BSF, School Buildings

Horbury School, BSF, Learning Platforms, virtual learning environments

Hal

Horbury school is located in Wakefield and is undergoing a BSF process. They are also in the process of becoming a trust school, with languages as their specialism. Following on from the work we did in Yorkshire, reviewing learning platform implementation, we were asked to work with them as consultants to advise on their plans for the future.

As part of our visit we attended a presentation by RM on the next version of Kaleidos (v3). Whilst it was a Flash based presentation, I have to say that the feature set planned is awesome! Unfortunately, when we tried to log in to it to see for ourselves the whole internet service was deadly slow and so we didn’t really manage to get to see/do what we wanted. Partly down to RM? We don’t know.

However, Horbury are a long way down the road to implementing a learning platform and they are looking at using Moodle alongside a number of different pieces of software. The RM solution is still being trialled and tested, however, adn it should be interesting to see how this school develops. We were impressed with the determination and general understanding of the power of online learning from every teacher we met. The school certainly seems right on the cutting edge, and it would be brilliant to continue to support them.

Cleveratom at BETT, The BETT show 2007

Hal

matt demonstrating istopmotion at BETTLast week I worked for four days at the BETT show and helped run the Create at BETT feature stand at the top of the stairs in the National Hall, Olympia, London. It was probably the busiest BETT show I’ve known in the last five years, and a delight to be working on such a high profile stand.

A number of partners made this stand exist. Apple computers gave their support with Alan Bennett from Apple Education Europe on the stand each day to answer questions and talk about the education market for Apple. Nick from AT Computers provided a stunning range of kit for us all to use (thanks Nick – really good!) and John from Reflecmedia provided a state of the art chromatte station with live chroma keying happening direct into iMovie. BBC Blast helped establish the stand and Learning Central were there to talk about innovative work with the BCS.

Matt from Cleveratom organised a group of children from King Harold School to be on the stand for four days to run the equipment and talk to the visitors. As ever, King Harold School pupils were brilliant! Their enthusiasm, infectious energy and determination to succeed meant that the stand never had a dull moment. Many thanks to Malcolm Burnett for organising the group and being there with them, promoting both their activities and our new company!

The image shows Matt giving (yet another) impromptu demonstration to some of the many, many visitors. We used iStopmotion from Boinx software to run some stop frame animation activities.

Both the stop frame animations and the chroma keying were used to create instant podcasts on the stand. It never ceases to amaze us how complex some pieces of software would have you believe a podcast is… don’t be fooled! With relatively little skill and only simple software everyone can be podcasting at will. Email or phone us to find out how we can get you podcasting like a pro! We will happily run sessions in your place of work or school and show you exactly how easy it really is.

In addition to the Create at BETT stand, I was also working on the ‘Tomorrow’s Learners Today’ stand, organised by Stephen Heppell of Heppell.net and situated in the middle of the Grand Hall on the main floor. This was a brilliantly interesting stand with a continuous flow of speakers all talking about building schools for the future. Some amazing presentations from people including Stephen himself, I was available to answer questions from the audience to follow up on the content and get people talking more about how to use the BSF programme in their own school. More about BSF another time – BETT was huge, and a great success!

More images from the stand can be seen by CLICKING HERE. This should open a new window with a web gallery in it.

Access and Integration in Schools Conference, Coventry University

Hal

Coventry University’s Bugatti Building hosted the second annual conference for access and integration in schools. This year’s conference wass jointly sponsored by the Ergonomics Society, University of Coventry and Ergonomics Safety Research Institute at Loughborough. Speakers included Alan Gardner on backpain and the design of school furniture, developing a European standard in the design of school furniture, Pauline Hughes, CEO of the Ewing Foundation talking about classroom acoustics, Rachel Benedyk from UCL talking about ergonomics, Andree Woodcock from Coventry talking about an up and coming research project about engaging children in school design and of course myself, talking about the ‘designmyschool’ website (currently off line since 2007).

Organised by Andree, this was a delightful occasion to get people together and talk about things that really matter. There were others on the list of speakers but sadly I missed them as I got in to Coventry by train a little after the conference started, and left a little before it ended.

The intriguing thing for me was to see folk picking up the strands of what we have been doing for the last couple of years in the school design arena. If Coventry University are able to undertake a more formal research project to substantiate a lot of the action research that went in to designmyschool then so much the better! If I can help at all, just say the word…

I thoroughly enjoyed this conference, small as it was, because it focussed on things I believe are important. With so much money being spent on schools at the moment (BSF, PFI and so on) it really is crucial to get the basics right. buying chairs that are poor design, or because they are cheap is about the worst use of the money I can think of – get this bit right, make the learners able to concentrate and not squirm in discomfort, and who knows what will follow on. The same applies to tables, heating, lighting, ventilation, corridors, toilets, canteens, playgrounds, and much more besides. These are traditionally areas that architects and procurement officers concern themselves with. It’s about time they stopped and looked at what makes effective learning (and thank heavens some already do).

But beyond the millions of pounds where will we be? Are we yet again going to invest in buildings that have very good intentions but are based on our yesterdays? Or are we going to take a much braver step towards investing in learning environments for tomorrow’s learners? It really is more about meeting the needs than meeting the budgets.

Exciting Minds Conference, Manchester, Creative partnerships

Hal

On Monday this week I drove to manchester to be a panelist and speaker at the Exciting Minds conference run by Creative Partnerships. I was talking about Building Schools of the Future – BSF. As part of a four strong panel we covered a large range of specialisms. Martin from Nottingham was involved in running BSF projects there and planning ways forward for schools – visioning, basically. Abe, from Sussex was an architect who had recently completed a school extension and was focussed on sustainability and ‘green’ issues. Brenda was from Manchester and worked as BSF co-ordinator, seconded from a secondary school where she is deputy head.

A stimulating discussion from each of the panel members, it struck me that there is a huge task being undertaken by lots of schools and not nearly enough people able to support them and talk sense about the issues they are going to face. Many in the audience simply wanted answers to issues they have got, but that simply isn’t enough. We need to look ahead – beyond the next few years – to what the vision is for the school. Creating buildings for the next 60 years will simply keep us in the same rut we are now in, albeit in 60 years from now (or more likely just about 10) – we need to think far more creatively about education and how to use buildings more creatively, and look at how technology can be used to link people and places more effectively.

This is going to be a recurring theme over the next couple of years, I think!

It was delightful to meet up with author and broadcaster Michael Rosen again – the last time I talked to him was when I was a teacher about fifteen years ago. He was an inspirational influence on me then, and I used his books regularly in classes I taught. I don’t suppose he remembers me from that time, but none the less it was good to share a few words and share a common ideal within the world of education.