Kent students help to create innovative schools of the future!
11 March 2009
Charles Dickens School announced winner of the Northgate Education’s “Innovate my school” competition School students from Charles Dickens School, Broadstairs, have been announced winners of the Northgate Education “Innovate my school” competition. Northgate Education invited students from the 11 Kent secondary schools involved in the first phase of Kent’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme to take part in a competition investigating new technologies they would like to see implemented in their school.
Thamesview School, Northfleet School for Girls and Charles Dickens School visited BETT 2009 in January at Olympia in London, the largest education resource event in the world. Students were asked to explore the exhibition and investigate new learning technologies and resources. Once back at school they were challenged to design a presentation detailing why they chose particular technologies and how they will benefit the students and their school.
Competition entries were judged by Northgate Education and Kent County Council. The students worked really hard on identifying resources which have real educational value as well as being fun and engaging such as mobile technology, application software, compact computer desks, interactive voting systems and biometric lockers.
The judges looked at how the students addressed issues such as the application of the technology in their school, how the technology would work in practice, what problems, issues or opportunities it would address and the overall benefits to the school and students.
Charles Dickens School will be receiving an Apple Macintosh Notebook as a prize with the four students involved receiving an iPod Nano each. Northgate Education will be reviewing all the ICT that each school demonstrated in their presentation to see if it can fit as part of their solution.
David Hyland, managing director of Northgate Education: “All three schools that presented showed a confident approach to planning their presentation and evaluating their choices. Charles Dickens was chosen as the overall winning school because they demonstrated clearly the reasons for their choice, the applications and value to their education. They chose the Nokia N810 smart phone and the compact computer desk. It was the smart phone that won it for them as they gave specific examples on how they could use the smart phone as part of their classes. They also were able to give cost and operational benefits for the school. ”
Northgate Education is Kent County Council’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) provider as part of the Kent Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme. Northgate Education is a leading provider of ICT managed services and solutions to schools, academies and local authorities throughout the UK, and will be working closely with Kent County Council, Land Securities Trillium and Partnerships for Schools (PfS) to provide Kent schools with ICT which supports each school’s education vision.
Cabinet Member for Education Operations, Resources and Skills Mark Dance said: “Equipping our BSF schools with state of the art ICT facilities not only improves the business of education through more efficient school management process, greater collaboration and the sharing of resources, but will raise attainment and transform the educational opportunities available for young people. Involving students in the BSF process enables them to have a say in what resources are implemented in their schools. Kent’s vision is to work with schools to create a culture of participation that gets students involved in their own learning and encourages them to influence their school’s development.”
Eleven schools across Kent will benefit from the first initial £29 million investment in ICT as part of BSF. With ICT firmly embedded in the education vision of Kent schools, BSF will allow for even more innovative ICT to be used in classrooms as well as providing tools to help teachers improve the delivery of education. Committed to ‘anytime-anywhere learning’, schools will be working closely with Northgate Education to provide learners, parents and teachers with access to education resources via any internet enabled device.
