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.

Waltham Tritons & Forest Swim School

Lessons and coached sessions:

Non-swimmers to competitive standard.

• 3 year olds to adult with specific sessions available for 11+ years.

Fees from £52 for a 13 week term.

Waltham Forest College pool and Ilford County High School. Monday, Wednesday and Sunday evenings.

Contact Karen 020 8521 7192 or Jackie 07930 752 223 or info@forestswimschool.co.uk

Valentine's Message:

This was sent to your Student Blog by a certain Retail student.

Is it for you??????

Another message:

Belfast under the microscope

The BTEC National Certificate Public Services (uniformed) year 1 students took an investigative journey to Belfast recently.

Whilst there we went on an open top bus tour of the city.

We travelled along the Shankill Road in West Belfast. Throughout the city there are murals depicting local para-military groups such as the UVF, UDA and UFF. Our guide explained some of the intricacies of this delicate situation.

We passed the Belfast Peace Line or Peace Wall, and drove through the Peace Gates in Townsend Street, a physical barrier for vehicles separating the Shankill Road and Falls Road. Staying in West Belfast, we drove along the predominantly Irish Republican or Catholic Falls Road. Here we saw murals showing allegiance with other groups from around the world. We also passed the Sinn Fein Headquarters and the famous Bobby Sands mural at Sevastapol Street.

On the second day we were picked up by police minibuses and driven to the PSNI training centre (Police Service of Northern Ireland) Lisnasharragh complex where we were met by Chief Inspector Kevin Smith (Head of combined operational training). Scones, tea and coffee were laid on and we started our day at police training college.

Chief Inspector Arthur Davidson facilitated an informative session on operational emergency planning which included topics such as the roles of the police, ambulance, fire services and local authorities in major incident emergency planning.

Arthur explained the bronze operational, silver tactical and gold strategic chain of command. Arthur also focused on the importance of teamwork in emergency planning and interagency cooperation.

He gave practical examples of joint emergency planning, training and exercising within the Northern Ireland public services. Arthur also focused on the challenges of emergency planning and focused on the Whiterock 2005 public disorder and the Omagh bombing as real life examples.

We had a delicious lunch buffet courtesy of the PSNI and in the afternoon Constable Michael Hutchinson (Firearms and tactical trainer) facilitated a theoretical and practical session in which he prepared a tabletop scenario of a major incident where a lorry had Just driven into a Fridge Plant room and caused structural damage as well as breaking some pipe work to a Liquid Ammonia Storage System releasing Ammonia gas into the surrounding area.

The students were split into groups representing different uniformed and non-uniformed public services e.g. fire, police, local authorities and NHS. The students role played a major incident table top scenario where they had to cooperate, coordinate and communicate with each other as how to best contain and deal with the emergency. The exercise was well planned and delievered by Michael and Kevin and the students thoroughly enjoyed participating in it as well as covering assessment criteria for their planning for and management of major incidents unit.

We also were introduced to Tom Johnson Sergeant Press officer at the Lisnasharragh police headquarters and he explained how in an emergency incident his department works with the world's press to cover relevant stories.

We were taken back to George Best International Airport in the police minibuses after a very informative, educational and enlightening day.

The staff and students on the Public Services (uniformed) course thank all the staff at PSNI for their hospitality on a very educational and enjoyable day.

Kurvil cooks the policy makers' books

Congratulations to Kurvil Alleyne, an NVQ Level 3 Pastry student who has been selected as a member of the National Learner Panel for 2007/08.

Kurvil went through a rigorous selection process and will be joining 17 other successful applicants from across England to work alongside Government ministers and other key Further Education policymakers over the course of the year.

The National Learner Panel (NLP) is a high profile group whose role is to influence and steer the direction of DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) post-16 policy by ensuring that the learner perspective is included in the policy-making process.

Kurvil's membership of this Panel is something that the College is extremely proud of and we wish him all the best over the coming year.

A Common place

(press the > arrow button above to play the video, and turn your speakers up!)

A load of students spend their 'down time' trying to find places to hang. The Cafeteria's an answer. The majestic front steps of the college are an answer. Even corridors and the reception area will do.

But, the real place to hang is the Student Common Room. It's part of the Lowery Building, next to engineering on the ground floor. And, guess what? Yep, those folk in the Creative Media Resources department have made a video about it. This walks you round what's in the common room so's you can then just turn up and hang there looking like you've been to the place hundreds of times!

Another brick in the wall

In the first of this term's trips, it was the turn of the BTEC National Certificate Public Services Uniformed Year 2 to go to the wall. The Berlin Wall.

Not only was the wall a focal point, but we were able look around the whole of Berlin itself.

We checked out Checkpoint Charlie, which, although now purely a tourist attraction, used to be the famous crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War.

The Public Services teaching team joined us 11 students as we researched more into the history of World War Two and looked at how a modern unified Germany was building its tourist and leisure industry.