This year I can honestly say the quality of entries was exceptional. The eventual entries recommended to the final judges were each capable of winning outright. It is fortunate that we didn’t have to make that call!

The awards ceremony is to be held at the Emirates stadium in June and I am really looking forward to if! A chance to put on the black tie outfit, but also to meet the people behind the visions for each school.

The picture shows the evaluation in full swing. It was a tough day, but extremely worthwhile. I can’t say who the winners are (yet) but watch this space… Or the space on the BCSE website

The points I raised were the background of the personalised learning debate in England, how personalised learning fits with other systems and structures in schools and what tools are available to support the introduction and embedding of personalised learning in primary settings.

I drew from the work of David Hopkins’s 2007 book ‘Every school a great school’ (Open University Press) which clearly discusses the processes that have been happening in educational reform and offers suggestions for how the process of change can be taken further. Building in examples from around the world, during my time at Ultralab, and adding in a fair smattering of my own opinion about how virtual learning environments, as they currently stand, are not going to support personalised learning without a great deal of effort on bealf of the teachers who use them.

Far from being pessimistic, the situation couldn’t be more full of opportunity, but dismissing some of the myths and dispelling rumours is necessary before schools will be able to move towards implementing systems rigorously enough to really embedd the processes required.

Not surprisingly, the response has a clear focus on the procurement process which has been a bone of contention for quite a while now. Recently revised, it still causes concern in that the emphasis on procurement is often detracting from the more fundamental educational needs. Whilst I shudder at the thought of the word ‘Transformation’ being used glibly (it is, in my opinion, a retrospective activity to look back and see if you have transformed, rather than a forward looking activity that you can plan for), we are simply not going to transform learning through the BSF process if we don’t have a good hard look at how learners engage with the process of learning. Much of this absolutely must come from engagement of the stakeholders to inform the bidding teams, which currently happens far too late in the process, or worse, not at all.

And once we have bought and paid for such inspirational buildings, and challenged current wisdom about how learners learn, created a new and exciting curriculum and put in place cutting edge technology to support it, what then? How do we then evaluate (I hasten to remove the word ‘measure’) the impact? Where is the single unified post-occupancy evaluation that tells us whether or not a real and sustainable difference has been made, because surely it is only through such a system that we can begin to grasp the extent of transformation. However, a post occupancy evaluation may also help to stay the dogs of war who are looking to criticise the way public money is being spent. We all know only too well the ongoing rumblings of discontent surrounding some of the first projects, and it is exactly this sort of thing that sends people (often politicians) into a rear guard action and cuts short or stifles an otherwise brilliant opportunity for change.

What I would welcome in BSF is a far greater involvement in the very teachers and students who are going to leave one old, decrepit building and enter a bright, shiny new one which will in some way transform learning. Whereas we have Design Quality Indicators which are intended to show the ways a building could be better, they are hardly written in a way that can engage young people in the decision making process. What we need is a system that allows teachers and students, parents, governors – all stakeholders – to be able to give the right kind of rich data that bidding teams need in order to create more exciting, more relevant responses. Incidentally, such a system would help the local authorities collect more vibrant information and help them ask the right questions of the bid teams.

Whereas on the one hand we have got the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda, and initiatives such as ‘Extended Schools’ (both of which are valuable, in my opinion), these seem to disappear in the cut and thrust of procurement in BSF – they absolutely start off right in the thick of it, but seemingly get left on the sidelines as soon as real money is debated. I’ve lost count of the times I have heard of particular features of a design being ‘cost engineered’ out and what that really means is that we are not looking at the best opportunities for learning (isn’t that the core purpose of a school anymore?) but at the buildings and facilities. Are we not then losing sight of what this is all about?

I have a theory that any new or redevelopment absolutely must be a balance of three core things: first and foremost, the pedagogy; secondly the technology to underpin the opportunities; thirdly the buildings and environment for learning. Somewhere in amongst that triangle will sit every single school and all will have an emphasis towards one or two of those three aspects. It won’t be the same for all schools, and even in very similar settings the fine grain detail will differentiate between them, but before a school can ‘transform’ it surely needs to know where it is. Most seem to, thankfully.

So then the transformation must be evaluated after we have juggled the three dimensions and looked at the path the school has been down, and to what extent things are different after the project completes. Even then we might say that we have got the same old school in a new building, and that alone is not transformation. Only when we consider the difference, and the opportunities for learning that are introduced, and the take up of those opportunities can we begin to grasp whether the BSF process has had the desired impact.

And we can only do that after the students and teachers take their place in the new building and start to work in new ways, with the new curriculum and new structures and processes.

If the procurement process is to end up as the main driver in BSF are we not losing the plot? Of course it must be a massive consideration – we don’t have an infinite amount of money, after all – but if we don’t look at how we can better inform the process with data from the end users, both before and after occupancy of the buildings, how are we ever going to improve this?

The BCSE response goes much further, of course, and considers many of the contentious issues (Building Bulletin 98 is *still* the guiding principle when creating learning spaces – it is TEN YEARS old… we need to throw down the gauntlet here -let’s have a better Building Bulletin), stakeholder engagement, DQI complexity and so on. It seems to me that we ought to all support the BCSE in challenging the process, and open up the debate surrounding how to improve BSF procedures. We don’t need to be confrontational, but we do need to bring to bear a lot of experience we have all gathered and most importantly, listen to the staff and students.

Cleveratom were there to provide an interactive session and encourage the delegates to ask questions. To do this I worked with half of the group (there were just too many delegates to fit in one room) and used the ever improving SMS tools that we are developing. The current incarnation is dubbed as ‘Walls iStream’, meaning text that is streamed onto a wall… Hais has been refining the interface and making it more linear than the previous versions, although we see a space for both in the future. The current version looks like this:

What we have seen is that architects are desperately keen to get the design of new schools right, and that they are under immense pressures from a number of different angles to confrm in one way or another with guidelines that limit the way spaces can be developed.

The BCSE event served to really highlight some of the issues to a wider audience and encouraged wider dialogue between people involved in BSF work.

Ty Goddard is the director for BCSE and is known as a strong campaigner for good design in schools. The responses from the event will be used to inform a document to go back to the Select Committee and let them know what is happening ‘on the street’. This is no easy task and there are many diverse views to consider.

The blog site for the seminar is http://www.buildingbetterschools.org.uk and you might like to sign up there and continue (or engage in) some of the dialogue as it unfolds. Participants at the seminar are particularly encouraged to make their views known (and felt) but anyone with an interest should have a sign in and join in the debate.

It speaks volumes about the quality of the designs for new schools around the country, and the opportunities that thousands of children are getting now that they weren’t getting before. I’m delighted to be involved in BSF work throughout the country and once again it has been emphasised to me just how important this work actually is.

I can’t say which of the entries will go forward to the final evaluations, of course, but I can comfortably say that innovation is thriving!

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.

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.

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.

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.