Each month, Invictus Director of English, Miss Hall, invites year 9-11 students to send in BLOG entries based on certain topics. Look out for the next topic on your VLE (Space, Ello, Edge, Aspire, More +, Wise) and send your entries on to Miss Hall (nhall@crestwood-s.dudley.sch.uk)
Miss Hall then selects a BLOG from each school to appear on each schools website!
Well done to this months winner, Sophie, and happy reading everyone!
Blair’s Brainiacs: Using Social media for educational good!
Blair’s brainiacs a community of over 230 thousand on tiktok, you may be wondering, what is Blairs brainiacs? Well, Blair Fiander is an 18-year-old A level student who runs live study broadcasts on tiktok. Blair runs these live study broadcasts from 5-6pm and 8-9pm Monday to Thursday and 5-6pm on a Friday. During these lives, you do 40-minute silent study and 20 minutes talking, plus a 10-minute wrap up at the end. Recently, Blair has started to do meditation at the end of her 8-9pm lives, which has gone down very well with viewers. It gives everyone a chance to wind down at the end of the session. These study lives promote productivity, and help motivate people to get their work done, along with helping students feel less lonely during isolation.
Personally, Blair’s ‘study lives’ have helped me a lot to keep on top of my work, and I feel so much more productive; other people I’ve spoken to who attend, feel the same way. She also shares revision, and motivation tips on her account, alongside funny videos to bring a smile to people’s day. Blair, along with her amazing staff team, who are all volunteers, runs a discord server which is the largest educational discord server in the UK at 21 thousand members as of the 17th of January. The discord has a great community, where you can go to just chat or go into the study rooms to feel less lonely and more motivated even when Blair isn’t live. She also runs a small competition you get a point for every minute you spend in study rooms, to help people feel more motivated to study. There’s also the year group subject channels which are separated into key stage and subject, where you can ask for help with any work you’re struggling with from other students, or subject mentors who are A level or high students who got A/A* in the specified subject. Another great feature of the discord is the textbook rehome where you can get textbooks from previous students and only pay the shipping. Many people I have spoken to on the discord are so kind and helpful, the staff are constantly moderating to keep the server safe. There has been debate for whether Blair’s lives are actually helpful, but I have spoken to many people and they have all found Blair’s lives an amazing help.