www.thecourieronline.co.uk Monday 10 March 2014 Issue 1288 Free
E le ct S ion Guid pecial e ins Sa
bbat ide t and Pical Offic o art-T ers Offic ime ers
The Independent Voice of Newcastle Students
AA look SHADE TOO DARK? into the closed world of animal testing for cosmetics p.19
TWICE AS NICE p.29
Est 1948
THREE’S A CROWD p.12
NU Apprentice 2014 winners crowned By Anna Templeton News Editor Last Wednesday saw the crowning of this year’s Newcastle University Apprentice, with Kane Avellano and Daniel Lipchev taking the £500 prize money. The NU Apprentice comprised of a series of events, which tested the competitor’s skills in teamwork, leadership, marketing and negotiating. Kane and Daniel won the process on their idea to set up Jesmond Cat Cafe. “It was a huge surprise to win. There were a few great teams there, so we just weren’t sure,” said Kane. Pairings for the final were allocated on a random basis so Kane, a second year Computer Science student and Daniel, who studies International Business Management and Japanese, didn’t know each other before the competition. Both said they were planning on keeping in touch after their victory. When asked what gave their team the edge, Kane pointed out “the idea and the amount of detail we went into. We had floorplans, 3D designs, logos, surveys....” “Lots and lots of details,” added Daniel. “We didn’t come up with everything at once, it was a process. While working we constantly improved.” 71 students, with a range of ages and degree type, applied to the competition. The initial applicants were cut down to just 40 people. The first week was a marketing task to create a new bottled drink and the
following week saw the competitors take part in a negotiating task, where the competitors were mixed into teams and had to source a number of different products. Among the items asked for were a Christmas card, parkin cake and a ‘free service’. One student had a full haircut and another female student committed to having a lock of hair snipped off. One team managed to secure a free massage from Kiehl’s to fulfil the task. The teams had to pay a £2 penalty per minute for being late, so ended up running through the city centre in order to make it back in time. Two out of five groups moved on to the next round, with 10 people in the final. Students were allocated random teams of two, and had just under a week to come up with their proposal, to create a new business plan for an enterprise in Jesmond. The final consisted of a 10-minute question and answer session in front of a panel of judges and a presentation of their business idea. The judges then revealed the winner, at the evening ceremony at Fat Buddah, with Kane and Daniel announced as winners. Other prizes were also given to top performers in areas of negotiation, leadership and teamwork. Olivia Jeffery, intern for Rise Up who helped organise the event, explained how “it was good to make the tasks challenging, because if we’d given them an easy ride it wouldn’t have been that fun. Continued on page 4
WIN: Apprentice winners stand with RiseUp interns and the owner of Luxe, Jesmond. Image: DocYOUmentary
Mitra already leaving his legacy in Mexico By James Simpson News Editor
A Mexican girl has been hailed “the next Steve Jobs” thanks to the unique learning programmes designed by Newcastle’s Sugata Mitra. The 12 year old Paloma Noyola Bueno has been learning using the educational philosophy created and developed by Mitra which focuses on individual driven learning enabling children to teach themselves using the internet. She is the cover story for this month’s Wired magazine.
Her teacher had seen the methods online after seeing a video describing the new philosophy and became inspired to implement it into his own classroom. The Mexican girl is from a small town just outside US border. The town is notorious for its gang problems and drug trafficking and reports have eluded that finding bodies is not uncommon. The school is located next to a rubbish dump and is locally known as “place of punishment” with 45% of students failing Maths and 31% of students failing Spanish, which are both core subjects,
according to Latinos Post. The teacher used these new The 12 year methods on all his students but old has been took to learning using Paloma them extremely the educational well, especially in such an impoverphilosophy ished area where created and resources such as developed by computers and the internet are Mitra extremely limited. It has been reported that Mexican
authorities have become interested in the young protégé and are considering providing the school with some funding after it has hailed great success. Sugata Mitra is famous for his education in the cloud scheme which he won a $1 million TED grant for last year. His project is centred on creating seven “schools in the cloud” which are effectively one room buildings with around six computers where children can be in control of their own learning experience. This developed from his first idea when working for a software company
in New Delhi where he placed a computer in an adjoining wall between his offices and a slum and observed what the reaction was. It turned out the children had taught themselves how to use the computer and were teaching themselves complex subjects such as DNA replication. His defining principle is that “the children are completely in charge”. The project has now developed and he has set up a “Granny cloud” which has recruited retired teachers to give seminars and be on hand across Skype to input into the children’s learning.