THE NEW VISION.....RED BALLOON OF THE AIR

The October Club have chosen to support Red Balloon and with their donations we shall harness the power of modern technology to reach bullied children who live nowhere near a Red Balloon. It will transform our ability to get children back into education and on the road to recovery!

It is clear that our vision will meet a need. But Red Balloon will have to transform the way it delivers its educational and therapeutic recovery programme so that these children are given the opportunity to recover.

We will create a “virtual” Red Balloon Learner Centre, which children will attend in a similar way to the way they attend our centres now.  Sessions will be one-to-one with a dedicated teacher (as is often the case now particularly in the early stages), or children will be linked into small groups.  With the benefit of web conferencing and a RB Facebook to post their work they will be able to meet in chat rooms, attend Masterclasses, join music workshops and visit a Human Library. They will have a dedicated mentor to help them plan their studies, meet other RBAir students and navigate the new Virtual Red Balloon. Modern children find this form of interaction much less alien than would their predecessors!

It will be important to devise programmes for children to meet others outside their own homes to ensure socialisation and peer contact. This will be done through occasional days spent at a “real” Learner Centre and through supervised trips to museums or the theatre of the kind we already provide.

By these means, we will not only transform our ability to reach children wherever they live, but we will also transform the number of children we can cope with and we will transform the children’s lives.

In a physical environment, we handle 15 children at a time in any one cente, but in a virtual environment Red Balloon of the Air will expand to meet demand.

How is Red Balloon of the Air different from 'e-learning'?

• the children will belong to the Red Balloon community

• the curriculum will be negotiated rather than 'packaged'

• therapeutic support and input

• monthly visits from Centre staff

• students will participate in trips

 

-- Posted by Red Balloon - on 4th November 2010 --