Dear Parents

I think we will all be very relieved as we get closer to spring and the end of the cold weather. It has certainly been one of the coldest winters for a long time and this has brought particular issues to Braeview. The snow seems to lie here for longer and this causes us serious problems especially on the brae. I am very grateful to parents who supported us at the worst times by not coming up the brae to bring children to school. Unfortunately when there is snow, there is only single traffic and so cars coming down stop cars going up. This leads to cars getting stuck and the whole system stops. We were also very concerned about pupils walking in the car park which was sometimes very slippery for cars and pedestrians.

The weather brought another continuing concern and that is the quarry at the bottom of the brae which floods in heavy rain and then freezes. The council is dealing with this so it will not be a problem for much longer but please do ask your son/daughter not to go there. Some of our pupils have been going there after school to play and it is not safe. We have been repeating this to them over the cold period in assemblies.

It has been a busy start to 2010. We have had our S5/S6 prelims and S4 pupils have had their results. In the midst of that we raised almost £500 for the Haiti disaster appeal and I am grateful to you for your support and generosity.

As we get to the holiday we are all looking forward to the Fashion Show on Wednesday. This is the first of its kind and should be great fun as well as raising money for the minibus.

I would like to thank you again for all your support and we look forward to seeing you after the holiday.

Mrs B M Hadcroft

Head Teacher

Computing Department

Morna Findlay from Edinburgh University visited the school for the third year running on the 14th and 21st of January to talk to a variety of pupils from S2 to S6 about career opportunities in computing and the exciting work the university does in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Among other things pupils got to play against a robot called Mary at Connect 4. As yet Mary is unbeaten despite the pupils best efforts! Some S2 pupils were given the opportunity to try the University’s pioneering miniature wearable computers called ‘Specks’ which track the wearers movements and project them onto a computer screen. This invention has generated a lot of interest in many areas from medicine to the film industry. In addition to this, our Higher class were given robot kits with light sensors to build up and test. The star of the visits however was the Sony AIBO robotic dog pictured left.
RRP £2000!

Advanced Higher pupils James Heenan, Steven Watson and Ross Strachan have been working in conjunction with the university to create a Breakout Game for their coursework. This experience has helped the boys decide on appropriate University courses when they leave in May. A version of their “Braekout” Game will be available to test on the department webpage:

http://braeview.ea.dundeecity.sch.uk/Computing/computing.htm

During the term before Christmas, we were loaned a set of Activote handsets from EDS to try out. As part of this we ran an Int 2 Computing quiz each Wednesday lunchtime. Well done to all who took part and earned points for their House as well as revising course materials. This term, we have been loaned the more advanced Activ. Expression handsets which allow pupils to enter full text responses to questions so the lunchtime quizzes will be up and running again in the next few weeks. See more pictures on the department webpage.

BRAEVIEW ACADEMY CAREERS CONVENTION

The Careers Convention will be taking place in school on Tuesday, 23 February 2010, and will run over two sessions from 2.20 – 4.00 pm and 5.00-7.00pm. All S2 pupils will be attending in the afternoon and S4, S5 and S6 pupils, along with all parents and carers, are invited to come along in the evening.

As well as representatives from university and college, a number of local employers representing many different employment areas will be present. These include publishing, retail, local and national government, health and the Armed Forces.

We look forward to seeing you.

MOBILE PHONES

As you know we are happy for pupils to have mobile phones in school, provided they are out of sight and switched off in class and the corridors. Recently there has been a number of incidents of pupils phoning/texting each other, phoning home and some of them say they are receiving calls from parents. This is a nuisance in class and interrupts the lessons. If this happens, the teacher will ask the pupil to put the phone away and if it happens again, may take the phone to be returned later. We do not want to do this so I would be grateful if you would speak to your son/daughter to help us ensure it does not happen.

If anyone needs to contact a pupil at school during class time, this should be done through the school office, in cases of emergency only. We are always happy to help.

We are also concerned that some of our pupils are bringing very expensive phones to school. It is rare that phones go missing or get damaged, but, if it happens, we cannot take responsibility for them.