It’s been a while since I posted anything significant to the blog. Apologies for that, but life at the CLC has been busy, as usual! I thought I’d take the opportunity to bring visitors up to date with some of the projects and activities that have been happening / are going to happen at the City Learning Centre. Be sure to have a look at our latest newsletter too for a further taste of what we’re up to.
Theme and tailored days
Our programme of theme days (the "menu" of activities that we offer to allocated schools each term) has continued to evolve. New for the Spring Term 2006 is Flash Animation (for Secondary Students only) and Space Day (for older Primary students and Secondary).
We’ve also modified our video days to create two separate activities - Film Editing and Film Making. The first school to participate in these sessions was St. Peter’s: the film editing day used a piece of prose as inspiration for sequences constructed from preprepared footage and digital stills selected by the students from the fantastic image resource www.morguefile.com. The finished results were often visually stunning and were enhanced by GarageBand soundtracks. In contrast, the film making sessions saw students storyboarding, shooting and editing famous endings of EastEnders episodes ("Dum-Dum moments") for submission to the BBC’s current East Endings competition. Apologies to anyone who was wandering past the CLC on Monday and heard one Year 10 student shouting "You’re not my mother!" at another! I will try to post some of the completed films to the CLC showcase in the not-too-distant future.
In addition to the "theme" days we offer to allocated schools it is also great to see more of our schools choosing to actively work with us to create and deliver tailored sessions to their students. Business studies students from Heath Park recently participated in sessions which used the hardware and intranet facilities at the CLC to support an activity of business/governmental role-play based on the issue of selling HIV / AIDS drugs to South Africa. Remember, we are always willing to work with schools to tailor activities to the needs of students.
Web Design Service
In the Autumn Term we presented the opportunity for one school to have their school website designed/redesigned by the CLC. As it turned out, two of the Primary Schools - Green Acres and Bushbury Hill - were so quick off-the-mark that we agreed to design a site for each of them in the Spring Term. Pendeford High School were marginally slower (they waited until the next morning to get in touch!) so we will be working on their new site in the Summer Term.
Here’s a sneak preview of the two sites currently under development. In both cases, the bespoke templates for the sites are completed. The staff leading the site development in school are now collating the information to "plug in" to the designs. Thank you to both schools for the committment you’ve shown to site development so far.
Here’s the design for Green Acres:
And here is the Bushbury Hill design:
When the sites are finished, I intend to publish a more detailed description of the site development process. (One thing I’ve really tried to focus on in these new designs are accessibility issues - i.e. access to information for visitors with disabilities. A look round other school websites quickly reveals that this is an area where many are failing to meet the needs of a significant number of visitors).
Wightwick PDA outreach project
As readers may be aware, Wolverhampton LEA is currently pioneering the use of handheld computers (PDAs) in schools around the city. The Learning2Go project has recently received national recognition in the BECTA ICT in Practice Awards for 2006. As part of our support for Learning2Go, the City Learning Centre has purchased a set of PDAs and is currently developing a project with Whitwick Manor, a local National Trust property, to create a PDA trail around the magnificent Manor House.
The trail will initially be used during 4 primary school visits to Whitwick (led by the CLC) after half-term. Students will be given contextual information by the PDA as they tour the house and will be challenged to record observations, reflections and role-play exercises onto the devices in the form of digital stills, video and audio recordings. The material gathered by students will then be used to consolidate student learning once they are back at the Centre.
