OUR SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE

Colton Hills Community School

At Colton Hills School the “Building Schools for the Future” programme is about transforming learning for our students to prepare them for 21st century living and work-ing. All our pupils will work in significantly improved facilities, be able to learn more effectively and have access to high quality ICT as an integral part of that learning. We will provide a learn-ing experience which students will enjoy in state of the art facilities which will enable them to achieve their full potential.

In planning for this transfor-mational programme it has been our intention that our students themselves should have a voice in formulating the planning and have the oppor-tunity to investigate school

design projects for themselves to inform their suggestions.

Over the last two years as part of the Creative Partnership pro-gramme a group of year 9 and 10 students have worked with creative practitioners to consid-er their own school experience and that of former students.

This work has led to our stu-dents consulting with designers, architects and educationalists within the secondary and pri-mary sectors with experience of school design and development, to enable them to formulate their own ideas for our school transformational programme.

The group has also consulted with interested students and teachers internationally to

find out what education looks like in other countries.

This publication represents some of the findings of this group and has enabled those who took part to develop invalu-able skills in so many areas. The process of planning and carrying out this project has proved an invaluable learning journey for all who took part.

We are indebted to Alicja Ro-galska who guided the stu-dents throughout the project.

Phil Lambert Headteacher

Introduction

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Contents

4 Contents

5 Our school of the future

6 Interview with Glynis Cousin

8 Flexible and easily con nected learning spaces

9 Making sure everyone feels equal in our school.

10 What materials is our school made of?

12 Visit to Highfields School

14 Postcrossing

18 A safe place...

19 Interviews with former pupils

20 Then and now.

24 Chair design

25 The City Archive

26 Design Advice

27 Designing a better environment

28 The sustainable school

30 The Public

32 The MAC

34 City Learning Centre

35 King’s CE School

36 Visit to Croft Primary School

37 The School Grounds

38 Rethinking school architecture

41 Imagining the new school

42 Mobile phones in our school

43 Technology in our pockets

44 Information Technology in our school

45 e-Learning

46 Interviewing school staff

48 Survey Results

50 Winning a WOSCAR

Credits

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This publication documents the innovative, interdisciplinary research project Our School of the Future which took place at Colton Hills Community School in Wolverhampton between January 2010 and June 2011.

Artist Alicja Rogalska, creative agent Iris Bertz and the deputy head teacher Mrs. Jane Lockley devised the project together with students and staff in response to Building Schools for the Future governmental programme and the planned refurbishment of the school. The

idea was for a group of students to investigate what their future school should be like employing various research strategies and involving a variety of disciplines. The core group of students went on trips to interesting buildings in the area and schools under-going refurbishment, conducted surveys, interviewed experts in the fields of education and architecture, consulted the school community and people from across the world through postcard exchange, gathered advice and created their vi-sions of the ideal school.

They also looked at the issue of sustainability, researched the history of their school and the site, analysed the learning environment looking at how it could be improved to suit various needs and participated in art and design activities to investigate the potential of creativity and inventive use of ICT in teaching and learning. This booklet documents some of our activities and findings, to learn more please visit our award-winning project blog:

coltonhillsschool.posterous.com

Our school of the future

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We went to Wolverhampton University for an afternoon to see the impres-sive new Technology Centre building and interview Professor Glynis Cousin, director of the Institute for Learning Enhancement who “teaches teach-ers to teach”. First we talked about her childhood school and how it fixed students abilities, by labeling their talents, or lack of, very early on.

Then we spoke about our school and got some advice for the BSF consul-tation, to listen to as many people as possible (including caretakers, din-ner ladies and the cleaners) to find out what they think about the school and “try very hard to come up with what really sets the school alight”. Prof. Glynis suggested we focused on the positive things, not to hide the negatives but to make the positives

bigger. We also spoke about teach-ing and learning (and how they are intertwined), the biggest enemy of all the students (dull teachers), the best ways to learn (having a real desire to learn something) and how to be a successful learner (have enthusiasm and belief in oneself) and how teach-ing and learning needs to be adapted to the way of life of the particular generation and the technology used.

