We Focus on the BBC

Recently six students from Focus 12 (one of the college’s under 16 provisions) went on a visit to BBC Broadcasting House.

The students, who have been making their own radio shows in the college (Focus FM), were invited by a producer to see behind-the-scenes at a live broadcast.

After a tour around the building the student’s were allowed to practice their skills on a mixing desk before watching a live broadcast of Radio 4’s “You and Yours” where Lord Coe was fielding questions about the 2012 Olympics.

Finally two of the students were interviewed for a future broadcast before being treated to a dinner in the infamous BBC Canteen. The students thoroughly enjoyed the trip and really benefited from seeing a professional radio show in action. Michael Thompson said “The highlight for me was getting to use their studio” while Ibrahim Ilham said “It was amazing to what goes on at a real radio station”.

The student’s continue to work on improving their radio shows and have been invited to the 1extra studios next year.

We seen the Screen

Recently 14 first year student representatives from the school of Business and Computing visited SCREEN UK at Milton Keynes.

SCREEN UK is one of leading providers of digital printing technologies to the printing industry and has close working relationship with HP, Tesco and others.

We all met in the college and used the college minibus to get to Milton Keynes. The journey took around 90 minutes travelling across four counties, (Essex, Herts., Beds. and Bucks.). To stop boredom setting in, we played a ‘Blockbuster’ game during the journey which worked out quiet well (the sweets went down nicely too) – it would have been even better had the laptop battery been charged and able to keep up with our pace.

At SCREEN UK, we were shown a brief history of the printing company and the role of computers and IT in modern printing before going on to see a demonstration of how text and images are transferred onto paper and printed in a form of a poster or magazine. We then split into two groups and were shown the operation of two digital printing machines, each worth around £250,000, in turn.

The students represented the college like true professionals, asking the right questions and showing interest during the events. Well done all.

We finished our tour around 12.30, and after thanking the organisers, headed back to the college.

No fog on the Tyne

Amongst those fortunate enough to be invited aboard HMS Tyne during her four day visit to London, were some Waltham Forest College students who are studying Tourism and the Public Services.

HMS Tyne is a River Class offshore patrol vessel currently carrying out fishery protection duties and she and her crew enjoyed a well earned rest in the Capital after four busy weeks’ duty up to 300 miles off Lands End.

Lieutenant Chris Benarr (pictured below) the ship’s Operations officer welcomed the students and led a tour to every part of the ship, which is home to some 30 officers and crew, explaining in detail their important role in the Royal Navy and life aboard and ashore.

The students were able to take their places on the bridge, try out the 20mm cannon (fortunately not loaded), were given a demonstration on the finer points of fire fighting and Lt. Benarr outlined the purpose of the function of the boarding of fishing vessels to carry out routine inspections and enforcing UK and EU fisheries legislation.
During these operations two man teams from the ship conduct boardings of fishing vessels inspecting net sizes, weight of catches, fish sizes, composure of catches and the vessel's logbook and licence.

Palma Paella

Where's the best place to go to try Paella?

We think it might be Palma Majorca.

Paella is just one thing we tried when BTEC National Diploma Travel and Tourism Year One went on a fact finding mission.

The main objective was to reseach and understand the marketing activities and and customer service provisions of a number of different travel and tourism organisations.

However, we admit that we did get time to visit the aquarium and to check out the beach at Can Pastilla.