1993 revenues of £:54.3m, Acorn Computers is the premier supplier of IT solutions to UK education and has been the leading provider of 32-bit RISC based personal computers since 1987. Acorn works closely with a strong community of industry partners, users and software developers to provide innovative technology solutions for the education, consumer, publishing and international markets.
The Acorn Computer Group is a holding company for Acorn Computers Limited, Acorn Australia, Acorn New Zealand, Acorn GmbH and Online Media. Acorn Computer Group owns 43% of ARM Ltd. Online Media, a division of the Acorn Computer Group, was launched in 1994 with the mission to design world class, interactive multimedia products.
* Photo CDs are similar to audio CDs except they hold photos rather than music. The photos can be accessed when the Photo CD is inserted into a CD ROM drive connected to a computer. Pictures taken with an ordinary 35mm camera can then be displayed on the computer screen and included in documents. Special photographic film is not needed - all that happens is instead of the images being printed onto paper when they are processed, they are transferred onto the disc using a special machine.