“Try very hard to come up with what really sets the school alight”

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Helen Gale, Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching at Wolverhampton Univer-sity visited our school to talk to us about architecture and design that supports various kinds of teaching and learning. Her talk was based on the refurbishment of Wolverhampton University that she helped devise. We spoke about: the importance of natural light and factoring in sound in the design (softening sound and soundproof-ing), flexible and easily connected learn-

ing spaces (moveable dividers, furniture on wheels), the use of bright colours to change mood and atmosphere, regularly updated display areas, open spaces that cater for many learning styles and study patterns (individual and group work, lectures, presentations), card system for accessing the school and the library and the idea of ICT not being a separate sub-ject but a tool for learning and teaching.

Flexible and easily connected learning spaces

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In order to find out what the special educational needs facilities are in our school, we interviewed a few members of staff and children at the Resource Base. We found out that although our school was very inclusive and appropri-ate facilities existed, they were often inadequate and old (like the tiny and dark lifts - we tested them and found the experience quite claustrophobic) or there weren’t enough of them (only one disabled toilet and two lifts in the whole building, which meant getting

to classes took a long time for children with limited mobility). To improve ac-cess it would be good to have ramps in some areas, because they can also be used by everyone, not just people on wheelchairs. Last but not least, the Resource Base itself could ben-efit from some natural light as at the moment there were no windows in there. We are hoping the BSF project will address these issues to make sure everyone feels equal in our school. 

Making sure everyone feels equal in our school.

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First we focused at the floors and found out most of them were grey! Carpeted floors are softer and nicer to walk on but difficult to keep clean (chew-ing gum, etc.)PVC and tiled floors are easy to maintain clean but are hard and often responsible for bad acoustics (loud footsteps and echoes). Our ideal school floor would be soft, but easy to clean, sound dampening and colourful.

We then inspected the walls in our school and found it difficult to find uniting colour, style or material. We preferred light wood to dark wood and light co-lours in general. Having a more defined colour scheme would be great, as well as adding some brightness with bolder colours.We then had a closer look at the light fittings. A lot of them were old-fashioned and not very pleasing aesthetically, and

some of the bulbs were simply not powerful enough. We would like to use more natural light in our school and have nicer light fittings, and also make sure we save energy through the use of energy-saving bulbs and motion controlled switches.

What materials is our school made of?

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We visited Highfields Science Special-ist School to see the BSF work that’s been happening there. We learned about plenty of good solutions that would be worth introducing in our school, such as the Cyber Café, net-books available in the library without supervision, new toilets designed by the students, comfortable seating throughout the school and recycling facilities. The first room we visited was a refurbished maths classroom.

It was fun to write on the glass wall (which is apparently good for supervi-sion and people don’t mess about with it), the colourful carpets and chairs were also good and very practical for dividing the class into groups.

We found out that the furniture was very important – the padded, comfy chairs really help to stay focused. So

sometimes refurbishment can be all about furniture and still really make an impact. The was also a door lead-ing to an outside space with tables and benches so some of the classes could be done outside. It would be good to study science there. We then looked at the printers – there are six around the school – and it is a more advanced way to print and photo-copy with the students and teachers having credits and code numbers.

The school had a media and design area with green screen facility which is useful for students wanting to work with video and design. The IT room was very impressive, the colours were great and the room was large (you could have two classes there at the same time) with a lot of mac comput-ers as well which is very important. The pupils use it for project based work as

well. The toilets were designed by the students themselves and the colours were good. The super fast dryers were also useful to help avoid queues. What would make them even better would be tiles or wallpaper match-ing the toilet seats in each cubicle.

Throughout the whole school there were recycling bins for plastic bottles, cans and paper, something we don’t have in our school yet (except for a few paper bins). The school has a silver eco award for being green.

What we really liked was the Cy-ber Café – an internet café the pu-pils can use during the breaks and also the small notebooks in the library that the students can use anytime – they don’t get lost appar-ently, though some are a bit slow.

Visit to Highfields School

“Sometimes refurbishment

can be all about furniture and

still really make an impact”

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Post Crossing is a project which allows any-one to receive postcard from anywhere around the world. The goal of this project is to allow people to receive postcards all over the world, for free! Well almost free... we still had to pay for the stamps. The main idea is that if you send a postcard you will receive at least one back from a random Postcrosser, somewhere in the world.

We sent postcards to random people around the world telling them about our project and asking for suggestions.

People wrote back to us from Belgium, France, Russia, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, Finland, China and Lithu-ania and loads of other places with advice and good wishes for refurbishing our school.

