Silverstone Study Centre

PfS students from Bracken Leas Primary were incredibly fortunate to take a look around the McLaren pit garage at Silverstone today. The driving rain and gale force winds meant that the McLaren team could not get out on the track but when they saw us on our track tour, they kindly invited us see what they were getting up to. It was easily one of my highlights of my time at Silverstone and the students were mightily impressed as well. The McLaren is simply beautiful but we were also given an insight into how much skilled manpower, technology and  effort it takes to translate that beauty into raw speed.

Paul Di Resta was the driver on hand to test the McLaren today and it must have been quite frustrating for him not to be able to drive the racer’s ultimate dream machine. In fact I know it was frustrating because he has written about it on his website here. I hope he gets his chance tomorrow!

Boddington Primary students continued the PfS introductory day series today with their visit to SSC. They worked creatively across all the activities, made light work of the Enable Learning Platform, and exhibited an effective attitude with good humour throughout.

Their work with PhotoBooth was most impressive. PhotoBooth is a simple piece of Apple software that applies a range of effects to the built in lap-top camera. It is a great deal of fun exploring the software but actually producing some original output relies heavily on the creativity and focus of the students. After playing with the software for a while the work begins in earnest. Students have to make use of angles and backdrops around the centre to compose photos and then to collaborate with partners to think of engaging and apt titles for their creations. As a finale, they present to the rest of the group the process they have undergone to both capture the photo and to agree on the title.

The Boddington team were splendid superb and sounded like professional art critics. They were totally confident in their work and in control of conveying their thoughts. They were the experts! One of the group said it was like writing by thinking. I couldn’t agree more!

The PfS introductory day season started yesterday with the visit of students from Culworth Primary. The students were exemplary and showed great touches of creativity throughout the day.

I particularly enjoyed hearing their powerful word choices to describe Silverstone’s fast cars exotic monsters that flow like a fierce river round the track. The ideas have been captured in a wiki library on the Enable Learning Platform for the students to review, reflect upon and develop in the future. In fact, all the output from the day was added to the platform ready to be shared and/or edited back at school and home. Judging by the 30+ discussion group messages on the school’s platform page, it is proving a hit.

Another memorable moment was when one very bright-spark asked whether the older single-seater racing cars were wider than the new ones in the workshop. As usual, I did not know the answer and looked on as group came up with three different ways of measuring and checking their ideas using a variety of non-standard units. The older cars were definitely wider. Judge for yourself! (Car number 12 is the newer version)

The first half of September has been a blur of meetings about a variety of exciting projects that we are involved in at SSC. Today we hosted the student consultative group representing the schools involved in our Excite to Write project. A full report can be found on our E2W website.

It was great to see students thinking creatively about the writing activities they would like to see in their project. They also explored their ideas perceptively in relation to what the teachers had brainstormed last week and identified areas of common ground. The challenge for me now is to ensure that the views of both parties are allowed to shape the final project activities. I am reporting back to the consultative groups within two weeks. Once the proposals are agreed the project can begin in earnest.

I’ve taken a short break today from my interior-design at the study centre to immerse myself in the virtual world of Enable, the Northants Learning Platform. It has proved a challenging yet curiously rewarding fight to survive drowning in a sea of permission settings and design issues. The initial design of the main Study Centres pages is pictured above while below is the Silverstone site.

Taking the time to tame the learning platform is well worth it though because it means that we can use it next term to enhance what we do at Silverstone. It should offer students greater ownership of their learning and the opportunity to link up learning at the centre with home and school. Hopefully it will give rise to more prosumers at the centre - young people who both creatively produce and consume in the learning and teaching process wherever they find themselves. If that comes about then the steep learning-curve will have been worth it.

Between meetings today, I’ve been putting the Driver Lounge area back together with some new and improved features.

One of the few advantages of having to rebuild the study centre each year is that it encourages me to recreate areas around the centre in different ways. Sometimes this is forced upon me by over-zealous wall-stripping or wall-demolishing during my absence. At other times it is due to the fact that I cannot really remember where stuff is meant to go

Anyway - here is my attempt at a redesign of the centre’s Pit Stop area, an altogether edgier learning zone this year, complete with pit board and the smell of the real pits courtesy of a load of tyres from the workshop. Notice too the brilliant spotlight tool on the whiteboard that comes with the latest version of Smart’s Notebook software. I am beginning to feel like a teacher again and less like a Pickfords removal operative.

I’ve just returned to what is left of Silverstone Study Centre.