Cog notes: Winning visions on canvas

Katie O’Brien (9) from Holy Family Senior School Swords came first in this year’s Sightsavers Junior Painter of the Year awards with her winning painting, I Want You to See Books Fly. Ryan Buckley (11) came second and Cian Managan (6) came third – both are from Tuam, Co Galway. Children from more than 200 schools entered the competition this year, whose theme was : “I want you to see...” Junior Painters aims to inspire children to express themselves through painting while developing an appreciation of the importance and value of their sight. The winning paintings can be seen at irishtimes.com/education/

Book that makes sense of ranking in competitive higher education

Every week seems to bring a new set of university rankings so thank goodness for Ellen Hazelkorn's Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education: The Battle for World-Class Excellence to make sense of it all. A second edition of the DIT academic's work has been published by Palgrave Macmillan, including new comparative data on how colleges and students use rankings, and it takes account of policy developments. The Higher Education Authority board member has become a go-to person internationally on the subject for her analysis of what many see as a money-making racket. Curiously, she hasn't been invited to speak at the Times Higher Education young universities summit at DCU, on April 29th-30th. Individuals €800 and corporates €1,600. theworldsummitseries.com/

Salmon of Knowledge leaps out at us as icon of Teaching Council

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a fish. The Teaching Council’s colourful new logo has had many educationists scratching their heads as to what it’s meant to represent.

“The new logo is based on the Salmon of Knowledge in the old logo. It can also be seen to represent a flame, eg flame of learning,” the council explains. “It is a single image and also incorporates the colour scheme of the old logo.”

The prominence of the fish on the old logo had caused some confusion in correspondence: council officials appeared at first glance to be Bord Iascaigh Mhara inspectors. In addition, “the old logo was not scalable for use in various communication channels in contrast to logos of other bodies which are simpler and have a single image,” the council says. “It was also felt the messages associated with the old logo were lost when it was reduced in size for use.”

Certainly, it’s a lot more eye-catching on Twitter - the council’s social medium of choice. And the cost of the redesign? An even €5,000, the council says.

Best way to lure young minds into reading is focus of new research

If you want to get young people to read, present them with material on cars, horses and footballers' lives, a new study from Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, suggests.

The report Improving Literacy Outcomes – Bridging the Gap, under the college’s Transforming Education through Dialogue (TED) project, examined the literacy needs of young people aged 12-18, as identified by teachers in 14 post-primary schools and other education settings.

Not surprisingly it found that the key to motivating and engaging students in reading was capturing their attention through content that interested them.

So playing to gender stereotypes around horses and horsepower helped, while “detective and crime stories; local newspapers and magazines related to individual interests such as pets, cars and parenting” also ranked highly.

The research highlighted the need to share best practice across schools and called for resources to be targeted to ensure equity of outcomes as well as measures to strengthen the link between schools and parents.