Postcrossing

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“In our state we value sun, light and the ability to go outdoors. Here is a wonderful example, the Getty museum, designed by architect Richard Meiers. Perhaps your budget it more modest!”

Eugine, California

“Try to look for small collections of objects from the school that can be kept, documented or displayed in the redeveloped space, providing a visual link of continuity.”

Antoaneta, France

“Around the school must be a little park, with trees, a big green place and benches where the students can learn, relax.”

Agatha, Romania

“I wish you the very best with your project. For me school of the future = territory of creativity in any form, for everybody!”

Olga, Ukraine

“All great things start with a first try. I think it is important that a school has rooms where students can spend their time during free lessons. That was very important for me when I was in school.”

Svenja, Germany

“Your request put my mind to overdrive... I wish for you all that in the study of language you find a way to embrace language.”

Mhina, Netherlands

Belgium

China

Finland

Ukraine

BelarusNetherlands

Lithuania

Turkey

Romania

Spain

Cambodia

Switzerland

France

Russia

Bulgaria

Germany

JapanU.S.A.

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A few of us went to Wolverhampton Science Park to interview Jan Roman, the Head of Black Country Children’s Services Improvement Partnership. First we spoke about Jan’s work, making learning more engaging and and the importance of creativity.

We then asked her for advice for our school’s refurbishment. Jan suggested we should first of all think about what life is likely to look like in the future and what the new spaces and facili-ties will be used for and how. Because it’s difficult to imagine flexibility is

very important: moveable furniture, multi-use areas, accessible outdoors.

Taking into account the various way in which people learn is also cru-cial. Jan also pointed out that suc-cessful learning environment was mostly about good relationships between students and teachers and creating a safe place where every-body is valued and respected.

A safe place where everybody is valued and respected

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We interviewed our teacher Mr. Pa-hal and Stacey Mattocks - both former Colton Hills pupils.

They said they’d enjoyed going to school and that most teachers were good, even inspirational, though some were quite strict. Stacey liked the fact that there was a good mix of stu-dents from a variety of backgrounds, but didn’t like the cliques and bully-ing. There were no computers in the school in late 80s and early 90s when she was a student. By the time Mr. Pahal started at the school, in 1996,

there was one computer room, but no computers in the library, which was full of books, but hardly ever used by the students. School food hasn’t changed much: hot dogs, chips, burgers, beans, pizzas, cakes... Except now it’s a bit healthier as there is a also choice of fruit and sandwiches. School trips included Alton Towers, bowling and cinema and the last two days of each year were so called ‘activity days’: there was no teaching but all kinds of sports and art activities to choose from instead, some even in differ-ent schools. However there were few

after school clubs other than football club for each year. In terms of disci-pline - naughty students had to report straight to the head of year (there was no key stage head) and even class teacher could give someone detention. Writing lines was a common punish-ment (caning stopped about 30 years earlier!). Each student had a homework diary to record achievements and once a year there was a solemn pre-sentation of certificates and prizes.

Interviews with former pupils

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When we found a brown envelope with images of the Colton Hills site from be-fore our school was built, we decided to take current photographs of the school for comparison. Luckily we also had a detailed site plan with the position of each photograph carefully marked on it, which made the task a little easier.

It was fascinating to see how the site had changed over 39 years - from a derelict farmhouse to a large, func-tioning school. We are hoping to compare the 1971 photos and the 2010 ones with the future ones that will be taken after the school has been refurbished as part of the BSF project.

Then and now.

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We attended a chair design workshop at the School of Art and Design at the University of Wolverhampton.

Product design students Hardeep, Andrew and Rhys helped us develop prototypes of chairs that would best suit the different areas of our school: the canteen/social spaces, the labs, the reception area and the ordinary classrooms. Working in groups, first we looked at chair design examples (some

quite extravagant!), noted what the specific needs and considerations were for each setting and then sketched our designs. We took into account things like: practicality, comfort, ease of stor-ing, mobility, durability, adjustability and finally - the aesthetics of the de-sign. Each group made a scaled, corru-gated cardboard model of their design that we then presented to the rest of the group and our tutors for feedback.

Chair design

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To find out more about the history of the Colton Hills site and the local area we went on a trip to the City Archives housed in the Molineux Hotel Building.

