Category Archives: Education

Feb 26 2018

How to take advantage of student discounts

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When you’re a student every penny counts. You’re far too busy studying to hold down anything other than a part time job so you’re not going to be earning a vast amount of money. While loans and grants are available, you’ll have to stretch them even to cover your living expenses.

So today I’ve decided to look at a few of the ways students can some discounts and other savings to stretch their budget a little further and reach the end of term without going into the red.

Transport

If you’re studying in London, transport is going to be one of your major expenses. It would be a shame to have curtail your experience of one of the most exciting cities in the world simply because train fare is expensive.

TFL offer a student Oyster card that gives you 30% off your journeys, which is a substantial saving across the course of your university career. You need a passport photo, a valid student ID and a credit or debit card to pay the £20 fee. If you travel a a great deal you could make that back within a week, so it’s well worth investing in!

While only London enjoys such an all-embracing scheme, you’ll find local variants in most towns and cities across the UK to help students get out and about. Consult your student union to find out what travel discounts you can get!

NUS Discounts

Your NUS card is the gateway to a series of small student discounts that could make life easier all the way down the high street.

Once again, you’ll need a passport photo, and may need to pay a small fee to get your card, but once you have it, you can get discounts at lots of different clothing and food shops in towns all across the country.

Other Discounts

When you enrol as a student, lots of companies are keen to court your custom. Most universities host events with local businesses offering discounts, special events and even simply giving things away to make sure you remember to come back to them.

From local takeaways to supermarkets and others - even student storage in London comes with a discount - it’s worth taking note of what’s on offer. Even if you’re not planning on buying many clothes during your studies, saving ten or fifteen percent when you do helps to keep your bills down!

Jan 22 2018

How to make gardening fun for children

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Gardening can be a fun activity for all of the family to enjoy. As well as being something different for the children to experience, it can also be beneficial for their wellbeing and education. Together with Suttons, an online retailer and gardening expert, I’ve popped together a quick guide to the benefits of gardening for children and ways to encourage their participation.

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Benefits of children gardening

There are many benefits of children spending time in the garden — both from an educational and health perspective.

There is a worrying statistic that three-quarters of UK children spend less time outdoors than prison inmates. Children are becoming more interested in tablets and smartphones and tend to spend more time in the house. Gardening is a great way to get them outside.

For younger children, messy play helps to enhance their sensory development. This could involve letting them play with the mud, splash in some puddles and just getting their hands dirty! It helps your child build their vocabulary too by becoming exposed to plants and creatures that they wouldn’t otherwise see if they were indoors. Their interest can be captivated with brightly coloured flowers and scented plants.

There have been numerous studies undertaken to assess the impact of gardening on children’s behaviour and social development, revealing a vast number of positive outcomes. These include:

  • After participating in a one-year gardening programme as part of their school curriculum, children aged 8-11 showed a significant increase in the ability to work in groups compared to those children who didn’t participate at all.
  • Children who grow their own food are more likely to eat fresh fruits and vegetables or at least express a preference for these foods.
  • Youth interns in community gardens reported increases in maturity and interpersonal skills.
  • Students expressed an increased understanding of ecology and responsibility to care for the environment.

Activities to try

There are many different activities to try in the garden. As well as having structured games, it can be good to let your child take the lead. They might use their own imagination to come up with an activity that you can both get involved in.

For older children, you could create a bird feeder out of a plastic bottle to encourage wildlife into the garden. This is easy enough to do:

  1. Create 2 holes opposite each other at the bottom of the bottle, insert a stick through this and this will become a perch
  2. Make feeding holes close to the perch (not too big or else the feed will fall out)
  3. Create holes in the neck of the bottle, you can pass string through here and hang the bottle from a branch
  4. Unscrew the lid and fill with seeds for the birds!

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For smaller children, you could take them around the garden and search for clues as to which animals have visited. This could be in the form of feathers, tiny tracks or snail trails.

Grow their own

As well as playing games and getting crafty, you can also grow plants and vegetables with children. This is a good way for them to get regularly involved in the garden and monitor their own progress.

Trees

Growing a tree is understandably a long-term gardening project, but it can be fun for a child to see how their tree is growing over time.

Easy seeds to grow in the garden are:

  • Conkers. These can be collected from a horse chestnut tree
  • Acorns from an oak tree
  • Helicopters from a sycamore tree

These can all be planted in a pot with soil and compost. It is likely that it will be around spring when the seed sprouts — you may have to transfer it to a bigger pot eventually.

