Teachers warned over befriending pupils on Facebook

This should send a shiver down the spine of every teacher! Apparently, more than one in 10 school teachers accused of misconduct last year had used social networking sites and email to forge inappropriate relationships with their pupils, an analysis of disciplinary cases has found.

Facebook, Twitter, online chatrooms and emails were used to befriend children in 43 of the cases brought to the regulator, the General Teaching Council for England in 2011. Eighteen teachers were given prohibition orders and struck off, while 14 were suspended. In all, the GTC heard 336 cases of "unacceptable professional conduct" last year.

The cases before the professional watchdog represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of inappropriate use of social networking, as the GTC only handles cases where a teacher has been sacked or resigned in circumstances where dismissal was possible.

Transcripts of Facebook messages and internet chatlogs were used as evidence against the teachers, many of whom had told pupils to keep quiet about the communication. Seven of the 43 cases in which the internet was a feature involved emails alone, rather than social media. In three cases, although the teachers were disciplined, the particular allegation about social networking was not proved.

As a teacher, for a few years now, I have been aware of the pitfalls of maintaining an online relationship where I had met someone in a professional capacity e.g. a teacher/student relationship. It is an area fraught with potential difficulty as, to most people's minds, online chat is just that, chat, and therefore the normal rules don't apply. This lulls you into a false sense of security in thinking that you can behave in a different way from what you would if you were face to face with a student. For this reason, when students ask me to "friend" them, I do but I have minimal online contact, not to be standoffish, but to protect myself from future problems. More and more teachers are waking up to this same dilemma and adjusting their privacy settings.

Read more:  https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/education/2012/jan/23/teacher-misconduct-cases-facebook?fb_source=other_multiline&fb_action_types=news.reads

Man stops visiting wife in hospital as bill goes up

This is when you truly know for sure that the world has gone mad!! A private hospital in Medina, Saudi Arabia, is demanding Saudi Riyals 40,000 from Pakistani resident Muhammad Abed for taking care of his child. He said: “My wife was pregnant and suddenly felt pain. So I took her to a hospital but they were unable to take her. They had no vacant beds. I spent several hours trying to find a hospital that could take her. When my wife’s condition worsened, I did not have a choice but to go to a private hospital.”

He added: “Minutes after my wife was taken in, doctors said her life was in danger, and she needed to go into labor. My child was born after only seven months and needed to be placed in an incubator. I paid 16,000 riyals for the time being but the hospital is demanding the rest of the amount. I ignore their calls every day and have not visited my wife and my child in the hospital for some time.”

This is a very sad case as the man clearly doesn't have the money to pay for his wife's release. What is he to do? If this was any kind of decent hospital with humanitarian concern for fellow human beings they would have offered him some kind of way to pay off the money at a reduced rate or over a long period of time. Instead, they are probably keeping his wife a s a prisoner until the money is paid.

We all know the power of these kinds of hospitals. I have experienced them in Thailand and in Saudi Arabia where they see the colour of your white skin and all of a sudden you are being ushered into a private room with the highest price rating. I have experienced something similar with AXA and Blue Cross medical insurance companies who will do anything rather than pay out on a genuine medical claim. The medical business, per se, is one huge unregulated rip off and something should be done about it!!

More here:  http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article566818.ece

Comprehensive pupil sends Oxford her OWN rejection letter saying 'grand interview setting allows public school applicants to flourish'

Now that's what I call spunk! Having the guts to not only reject a possibility of a place at an Oxford college, but then the temerity to speak to Oxford dons using their own poncy, put down language deserves an award!

How often do you hear about a state school pupil sending their own rejection letter to Oxford University mocking its standards and rituals after being interviewed for a place? Elly Nowell, 19, wrote to Magdalen College that it 'did not quite meet the standard' of other universities.

In a parody of the institution's own letters, she wrote that she found the 'obvious gap' between minorities and white middle-class students 'embarrassing'. She said in her letter to Magdalen College that there were 'significant flaws' in its education system.

Mocking: A-level student Elly Nowell, who is predicted A*s in history, law and English literature, sent a scathing 

Miss Nowell, from Winchester, Hampshire - who is predicted A*s in her history, law and English literature A-levels - now hopes to study law at University College London.

She described the Oxford University interview process as 'torture' and the college as 'rude' for not even providing a glass of water. She also criticised the 'grand formal setting' of the interview, saying it was 'intimidating' and biased towards public school pupils.

Yesterday she said: 'It was during my interview that I finally realised subjecting myself to the judgment of an institution I fundamentally disagreed with was bizarre. 'I spent my entire time at the university laughing at how seriously they were taking everything and felt like the only atheist in a gigantic monastery.