First we went on a tour of the 18th c. house and learned about its history: from home of the wealthy Moulineux family to popular hotel to dilapidated building before it was restored in 2009. Then we learned about the day-to-day functioning of the archives and even visited a few of the storerooms

with computer controlled temperature and humidity. We then practised our research skills using the online search catalogues. We managed to find a few pictures of Colton Hills school just after it was built and identified the farm that used to be where Colton Hills school is now as Lodge Farm and we found lots of documents about it that were over 100 years old. Since Colton Hills is a relatively new school, we also searched for information about schools in the area and found some

images of The Royal Orphanage School routines and sports and exam suc-cess tables from 1948 that we could really relate to because we recently took similar exams. Before we left we donated our old pictures of the Colton Hills site and the map to the archives.

The City Archive

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Barry Best, educational design advisor for Wolver-hampton Building Schools for the Future (BSF), met our team to discuss the prog-ress of the project. He told us about his job in which he basically functions as a translator of the schools’ vision for learning, teach-ing and organisation into the language of innovative design and architecture. We discussed how there are no

uniform solutions that are good for any school because every school is different. However there will always be the need for certain spaces: learner-owned (teachers act-ing as facilitators), internal and external social spaces, individual and collaborative work spaces and traditional teaching space. We then spoke about the changes in the use of ICT in the school - how and where it’s ac-

cessed and used and how these changes should be accounted for in the refur-bishment design. Our school being a language college, Barry spoke about plans to create a global bench - a screen with live feeds from schools from all over the world, like a window into the world and an opportunity to practice foreign languages.

Design Advice

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John Bell, designer and consultant from Quite Good Design came to our school to talk about interior design and school furniture in particular. He showed us some examples of innovative designs that not only meet the needs of stu-dents and teachers but also look good.

We also spoke about ergonomics (“the study of designing equipment and de-vices that fit the human body, its move-

ments, and its cognitive abilities”) and proxemics (“the study of measurable distances between people as they inter-act”) and how they could be used for designing a better school environment.

For instance: adjustable chairs and tables to prevent back pain and wider, more pleasant corridors that wouldn’t encourage aggressive behaviour.

Designing a better environment

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To learn more about sustain-ability we visited St. Luke’s CE Primary School - the new, beauti-ful, prize-winning primary school in Blakenhall. Their building was designed by Architype. We were shown around by two pupils and came back truly impressed!

St. Luke’s school is highly sustain-able: it’s built from responsibly sourced timber, all classrooms have specially designed windows

to allow for automatic & manual ventilation (natural air condition-ing!), triple glazing and lots of daylight that save energy. There is also underfloor heating powered by biomass woodchip bolier and the wall insulation is made out of old newspapers and magazines!

We particularly liked the lack of corridors, the lockers and artworks by the pupils cre-ated using recycled materials.

The sustainable school

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In search for architectural and digital inspiration we visited The Public - an art gallery and a multi-purpose venue in West Bromwich designed by the famous architect Will Alsop. The building is truly stunning: we loved the bold colours (pink neon!), shapes (triangular and oval-shaped windows) and suspended ramps.

We booked a guided tour so we had a chance to see a lot of different spaces, not usually open to regular visitors, such as conference rooms upstairs. The interactive digital art gallery was great, we particularly enjoyed the games: creating a soundscape using hands, magic video-bench, life-size digital animation and 3D avatar fights above the heads of the cafe customers. We came back inspired and with some great ideas for interactive, digital artworks for our school.

The Public

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Another trip we made was to the newly refurbished Midlands Art Centre and Sampad building in Birmingham. We were particularly interested in how the new MAC connected to Cannon Hill Park and what we could learn from that for our school and its grounds.

We liked the new entrance - a bridge over a brook and the way the cafe

opened onto the park through plenty of glass; there was also a lot of sitting space on the terrace to be enjoyed in good weather.

After a short stroll in the park, we went on a guided tour of the new facilities including a theatre, art galleries, cinema, dance and performing arts studios, arts education suite and

audiovisual media studio. Similarly to The Public, the new building is very accessible (thanks to slopes connecting all floors) and energy-efficient, it also uses plenty of natural materials such as wood and stone. We finished our visit by looking at the exhibition of South Asian Arts in Birmingham in the last 20 years.

