E-News Bulletin Friday, 15 June 2012

1.1 million-plus Gates grants: 'Galvanic' bracelets that measure student engagement
By Valerie Strauss

In the ‘you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff’ category, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending about $1.1 million to develop a way to physiologically measure how engaged students are by their teachers’ lessons. This involves “galvanic skin response” bracelets that kids would wear so their engagement levels could be measured.

If this tells us anything, it is that the obsession with measurement and data in school reform has reached new nutty heights.

Read report on: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

It's boom time for UK's documentary film makers
By Sarah Morrison

Ken Loach is making one, the band British Sea Power are composing music for another. Cinemagoers are watching more of them, and even the box office is happy – making more money from the form than it has in years. Days before Britain's largest documentary film festival kicks off in Sheffield, new industry research suggests the documentary film is enjoying a renaissance.

Read report on: http://www.independent.co.uk/

Decades after Rupert Murdoch banned unions at News International, the UK NUJ is back in Wapping
By Koos Couvee

A newly created NUJ (National Union of Journalists) chapel is seeking legal action against parent company News Corporation after a large stack of documentation from Sun reporters was handed over to the police as part of an investigation into corrupt payments, The Journalist, the NUJ magazine reported last week.

The journalists fear that the documents, which include confidential emails, articles and transcripts of internal meetings, will identify legitimate sources to the police and may lead to whistleblowers being identified.

Greek Youth Unemployment Now at 52.8%

THE Greek Statistics Authority (EL.STAT.) has announced that the official unemployment rate for last March rose to 21.9 per cent, a huge increase compared to the 15.7 per cent rate of March 2011. Last February’s rate was 21.4 per cent.

Read report on: http://www.wrp.org.uk/news/7621

The Spanish miners' strike puts their rulers on even shakier ground
By Richard Seymour

Spain is one of the "peripheral" economies of the eurozone, exposed to high levels of debt and volatility. Its banks, having expanded during the construction and property booms, are now dangerously weak. Like Greece, Italy and Ireland, Spain has been subject to waves of austerity, ostensibly to reduce the deficit. €27bn cuts are already planned this year. These cuts, and the conditions they have exacerbated, have already produced a mass insurgency, with the indignados of Puerta del Sol drawing inspiration from Tahrir.

Read report on: http://www.guardian.co.uk/