'Oxford is a fairly ridiculous and prominent elitist institution, yet unlike the monarchy or investment bankers it is rarely mocked. Even comedians tend to avoid Oxbridge as a subject. Being a successful student should depend on the student and not on whether a couple of academics think you shine in a 20-minute interview.'

Hat's off girl! It's about time that those ridiculous institutions get a dose of their own medicine. They dole out rejection letters by the hundreds every year so it's really nice for them to receive one once in a while!

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2088710/Elly-Nowell-sends-Oxford-OWN-rejection-letter-criticising-grand-interview-setting.html?ITO=1490

Overdraft charges on current accounts are so complicated they baffle a maths PhD student

In case you live somewhere off the beaten track, you may not have noticed that British banks do their fair share of charging when it come to banking service, or in some cases, for services that are supposed to be done but in fact aren't! And now we hear that bank overdraft charges on current accounts are so complicated even a maths PhD student can’t always work them out, well, according consumer experts anyway.

A customer could be hit with a £150 bill for a large unauthorised overdraft without a clear explanation as to why, Which? said. The consumer body wants ministers to make banks provide honest and easily understood information about the true cost of going into the red. Or, as Jim Bowen used to say on Bulls Eye, "You don't get nowt for two in a  bed!"

 

Currently, the finance giants use a mix of daily and monthly charges combined with further fees linked to the number of cheques and payments that are bounced. Each bank has its own combination of charges with the result that customers cannot make meaningful comparisons to find which is cheapest.

Which? asked 12 people, including a maths PhD student, to work out the cost of an unauthorised overdraft for leading banks by giving them 48 mock bank statements on which the rules were set out.They got only seven out of 48 correct between them. The finance giants used for the study were RBS-NatWest, HSBC/First Direct, Lloyds, Barclays, Halifax, Nationwide and Santander.

The charges for the same small unauthorised overdraft could range from £10 to £50 depending on the bank, according to Which? The range on a medium overdraft was £44 to £125, while the figure on a large overdraft ran from £66 to £150. Which? said: ‘Overdraft charges may appear easy to compare, as banks charge either ‘‘simple’’ daily fees or interest on their main current accounts.

My pet hate is Barclays, but not because of it's charges. I keep an account with them and always have at least 20K in the account at any one time. I don't receive any interest on my money, so when I want something that's a little off the normal route e.g. to get a new card sent overseas or a statement, or a transaction that isn't in the official ledger, I get nothing, not even an explanation or an email. The same thing happens  when I use my card abroad. I have a ridiculous call that's made asking me for information about my mother's polo habit or my second cousin twice removed's poker strategy. In other words, nothing that has anything to do with security or banking and everything to do with pissing me off and not forcing them to give me what I want. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087567/Overdraft-charges-current-accounts-complicated-baffle-maths-PhD-student.html

These shoes are not made for walking

Unlike the song, these shoes are not made for walking. They are made for moving at a much faster pace. Apparently, in case you are tired of walking these days, an American inventor has designed a pair of motorised shoes that can have you speeding round TESCOs faster that a granny in an electric wheelchair or a weightlifter on steroids. As Ken Dodd would have said, "Oh ahh missus", what will the neighbours think!

The "spnKiX" resemble a cross between a ski boot and a roller skate with oversized wheels (AFP, Chris Lefkow)

The battery powered high-tech footwear called "spnKiX" resemble a cross between a ski boot and a roller skate with oversized wheels and are among the gadgets on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. A user straps the motorized skates on to their shoes and away they go, gliding smoothly along at speeds of up to 16 kph. 

The futuristic shoes are the brainchild of Peter Treadway, a Los Angeles-based industrial designer. "I've been developing some form of wearable transportation since the 1990s but just in the last, say like eight years, I realized the real necessity for it," Treadway said. "I was going to lunch one day and couldn't find a place to park," he said. "So I thought 'Why don't I make something that could get me from home to someplace really close by?'

It's just turned into this fun kind of product." Treadway said each shoe has a battery and a motor and they are synchronized to work together as "sort of mirrors of each other." The rechargeable battery allows the wearer to go about 3to 5 km on a single charge and needs about two to three hours to fully juice up again.

What will we have next? A shirt that puts itself on your body? A pen that writes for you? We already have a  car, the new Ford, that parks itself. One wonders how much of this is actually useful or just clever marketing? Only time will tell.


More here: http://arabnews.com/lifestyle/offbeat/article562585.ece