The MAC

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City Learning Centre is a technol-ogy support centre for all the schools in the Wolverhampton area, engag-ing in a variety of projects such as digital animation or e-safety.

We spoke to the e-learning coordinator there, Richard Anderson, who teaches school groups and trains teachers to improve their skills and teaching when using technology. We spoke about the best ways to learn: being active in trying to understand and interacting in as many different ways as possible with the subject and then expressing

one’s opinions & understanding of it in a variety of ways. With technology being increasingly accessible, inexpen-sive and easy to use these can include making a website, an animation, a podcast or even videochatting with someone on the other side of the world.

Richard advised us that we should fo-cus on flexibility, accessibility and a va-riety of different technologies (so that we don’t get locked into one particular kind) when our school is refurbished.

City Learning Centre

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We visited King’s CE School in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton when it was in the first phase of BSF con-struction. We spoke to the site man-ager Mr. Griffiths and the school vice-principal Mr. Smith who took us on a guided tour of the site.

The classes were relocated to portable cabins and the pupils got to watch their school transform in front of their eyes! We learned that King’s wants to become a green school: the trees on the school premises are protected, bricks reused and when the refurbish-ment is complete there will be a green roof, a vegetable allotment, an en-ergy centre and bio fuel gas usage.

Another great idea is for the new school facilities: swimming pool, theatre and concert venues, art facili-ties, meeting rooms, etc. to be open to the local community after school hours. There will also be some spe-cial features in the new school such as a classroom sized tree house, a silver dome, a faith centre, an art gal-lery and an astonishing glass front.

We asked what the main problems were at King’s during the building process. The site manager said that the main problems included keeping everything running and safe. Security can also be an issue due to many parts of the premises being blocked then reopened.

King’s CE School

• Consult builders

• Acknowledge phases

• Pin-point areas of the school to refurbish first

• Use training days to shift equipment out of classrooms

• Meet with contractors

• Pre-plan escape routes: continuously update

• Be prepared for crowd-ed corridors and huge never-ending queues

• Fence off the build-ers’ compound

• Use the school web-site for updates, re-ports and information for general public

• Get the whole school involved! 

How to prepare for the building phase

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Visit to Croft Primary SchoolWe went to Croft Community Primary School in Walsall to find out how the school prepared for refurbishment. The project was split into several overrun-ning phases, each involving consulta-tions with parents, governors and staff. Some of the main problems involved lack of preparation time (the staff only had two days to create an appropri-ate learning environment in the porta-cabins after the holidays), the heating

playing up, power cuts (which limited the food that could be served in the canteen) and classroom resource stor-age (currently in outdoor containers and transported using trolleys). The construction area had been boarded up well so there haven’t been any health and safety issues, though noise pollu-tion from the heavy building machin-ery has aroused complaints from the local community. Bad weather was

another issue as it led to delays in the building work. The key advice we got was to keep everyone well informed of the progress and changes through the school website, a local community newsletter and signage. Flexibility, co-operation, support and teamwork as well as good, multipurpose use of the scarce space were also vital.

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The School GroundsOur school grounds are fantastic but sadly quite underused. Many PE classes obvi-ously happen outside, but there is a lot more potential, such as creating outside learning environments for other subjects, outdoor classrooms, wildlife areas, vegetable patches... The school itself could also be better con-

nected to the grounds through classrooms extending outside (extra doors and roofed areas) and more, bigger windows that would enable the lovely views to be enjoyed more. Also, the quads could be a great learning and leisure space, but need redesigning.

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Rethinking school architectureGeorge, an architect from the company Architype who designed St. Luke’s school, came to our school to talk to us about sustainable architecture. Sustain-ability is making sure no resources are wasted - this ensures that future gener-ations are healthy and will have enough resources to live. We spoke about heat-ing and insulation; we found that most windows in our school were single-glazed. This means that heat is lost very easily and sound easily escapes outside. What would be better is that windows are either two or three panes.

We also talked about natural ventila-tion instead of air conditioning as it is unhealthy and also wastes energy. Another issue is that we need to have more natural and less artificial light from bulbs, this would cut down on a lot of energy. We then discussed vari-ous heating options. St. Luke runs on woodchips, but there are other meth-ods of making renewable energy that can be used such as pedal power, hydro power, solar panels, wind turbines and biomass. We could perhaps harness these to run our own school (sadly we can’t use the pond for hydropower!).

