Everybody gets an education but do some people deserve one?

I am the government's latest weapon. I am a member of the SAS. No not the SAS I'm currently partaking in the student associates scheme, the government's latest way to encourage kids to stay on post-16. They hope by having university students in the class room that we can lead by example to encourage students to stay in education after GCSEs.

I currently work at Bristol Metropolitan Academy. As a district central Bristol has the lowest GCSE scores in the country, far from the average of around 55% of students who achieve 5 A*- C grades nationally.

I was introduced today to the lowest achieving troublesome students, so much so that they are taken off site for special activites 2-5 days of the week. I have to admit I wasn't expecting big things but I was pleasantly suprised. Yes there was the play fights, the running outside in the rain and climbing onto the building's roof but the kids responded well to 1-on-1 tuition and proved that it was just attention they needed. One kid who I worked with suprised me with his attitude especially towards the others kid's playfighting and his general perception of drugs.

In the afternoon i was placed back into school and suffered the worst kind of abuse from a student. Her lack of respect for me was truely shocking and according to her classmates was the norm for this girl. It made me wonder when there are kids struggling, crying out for attention, who are willing to work hard if you have the patience, then why do other more intelligent students with a complete lack of respect for staff and surrounding gain that attention despite their obvious discontent?

Hopefully which ever government takes over smaller class sizes must become a priority as it seems all kids need to make them achieve is some attention.

Avatar

So Avatar won best film, best actress and best director at last night's Empire film awards and I have to say this is a triumph. Yes Avatar isn't a particularly original idea, yes the script is never going to inspire somebody with its magnificent use of the English language but it has done something no other movie in recent time has done, get people's asses off the sofa and into the cinema.

Now it may have cost over $200 million dollars to make but it has raked in over $2 billion dollars back! Not a bad return. Being interested in performance technology the idea of 3D films does add another dimension, sorry for the pun, to the movie. Having this innovative way to watch the movie has definitely defeated a lot of the piracy around the movie which is currently present due to the rise in broadband technology. And with broadband speeds hoping to reach 100mbps in the future having movies that can only be seen in cinema is the only realistic way to fight piracy.

So just like the current battle in the music industry against piracy, which some people are arguing the case that albums are now just adverts for live performance, downloadable HD trailers and extended clips should be freely available or even 2D versions or versions with no computer graphics(a la Wolverine) could be released to get people interested in not downloading their movies and getting back into the cinema.

Who Needs An Education? We All Do...

Firstly let me state I am completely against drug abuse. The idea that a chemical compound can control, constrain and destroy your life is a terrifying thought to me. However as we live in a democratic society everyone is free to make their own mistakes, so I try not to judge. What I do have a problem is lawmakers passing unfair legislations in order to win a few extra votes. For me this is one step away from democracy and one closer to dictatorship.

I am of course talking about Mephedrone, the latest drug taking over clubs. Little is known about the drug apart from it was made roughly around 18 months ago and casual drug users haven taken to use it as it has similar effects to ecstasy, yet unlike ecstasy it is not 'illegal'. Firstly the idea that it is a 'legal high' is a misconception. It is intended to be sold as plant food, not a legal high and as such is actually illegal to sell for human consumption. However if a human wants to eat plant food, similar to a tramp drinking methylated spirits, there is nothing by law the government can do to stop you.

This looks soon to change however after recent deaths linked to Mephedrone, the keyword being linked. Of the 18 deaths in this country and 7 in Scotland none can positively be attributed to have been caused by Mephedrone itself. However this has not stopped the current government from rushing through a regulation to make the drug classified as illegal. This is despite the fact that there has been no scientific research completed into Mephedrone yet. Without having the evidence to make an informed and intelligent decision there is the possibility of a spate of unfair punishments to both users and distributers.

The main problem with the drugs policy in this country is the attitude of the enforcers, similar to that of the current sex education policy. There should be a greater concentration on educating people, particularly youths, into the problems and negative effects of drug use rather than a complete 0% usage idea. Making them illegal pushes the drugs to the fringes of society, which can cause more deaths as the drugs become harder to come by and poorly made. It also adds an air of 'being cool' to the drug, which many young people in particular will abuse as a form of rebellion. Some of the blame for the romanticism of drug abuse must lie with the media, with programs like Skins and 'characters' like Pete Doherty seemingly abusing drugs without consequence. By educating people and allowing them to make their own informed and intelligent decisions hopefully there will be a decline in drug addicts and a cleaner society.

Spring Clean

So in my quest for inspiration I've decided to have a little spring clean. Starting with a brief visit to my wardrobe and ending in my more comfortable domain of the online social network, I began to browse Twitter for some interesting characters to follow. After some standard routes adding technology companies and uber geeks I stumbled across Zoe Keating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYrcXX4nWOA

Who says you need a band when you have a loop pedal and an apple mac?

Interaction

With my final year project starting to rear its ugly head I've been beginning to wonder what I shall create as my summation of 3 years of education studying Audio & Music Technology at the University of the West of England.

I'm becoming increasingly interested in live electronic performance and the associated technologies and interfaces - ironic considering I'm a music tech student! The first time I ever began to think outside the box in terms of live performance was watching this performance by Bloc Party on Later...with Jools Holland. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P-qjro4g_w. I thought having the bass player playing a percussion/second drum part using just a sample pad was a really simple but effective idea, as was all the layering and looping of the guitars and vocals.

We recently had a guest lecture from the fantastic Imogen Heap. One of our lecturers, Dr Tom Mitchell, built some software for her to use a new piece of hardware live on stage. She is always looking for ways to be interesting and innovative and not just play the album exactly the same live, a view point I have always agreed with. She discussed how on her current tour she has microphones on her wrists, then using these mics she records noises on stage and uses them to create a backbeat for her song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P-qjro4g_w. This is a video of her amazing song hide and seek, using her vocal track through a vocoder to create the whole piece.

With the rapid advancement of computer processing, the possibilites available during live performance using computers and other digital interfaces will soon be limitless.