** Well Done to Cefn Fforest Year 6 News Team **

We had excellent news this morning in an e-mail from Jeff Howson from Making The News ( an online news site - where kids post their own news articles including multi media pieces), in a hectic run up to Christmas some of my Year 6 news gatherers had commited themselves to entering a UK wide News Competiton ( entires had to be in before 16th December!!!).

With concerts, parties and many other distractions as we approached the end of term, our lunchtimes became highly charged with upils grabbing camcorders and still camera's, rushing off to film and then upload and edit their work within the tight lunch 'hour' ( I can safely say that through November and December I never had time to sit in our staffroom at lunchtime - so missed out on 2 months gossip)

As the deadline approached we had a perenial problem for schools operating within an intranet run by a local authority - we found it increasingly difficult and in the end impossible to upload multiple video films ( we had a problem as the articles went to a central competition space - I couldn't retrieve them for more editing ) - In the end the pupils were writing and editing video ( thank goodness we got an Apple Macbook in November otherwise our task would have been almost impossible using WinXP) saving items to flash drives and then uploading the articles from home ( this calls for quite a high commitment from the kids - but they did it.
We failed to enter all of the categories that we had planned and had some disappointed people who just failed to meet their deadline, but that's a fact of life I guess.
Following all of the hype and panic we sat back and waited - results were due to be e-mailed to us by 23rd December. School closed for us teachers on 22nd December, and I set off home with my fingers crossed for the kids....... and nothing........Christmas Day...... Boxing Day.... nothing.... I gave in and posted an article for the pupils to pick up saying "I guess that no news is bad news but keep watching....."
Today 28th December an e-mail in my in box from Jeff Howson from MTN, I must admit that I opened it slowly hardly daring to look in case it was along the lines of "sorry..... better luck next time....." But no it was notification that a story posted under the heading of Best Overseas Story has won in its category (Yippee!!! well done kids!!!).
The pupils have won and have been invited up to our big Education IT Show called BETT at Olympia in London on Wednesday 10th January where their prizes will be awarded by Warwick Davies ( Professor Flitwick in the Harry Potter films )

I must congratulate all of my pupils who entered stories for the competition, they overcame the odds and put together some very good work. The winning group followed up a visit we had to school by a Nigerian Diplomat and his son Kay, by arranging shooting and editing a video interview with Kay using a JVC Camcorder and our new Apple MacBook, they took the final cut away on a flash drive and got together to upload their finished article - I for one am very prod of the work they produced and the reward is much deserved for all of their efforts over the Autumn Term - ( and I for one won't mind missing the Staffroom chatter at lunchtime for a while I guess !!!) .