We learned that wood has a very low embodied energy (energy needed to produce a material) as it occurs natu-rally and is abundant when it comes from managed forests. We looked at different samples of wood and other materials used to build schools like St. Luke’s such as carpets made out of coconut, recycled car tyres or wool. We also spoke about insulation - the radiators in our school often run when there is no need and if we had the right insulation then we would be much less reliable on them and lose less energy.

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Heraklith acoustic board made of wood wool (waste prod-uct of timber industry) and mineral bonding. The boards are used to improve acoustic performance of spaces (re-duce echo effect), so people can hear each other better

Glulam board, which is basi-cally bits of timber glued together into a shape of any size. These are usually used as structural elements in build-ings in walls and roofs.

Smile Plastics recycled plastic board, this particular sample had shredded banknotes in it, but other boards can be made of yoghurt pots, mo-bile phone cases, even old wellies. Boards are used as surface material in wet areas like toilets and practical areas

Natural hemp fibre insulation: used as thermal insulation in external walls and roofs

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Imagining the new schoolWe did some research on classrooms of the future and found out that ideally they would have: multiple electronic display surfaces (pro-jections, flatscreen panels, PC monitors), light-weight but sturdy and reconfigurable furniture, wireless network and interconnected devices, floor with grid of power and data receptacles, ceiling speakers and wall mounted video cam-eras (for sharing anf distribution of classes).

Future classrooms would have good acoustics (each room well isolated, not too reverberat-ing), video conferencing facilities (for contact with guest lectures, field groups, etc.) and flex-ible, sensor-controlled lighting (daylight bulbs).

We used traditional methods, (scissors + glue) and digital collage to come up with ideas for our future school. visualising some ideas of what classrooms might look like.

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Mobile phones in our schoolAfter reading some articles about the creative use of mobile phones for learning and teaching, we discussed the pros and cons of using mobile phones at school. The ideas included: mak-ing short movies on a subject, taking pictures of notes, recording foreign language exercises, setting reminders and timers for science ex-periments, accessing revision websites, check-ing school email and sending homework. The advantages were increased confidence and

motivation when using familiar technology and freedom of expression. The disadvantages of mobile phone use at schools were mostly linked to their misuse such as cyber-bullying, distract-ing oneself and other pupils, disrupting lessons, making sneak videos of teachers but also raising the risk of being mugged. We then responded to the subject matter by creating stop motion animations using, er... yes - our mobile phones!

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Technology in our pocketsMrs Lockley met with us to talk about how BSF is as much about buildings as it is about virtual learn-ing environments (VLE). She ex-plained how learning could be trans-formed using new technologies.

Whilst computers at school are very expensive to buy and run (and even to recycle!) and quickly become out of date, most students have smart-phones with cameras, notebooks, voice

recorders, WiFi and bluetooth. That’s why using mobile phones to support learning will have to happen - it is just a matter of time. Another thing is that using photography, video and sound recording, blogging, podcasting and video-conferencing should be pos-sible in all lessons and classrooms and not just the ICT ones. VLE is a great step forward and soon it will be pos-sible for students to access schoolwork when away, send homework directly

to the teacher and for parents to get reports, see assessments and have live updates on their children’s attendance and behaviour. To ensure everyone has mobile ICT access the school will need to provide netbooks or PDAs and also offer help with internet ac-cess at home. Obviously security is a big issue, but it will simply have to be solved - there is no going back.

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Information Technology in our schoolTo find out more about the state of our current ICT provision we interviewed Dalton Suther-land, one of the ICT technicians who takes care of the desktop computers, laptops, wireless faciltities, printers, smartboards, and so on at Colton Hills.

Dalton told us about the new-est piece of technology acquired by our school i.e. ‘spacesavers’ - small PCs that attach to the back of monitors to save space. They are fast and energy efficient which is very important. Dal-ton’s hopes for the future are for

each student to have their own, up-to-date computer/PDA, for students to interact more with the existing facilities (such as whiteboards) and for the whole school to be wirelessly connected.

