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New college is fit for purpose
Using ICT in an innovative way across the curriculum has brought success to the UK's first Microsoft Innovative School.
Lessons learned at the UK's first Microsoft Innovative School are providing a solid foundation for teaching and learning in the new Huyton Arts and Sports Centre for Learning.
The Huyton centre in Knowsley, Liverpool, opened in September last year, merging two older establishments - Bowring Community Sports College and Knowsley Hey Arts College.
From day one, the centre has promoted what it calls 21st-century learning skills that were such a spectacular success improving attainment, behaviour and the curriculum at Bowring.
Huyton's Director of e-learning, Damian Kenny, said: "One of the reasons that Bowring was chosen as the first Microsoft Innovative School was because we introduced more collaborative, cross-curricular teaching and learning.
"As one of the first steps of this journey, we asked the question 'what skills and personal qualities do we want our young people to have when they leave us?'.
"We set out to design a curriculum that would allow and encourage our young people to access and practise these skills. The same questions were being asked on a national scale, and the skills identified are now referred to as the Personal Learning and Thinking Skills."
Since the merging of the two older colleges, a lot of learning has taken place for the staff, not least in their new teaching environments, but also in how they refine and adapt their approach to 21st-century learning.
Damian said: "We did a lot of transitional work before our merger and since bringing both bodies of staff together, we've developed a big piece of work involving all the staff to bring everyone up to the same level.
"As far as the ICT side is concerned, we knew we had to get the teaching and learning correct before we did anything else. Now, six months on, we are developing an ICT toolkit for both students and staff to use as we bring resources and procedures into place."
Huyton Arts and Sports Centre is driving flexibility across a range of learning environments, and giving its students individual ownership of their learning. Damian added: "A new focus of Ofsted centres on what students are learning, rather than what teachers are teaching."
He said that there has been big progress towards this in Huyton. Young people are developing the learning systems that work best for them, and even where they get it wrong, they realise that it's okay - occasionally - to fail. Learners are becoming more independent, and taking on responsibilities for coaching their classmates and other students.
Technology is also making its way into the sports curriculum. Damian said: "We've used the same blueprint - teaching first then the technology to support it. Sport is now called Team Time, and all of the students are given responsibilities within a particular team - such as warm-up coach, someone in charge of resources, and someone in charge of refereeing.
"They can score points based on their abilities because there are competitive aspects built into the programme. And we use mobile devices such as hand-held projectors and flip video recorders that can be used on the sports field and the data easily transferred on to a laptop.
"We're also experimenting with Nintendo Wii Sports and the DS to improve hand-eye co-ordination and re-engaging those hard-to-reach students."
He added: "We're working in partnership with Knowsley's City Learning Centre in using devices such as iPhones, but also using Dartfish - a piece of analysis software that allows us to measure the different movements, rotation, angles and power performances of students, and compare them to the same movements of the world's top Olympic athletes."
Look out for a future edition, when we'll feature Calderglen and Stirling High Schools, two Scottish Microsoft Innovative Schools.