In February 2001. a group of 15 students from year-6 joined a school web designers club. The aim of this club was to design and build the school web site while working in an on-line suite of labs, and extension of the school building.  The on-line labs could be accessed from any computer with an internet connection and so learners could work when and where they wanted, including outside traditional school hours 7-days a week.

The programme engaged the enthusiastic learners in the whole process of web site design including researching the target audience, agreeing the corporate image, designing the navigation, identifying the content and considering copyright issues. The 6-week on-line programme was well attended, both during lunch periods as well as evenings and weekends. We found that virtual learners took on roles as peer tutors, e-mentors, e-monitors (e-police) and demonstrated a wide range of skills developed outside the school curriculum.  Download the full report to find out more.

You can find the school website (the end product here)

http://www.moorgreen-jun.bham.sch.uk

This was a joint programme with Learn Net Advisors & Research, Moor Green Junior School and the Birmingham Grid for Learning working in collaboration.

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All In Virtual Project: 

Runner Up in the Birmingham Life Long Learning Awards, March 2003......

The Inclusion project (All In) was a Birmingham city-wide pilot project which aimed to train teachers from 3 secondary mainstream schools and 3 secondary special schools to become Virtual Tutors and to develop and deliver virtual programmes to learners in mixed groups from their schools. The All In project commenced in October 2001 and completed the pilot phase in July 2002. 

The Birmingham Inclusion Consultancy Service was active in initiating and funding this project.   A project co-ordinator from Learn Net Advisors & Research was appointed to run the Virtual Tutor Training for 15 teachers across 6 schools, to support curriculum development, build the virtual classrooms and support the delivery to 60 learners.  Virtual Tutor Training was delivered through Net Bourn, Virtual College, and the virtual classrooms/delivery was supported by the Birmingham Grid for Learning

Following training, the teachers put their new found knowledge and experiential learning into practice by developing curriculum for identified groups within the schools, closely linked to national curriculum.  And finally, 3 new programmes were delivered through virtual classrooms 

The Virtual Classrooms design supported the subjects developed.  There was a Virtual Castle for the Medieval Realms programme where year-7 learners became Maids, Squires, Earls and Masters, facilitated by Merlin and Lady Gyneverre.  The Virtual Zoo supported the ICT project and the year-6 learners became Keepers researching and building their own animal enclosures closely supervised by Mr Attenborough, Crocodile Dundee and The Vet.  Finally, the Personal and Social Education programme was delivered through a Virtual Jungle where teams of year-10 ‘leopards and bears’ worked together under the facilitation of 3 virtual jungle characters.

 The virtual environments provided not only classroom space, but a social area, library and staff room.  Access to the virtual environment was from any computer with Internet access, 24-hours a day 7-days a week.  The asynchronous nature of the classrooms enabled people to work when and from where they wanted to, although access from school was important given the low number of learners with access from home.

 The virtual learners consisted of  30 pupils from main stream schools (mixed ability) and 30 from Special schools:  30 were from year-7 and 30 from year-10.  Schools paired up in the programmes so that learners from special school would work alongside peers from  a mainstream school.  Schools were not identified and learners did not know the types of schools they were working with thus providing equality of opportunity to speak and be heard. Download the full report

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Virtual Transition Project: 

Runner Up in the Birmingham Life Long Learning Awards, March 2004.....

Now in its fourth year, this project which originally took place during the Spring / Summer term 2002, was created in response to the well documented dip in attainment by pupils when they transfer to secondary school.  The aim of the project was to provide year-6 learners from a feeder school with the opportunity to meet learners from, and find out more about, the secondary school they were due to attend in the Autumn Term.

A further aim was to train a number of learners from year-8 in the receiving school to develop and deliver a 3-week curriculum, in effect to act as virtual peer tutors.  These programmes (three in total) were run alongside the new Key Stage 3 Strategy English transition modules.  

The project was delivered through a virtual suite of rooms, accessible 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, through any computer with Internet access.  The project, programme development, virtual delivery and key learning points / considerations, are outlined in the full report.

The Virtual Transition Project was developed in collaboration with Birmingham Advisory School Service). Birmingham Grid for Learning (BGfL), Learn Net Advisors & Research, and last but by no means least, Kings Norton School for Girls and Bournville Junior School. Down load the 2002 report here

The programme ran again in 2003 with over 300 pupils participating. This programme was led and funded by eDevelopment team, Education IT, Birmingham and an out reach worker funded through the Birmingham Children's fund.  70% of the pupils felt that the programme had helped them to settle in to their new school.  The full report can be accessed here or view a PowerPoint presentation

The last programme to be delivered was Summer 2004 where similar results were found - nearly 70% of  pupils felt that the programme had helped them to settle in to their new school.  The full report is available from the Birmingham Grid for Learning

A package is now available to all secondary schools and consists of everything they need to set-up and run the programme from the school.  This embedding of Virtual transition is now supported by the Birmingham Advisory School Support service (BASS) and the Birmingham Children's Fund and, of course, Learn Net Advisors & Research