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e-LearningGavin Hawkins, e-Learning Consul-tant for Wolverhampton BSF, visited Colton Hills to meet us and speak about various ICT plans and options for our school. Amongst others, we discussed: online learning and soft-ware inbuilt in the Learning Platform, digital signage in the school, wire-less internet access and connection to multiple smartboards (for instant sharing), multitouch whiteboards, 3D enabled projectors, plasma screens,

ICT suites, teacher and student lap-tops and new school PC regulations such as 15 seconds booting time. We also spoke about a 360 degree digi-tal igloo with greenscreen option and the need for professional develop-ment for our teachers once we get all these amazing facilities in our school! And, last but not least, we got to test various proposed student devices.

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EAL coordinator

“We’ve got pretty modern facili-ties, lots of areas where students can do extra activities like the dance studio and the swim-ming pool. I think we could have more activities, more trips for students and make the build-ing a bit bigger in some areas.”

Learning mentor

“The kids are great, the grounds are fantastic and I like the general air of optimism. I would like to give more pupils the opportunity to experience real life situations in the work place without actually commit-ing to being there all the time like during work experience.

Network manager

“I like the location and the green lands around the school. The dining hall needs chang-ing because at the moment the students can just walk through.”

Interviewing school staffThroughout the project so far, we have been conduct-ing short interviews with school staff. We wanted to get a sense of their thoughts and opinions of the school building as it currently stands, and to ask them their ideas for the new school.

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Special needs coordinator

I like the fact that we’re a very inclusive school, we have lots of different types of children here, children with disabilities, but also children that don’t find learning so easy but everybody seems to be well included.I’d like more natural daylight and better, brighter areas so that the children and staff would feel more comfortable.

Student achievement manager

The thing that is best about Colton Hills are the students, because they are very likeable, good humoured and, most of the time, well behaved. We could do with some new facilities, perhaps a place where students could go when it’s raining or cold outside so that they didn’t have to huddle in the corridors or in doorways.

Department Support Officer

“I like the people that I work with and the school environment. I’d like to see IT systems in place to help everybody and make life a bit easier and improved com-munication around the school.”

Canteen Manager

“I really enjoy my job. I’d like to make the dining hall big-ger to give children more chance to be able to sit down and relax a bit more when they eat their meals. I think they’re too rushed at lunch time. “

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Survey Resultswe ran a survey asking staff, students and par-ents/carers about Colton Hills. Here are some of the opinions we gathered.

StaffThe location is lovely. I think the library, the the-

atre and the swimming pool are the best facili-

ties. I think that communication could be better.

Access to smartboards. Too many classrooms are

used as corridors. The corridors need to be wider

so that you can get about easily at lesson change.

Ventilation and lighting need to be improved in

many classrooms. I would like the school to look

more modern. Furniture is dated. My office is

too hot both in summer and in winter. I don’t like

the fact that I have to walk through a classroom

to get to my office. Corridors need brightening

up. The one thing that would help me achieve my

potential is being given more notice of events so

I can plan them better. Technology is severely

underused at the school. Access to ICT rooms/

laptops for all subject areas. The year 7 area does

not work. Zones 2 and 3 are hard to teach in as

there is nothing to stop noise travelling from one

area to the other. Zone 1 is airless. I think the

whole school should go wireless and everyone

should have a netbook. We could use the Learn-

ing Platform to store documents digitally so

people would not have to use memory sticks. Din-

ing room, if it were more inviting, had a smart

board, could be used for group work. I think we

need to celebrate our achievements more and let

the outside community know what good things

are going on in school. Update the science labs.

Parents/carersThe friendly and helpful staff - you feel welcomed.

Close to home. Good reputation. Location and

mixed environment. I’ve been acquainted with

this school since it first opened. Swimming pool

and the vending machines are good. We felt as

this was the right school and we belonged here.

Family members have studied here since the

school first opened. As a former student I really

enjoyed attending Colton Hills so decided to send

my two daughters. Let parents know what’s go-

ing on. All staff are very supportive and encour-

aging. I’ve been happy with teaching, I personal-

ly think learning has more to do with the pupil’s

willingness to learn. Teachers are very helpful

with homework and classwork. Children free to

ask during form period. If I was to change any-

thing it would be – that the pupils of the school

are reminded that when they leave the school’s

premises they are representing the school. Identi-

ty badges is a good way of representing school.

