Marketing
Battlefront, The Insiders, Year Dot and Slabovia are 4 projects, commissioned and overseen by Channel 4 to ensure high editorial and production values, which make use of Web and television in an innovative, cross-platform approach to teaching young people life skills. These powerful resources make full use of youth centred online social networking and sharing sites to reach out to informal learning spaces which exist outside formal educational settings.
Educators can harness the huge potential of the projects by bringing them into the classroom. The projects cover a wide variety of curriculum areas from PSHEE, SRE, Citizenship and Careers Education to Religious Studies, Science and English and can:
- tackle disengagement
- develop key soft educational skills
- promote Functional Skills
- fulfil policy initiatives such as Every Child Matters, Aim Higher and Family Learning and SEAL
- allow opportunities for personlised learning
- widen learning experiences through other online communities such as partner social networking sites like Bebo and MySpace
- foster an ‘anytime, anywhere’ approach to learning that reaches well beyond the boundaries of school and college
- encourage self-motivated learning and research which can be fed back into the established curriculum
Bow Street Runner, a Channel 4 interactive educational game, is designed to support a number of curriculum areas and can be used to enhance teaching in the History, Citizenship and English classrooms. Activity suggestions, which include those designed for Gifted and Talented and SEN groups, exploit students’ playing experience of the game and deepen the user’s understanding of the issues raised by the drama by:
- Allowing players to experience life as a Bow Street Runner
- Developing deductive and problem solving skillsEngaging with the Georgian underworld gangs, gaming and other criminal activity
- Raising awareness of the social and health problems of the 18th Century
- Encouraging players to examine artifacts from Georgian England, such as posters and newspapers, in each location, adding to the rich picture of life on London’s streets