Seeds

Planting seeds with your children that are easy to sow and quick growing are good for keeping their attention and interest levels in the garden. Vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and spring onions are all easy to grow and maintain.

To encourage healthy eating, plant those that they like to eat so they can follow the journey of the seed from planting to their plate!

There are other plants that are fun to grow. Suttons sell vegetable seeds and a range of fun seeds that have been designed for children. These include:

  • Cress — a fast-growing plant that can be grown indoors and outdoors and added to a salad afterwards.
  • Sunflowers — tall growing so children can practise their measuring skills as it grows.
  • A Mimosa Pudica (a dancing plant) that when it is touched, its leaves ‘dance’ and curl up tightly.

The list of activities is endless that you can do to make gardening fun for children. Get outdoors and get involved with your child and you’ll soon see the benefits!

Jan 10 2018

Can online tutors teach better than face-to-face classrooms?

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We all love the convenience that the internet gives us today. Our life has become so connected that internet access is now considered a basic human right like food and clothing.

Inevitably, it’s also given rise to more alternatives to face-to-face learning like online education. Now, it’s so easy to browse and select from the endless options on how you want to learn online.

For example, you can go to online learning platforms like Preply and improve your English speaking and writing skills (https://preply.com/en/skype/english-tutors) and then start working with them via Skype.

But this has stirred a debate among people. While some still believe that traditional classroom set-ups are the most effective way to learn, the rise of online tutorial services (and resulting quantitative data) is starting to change this mindset.

The Advantages of Online Tutors Over Traditional Classrooms

1. Flexibility

If you already have other commitments like family and work, you’d enjoy the flexibility online learning offers. Unlike your traditional classrooms, you can study at the time most convenient to you.

2. No Commitment

Especially when you’re dealing with a chronic illness or undergoing treatment, you might not have a lot of energy to do everything you want to.

So if you decide to take an indefinite break, it’s far easier with an online course. Online tutors charge by the hour or per session so you don’t have to worry about refunds or missing a class, and you can pick up where you left off when you are able to.

3. Learn at your own pace

In a classroom setting, you might feel that the lessons are going too slow or too fast - everyone has a different learning curve.

If you have a good tutor working with you, they’ll be able to tailor fit a plan just for you so you can fully absorb each new topic before going to the next one.

4. Similar academic results

A number of studies show that you can get the same results from online tutors and face-to-face learning. Coupled with the convenience and flexibility, going with online learning is arguably the more logical choice.

The Disadvantages

1. It requires discipline

Because there’s nothing stopping you from not meeting with your tutor, it’s so easy to prioritize other things instead.

You need to be very self-motivated to stick to your schedule and to keep attending regular sessions. If not, you might find yourself lagging behind and not learning anything at all.

2. You get less social interaction

Especially with kids who are still developing their social skills, having fewer people to talk to can be a problem later in life. They might find it hard to express themselves in public and still combat shyness even at a late age.

According to the Raising Children Network, school-age children need to be around kids their own age to have a sense of belongingness and higher self-esteem. So, parents opting for home education or an online courses for their children would need to actively create opportunities for them to develop social skills.

3. Less exchange of ideas

With online tutors, there are only two people involved in the discussion. While having fewer ideas tossed around isn’t the case a hundred percent of the time, it’s more likely to happen. As a result, an engaging and lively discussion isn’t always possible with online tutors.

4. Technological limitations

If you decide that online tutorial services are for you, you need to have a strong internet connection and enough storage space to install Skype on your desktop or laptop. Failure to meet these requirements would disrupt your learning session or make it impossible altogether.

5. Not all online tutors are equal

While online tutors usually need to pass certain exams before they can teach, they don’t have to be certified by any organization.

So unless the tutor lists his credentials, you won’t know what they are (if they have any at all). Lack of credentials doesn’t necessarily equate to a lack of skill, but you might be leaving a lot up to chance.

So, are online tutors better?

An online tutor isn’t better than face-to-face learning and it shouldn’t be treated as such. But it can be a great alternative when you are unable to go to a traditional school.

Both are not perfect. While online tutors have some advantages over the other, it also has disadvantages. However, they do complement each other. One offers flexibility and convenience, while the other imposes structure and discipline.

In conclusion, instead of focusing on which is better, just do what you think will help you learn more quickly. Research your options and make an informed decision. But if you want to stick strictly to online tutorial services, the first thing you need to do is create a positive home environment that is conducive to learning.

 

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