Adapting to a new atmosphere. Moving around

the school can be difficult. Use of educational

websites at school is a great way to keep children

focused and stay on task. Encouragement of go-

ing on websites at home is brilliant. Allow access

to anything on computer. Show more maps to

make it easy to find way. Needs redecorating.

49

StudentsI like the new swimming pool and library because it’s

bright and colourful and lets in a lot of light. I like my

friends and I like PE facilities and music. I think facili-

ties are rubbish, I like swimming though. I like the

environment. The sports hall is good because you can

play lots of games there. I like the green areas and the

astroturf. Bigger classrooms, longer lunchtime, water

taps. I’d change toilets, classrooms, corridors. Can we

have lockers please? The corridors are too narrow, more

open space, not the old traditional seating arrange-

ments. Water fountains and vending machines! I would

definitely change the toilets and corridors and the dining

room. Supply teachers need more training. Air con in

all rooms. No uniform please. There is one thing I would

change and it is the school logo. Open plan learning.

In fun &easy ways I learn better & faster. I prefer doing

work on computers. Teaching is very boring. It feels

like the teacher is against us because we are all not

mixed in the things we do. I enjoy group work and most

likely prefer team work than working independently. I

like learning interactively. We need more physical and

practical learning. Art + IT. Noise can heard from miles

away. It needs more natural light. There are cracks in

the walls that need repairing. Toliets - dirty, not very

safe, or private. I would like every year group to have

their own area and be cleaned everyday. Specific things

that represent each year (e.g. Y9 area called ‘the li-

ons’). I enjoy learning when it is made interactive, more

attractive; teach in a fun but educational way. toilets are

a hospital green colour and some don’t have mirrors;

there is never any toilet roll.They should have locks and

taps which work. Also they NEED mirrors! We should

be able to have access to our personal sites. Use web-

sites like youtube for work and unblock facebook for

breaks and lunchtime. More and free internet access,

make more interesting things with technology. Technol-

ogy needs to be accessible to all subjects not just ICT,

more variety is needed - this may help to boost our

learning. Let kids use google images. Internet access is

not enough,the computers are ancient. Stop blocking

all the sites!!! There are good items of technology in the

school, I think teachers need to use them more. Can-

teen needs to have better food, more space, shorter and

organised lines. Food costs too much and is tasteless.

I don’t like the school uniform, change it please, make it

better! Black jumpers compulsory instead? The uniform

is expensive and the jumpers rip too quick and easily.

Let’s have a drama group that people would actually

want to attend: youth based and organised. Basketball,

hockey, tennis, rugby, rounders, also teams, vjing and

clubs with other schools. There should be more sports

clubs (they should also be advertised more) and the

school should offer the Duke of Edinburgh Award!

50

Production

Editor Alicja Rogalska

Graphic design John Bell

Leading artist Alicja Rogalska

Creative Agent Iris Bertz

Students

Amardeep Sarai Aranjot Kaur Davinder Bains DJ Iwuchukwu Gursharan Kambo Jade Brown Jaskarun Gill Joshua Kiaro Kiefer Perry

Kiran Bhangu Mehmed Bajramovic Philip Shireby Rohit Nahar Ryan Edwards Sukleen Holait Trisha Dogra Zinzile Ncube Zaynah Ife

StaffMr. Dalton Sutherland Mr. Inderjit Pahal Mrs. Jane Lockley Mrs. Pam Warren

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this project.

Poem on back cover by by Zaynah & Zinzile

In memory of Mr. Inderjit Pahal

Our School of The Future project blog on posterous.com was awarded a 2011 WOS-CAR (Wolverhampton Oscar) in the KS3 Best Learner Content category. WOSCARS is a Wolverhampton-based competition seeking to find the best uses of technology in schools.

The ceremony took place at the Science Park Technology Centre and the dress code was black tie and cocktail dress. Our project team had a chance to pose for paparazzi-style snaps on the red carpet and have a profes-sional group photo taken with the award statuette after receiving it on stage. We are very happy and proud with the award!

Winning a WOSCAR

Credits

Our school of the future, lets the learning tree nurture, Young people with a different generation, Give us opportunity to hear explanations. A college specialising in the art of language, Mixing school life up like a sandwich. A place, a time to make a change, Some furniture new, some to rearrange.

A place, diverse, in cultures and trends, A place to learn, to comprehend. A community gathered in a place called school. Unity embraced, every student a jewel.