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Friday Aug 22, 2008

Watch the suffering...

In the last few weeks, thousands of teenagers have been collecting their exam results, whether it was for Scottish Highers, A Levels, GSCEs or SQAs.

If the stress of opening their results wasn't enough - these teenagers opened their A Level results in front of a camera. You can watch the results here as part of the Year Dot intiative.

And, of course, you can get all the information you need on decisions as a result of your exam results - whether they are good or bad - in the exams section of TheSite.org.

Posted by Olly ( 12:19 PM ) Link to this post  |  Comments[0]

Thursday Aug 21, 2008

"How's my teen driving?"

American's have always had a thing for bumper stickers, but now they are taking them further than simply political or sexy messages.

You may have seen those "How's my driving?" stickers on lorries in the UK.  If you didn't know, putting one of them on reduces motor insurance premiums because the belief is that someone is going to drive better if they know they could be shopped by an irate motorist behind them (although what with the laws on using mobile phones, you've got to wonder how often someone actually calls that number).

Now our cousins from the other side of the pond are adding those bumper stickers to cars driven by teenagers.  But instead of instances of dodgy driving being fed back to an insurance company; it goes back to the teen's parents (who pay for the service).

I can't work out if it's a good idea or not.  In a sense, having a shop-a-bad-driver number is far less of an instrusive method than other ideas such as GPS tracking or monitoring systems that log all driving activity; not just the bit that is bad. Equally, I'd far prefer teenagers get the chance to drive with the risk of being caught than the current strategy in the UK which seems to be reduce the risk by eliminating the opportunity (ie increasing the age you can legally drive).

Would it work in this country?  We're less likely to let young drivers have their own cars so parents would probably have to deal with having a sticker on their own car.

So, would you be happy to have a sticker so some random stranger would be able to shop you for speeding or having your music too loud?

(reported in Boston Globe, via YPulse)

Posted by Olly ( 2:46 PM ) Link to this post  |  Comments[1]

Friday Aug 08, 2008

Speak up, Speak out!

 The other week we published a new rant called Shy and mighty. The writer, Rosemary Munro, is angry that drugs companies get away with promoting pills that can apparently 'cure' shyness. She says:

"Tests have shown that this drug is more likely to make us approach strangers and give money to charity. Great, so we're going to end up broke and drugged, but at least we'll be sociable."

I think I can see her point. But what this rant has highlighted for us is that although drugs are probably not the way forward, shyness isn't to be scoffed at. It's a serious issue for many and lots of young people struggle to overcome it.

Just yesterday I attended a fun and useful training session on public speaking run through SpeakersBank. What really struck me about it was the trainer herself. Sam asked us to perform a two-minute speech on something about ourselves. Being asked to talk about myself is something I really dread and so I asked her for a quick example. I was blown away by her speech in which she explained how she was painfully shy in her teens and realised at university that it's something that she had to confront. She was persuaded to join a toast masters club and from there built her confidence on a weekly basis. These days she's an acclaimed speech trainer who has helped young people win awards for their speeches.

Now, the idea of toast masters sounded terrible to me, but I've since looked into it, and it sounds much better than I thought! Here's some information:

Toastmasters International has 200 clubs in the UK and Ireland and nearly 5000 members...nothing to do with red-coated gentleman by the way! The first club was formed in USA in the 1920s at a YMCA to help young men build their confidence and develop their communication skills. Now there are 10,500 clubs worldwide and members receive a monthly magazine and work through an internationally recognised programme of speaking assignments.

So, if you're struggling with shyness, and would like to try out something new and exciting where everyone else is in the same boat, have a look to see if there's anything in your area.

Posted by Helen ( 10:57 AM ) Link to this post  |  Comments[0]

Tuesday Aug 05, 2008

You're great, you are...

Here's something worth posting to the side of your monitor, or forwarding to your boss.  It's seven reasons why messing about on MSN and having your headphones on at work is a good indicator that you are actually far more of a productive worker than your 55-year-old colleague who dutifully never Ebay's during office hours and switches their mobile off whilst they are at their desk.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't take the piss... just because turn up in t-shirt that hasn't ever been introduced to an iron doesn't qualify you as some sort of workaholic genuis.  But it does mean that if you are good at your job, you can hold your head high knowing that you don't have to wear a suit or ignore those pesky Facebook pokes when you are meant to be working.

Oh, and whilst we're at it ... you might find our new article on monitoring at work interesting.

Olly

Posted by Olly ( 9:06 AM ) Link to this post  |  Comments[2]

Friday Aug 01, 2008

I'm getting old...

I've realised I'm getting old. Yesterday I got home and discovered my new mobile has been delivered. I'm not a technology-geek who has to have the latest gear; the reason I was getting this phone was I'd had the other one for 18 months and it was looking tatty and I could get a new phone for nowt.

So yesterday should have been a relatively exciting day: open the box, put the sim card and battery in, plug it into the charger and off we go. But no. Despite the fact it's exactly the same make as my existing phone (and as the last five or six phones I've had), it appears I am unable to use it.  I don't mean it doesn't work: I mean I just can't get it to do what I want it to do.

Firstly it wouldn't copy my contacts from my old phone (and when it did it's re ordered them so now everyone has individual entries for each number they possess).  Then I couldn't get it not to keep going online when I thought I'd pressed cancel.  And I still haven't managed to work out how to easily lock the keypad.

Maybe this is what happens when you reach a certain age, or maybe it's just that in order to justify bringing out new phones, they need to get more and more complicated.  Lukcily, it appears I'm not the only one who thinks phones are becoming more difficult to use.

Posted by Olly ( 8:14 AM ) Link to this post  |  Comments[0]