Interesting News Of The Week 18/06/2012

I'm on time this week, so lets get straight into it.
Here's the stories.

Louise Mensch launches rival to Twitter

The first story this week is a link between politics (a politician) and social networking.

Here's a summary of the story in over 140 and 180 words.

Conservative MP Louise Mensch has launched a microblogging site to rival Twitter.

Ms Mensch is a Twitter user with almost 60,000 followers but said she has grown "frustrated" with it.

Yeah, that's right, as you can see from the title a politician has started her own site, to rival Twitter, this could be fun too see how her site goes.
She's named her new site, Menshn (Linked for you to have a look), she aims to keep conversations on topic and allows 180 character posts which is 40 more than Twitter, big difference there, that's more hashtags people.

She also shares the site, she jointly owns it with ex-Labour digital adviser Luke Bozier, the thing is though it's only available in the US but aims to launch in the UK before the London Olympics, which could be a great advantage.

Discussion on Menshn has initially been restricted to the US election, so at the moment it appears to be more of a political site, but Ms Mensch says it will expand to reflect users' interests.

When new members join they gain 100 randomly selected subscribers, equivalent to Twitter followers, so instead of waiting for people to follow you, you get 100 straight away, nice.
Mr Bozier said: "With all the great political forums out there, we noticed that there was no place to talk about politics live.", so it is for politics, I'm getting confused now, seems like a bit of a let down.

She described her site as "A permanent place to go online to talk about the things you're most interested in.", where as Twitter users can organise discussions through the use of hashtags or searching by keyword and choose whose Tweets they read by following or unfollowing other users.

The new site has had a largely hostile reaction from Twitter users so far, with some accusing Ms Mensch of vanity and predicting that the site will flop, which could be expected if she keeps the site to politics, but we will see.

The Corby MP has insisted the site's name is not a pun on her surname, as it is spelt differently, and is, rather, a play on the word "mention", if I'm honest I'm not quite sure if I believe that or not, but it's possible.
Users who type "menschn.com" into web browsers are currently being redirected to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament site, whoops, not exactly what they were looking for.

Ms Mensch, who was a "chick lit" novelist before becoming an MP in 2010, said she hopes the site would attract Twitter users who find the site "frustrating", I wonder how many people besides herself actually find Twitter frustrating.

There's no video for this story so here a picture promoting the site:

New O-level-style exams could replace GCSEs

I've selected this as my second story this week as it applies to not only me but anyone else who has or is taking their GCSE's, so in a way this could become a worldwide story.

In simple terms this story is about the reconstruction or changing of the educational system as we know it.

The Education Secretary, Michael Gove plans to scrap GCSEs for England and return to O-level style exams, so back to the good old days.

It's been said that Mr Gove believes GCSEs "have gone beyond the point of rescue", does that mean they are now pointless?

The proposed changes have been planned to be brought in for pupils from autumn 2014, so for anyone who is currently in year 8 or year 2 of secondary school (depending on the school layout), would see to the biggest change to the exams system for a generation.

Less academic pupils would sit a different "more straightforward" exam, like the old CSE's, well at least they are accounting for the less fortunate of us.
Labour says Mr Gove must explain his changes to teachers and pupils, so he'd have to have one on one meetings with all teachers and then group ones for each set of students all over the country, that could be fun.

GCSEs replaced O-levels and CSEs in the mid-1980s.
Under that system, the more academic (smarter) teenagers took O-levels while others took CSEs (Certificates of Secondary Education).
Now a similar system could return, although the names of the new exams are yet to be decided.

There was a leak to the daily mail just as tens of thousands of teenagers finish their GCSE and A-level exams, meaning that those exams may not be worth as much as the news ones.
As control of education in the UK is devolved, Mr Gove's plans are for England only (at the moment), It will be up to Wales and Northern Ireland to decide whether to follow suit.
In Scotland, pupils take Standard Grades and Highers rather than GCSEs and A-levels, so they would probably not be affected.

The plan is for students to begin studying what the leaked document says will be "tougher" O-level style exams in English, maths and the sciences (Biology, Chemistry and Physics) from September 2014 they would take their exams in 2016, two years later due to students having to stay in education till they are 18.

So, pupils starting their GCSE courses in September 2013 could be the last to take them, and also probably the last to be effected.

Already, the new academy schools (like my secondary school has just become), which are state-funded but semi-independent, do not have to follow the national curriculum.

It is also said the government plans to scrap the traditional benchmark on which secondary schools in England are measured, that being the requirement for pupils to get five good GCSEs (grades A* to C) including maths and English.

Schools would continue to be measured on the government's new benchmark, known as "The English Baccalaureate", which counts how many pupils in a school have good GCSEs in English, maths, two sciences, geography, history and a foreign language.
Well I'll tell you what, I'm glad I don't have to do all that.

Their isn't actually a video for this story but here's a video of Mr Gove's speech on ICT and the national curriculum:

Summary of the week

So this week we've got politics and politicians taking the social networking by storm (not) and the national curriculum being changed dramatically, bye bye GCSE's.


Politics blog sites