‘Our River Medway’

1. ‘Our River Medway’ A cross-phase, cross-curricular Hands On Support project Maidstone One

2. Meet the MC1 HOS team... • 3 LICT teachers John Duncalfe from Barming Primary, Lucy Henderson from Ditton Junior and Michelle Brayford from Brunswick House Primary. • LEO Julie Stones • ASK Primary ICT Andy Place • ASK HOS Primary Phil Bracegirdle Other key people in the project planning process were: Ian Coulson: Kent ASK History/Geography Consultant Chris Davison and Heather Petitt: SEGfl Project Officers Charlotte Curtis : MCVP Marieke Zech: Museum of Kent Life Education Officer

3. What had gone before... With several Cluster projects already under our belts such as: we felt more prepared to launch our own cluster project. TA IWB Training SENCO ICT Training

4. July 2007 – In the beginning It all began with an e-mail from Phil ... ...followed by a meeting with Charlotte Curtis from the MVCP in July2007. BUT there was no mention of: • A project for 200 children, 18 primary schools and 2 secondary schools. • 26 separate 'Ask an Expert' FM video-conferences. • A launch day with children taking part in 4 museum workshops, river walks, river trips, using video and digital stills cameras, voice recorders etc. • Creating an eight page newspaper to celebrate the whole project.

5. 13th Sep 07 – Discussions begin... A meeting was held at the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership to discuss how we could run an ICT based project celebrating our Cluster’s locality along the River Medway. This was attended by staff from MVCP, ASK consultants Phil Bracegirdle, Carine Jacquel and Ian Coulson, Chris Davison from SEGfL and ICT coordinators from 4 secondary schools as well as ourselves.

6. Key Question • What is it like to live along the River Medway? • The focus would be on the human and animal life along the river, past and present. • The plan was to use new technology to look at a humanities topic in a more creative way. • We hoped this would be the creative curriculum at its best.

7. 15th Nov 07 project takes shape • At a further meeting ideas began to take shape and a project plan was put together and aims decided upon. • It was decided that the Museum of Kent Life would be an ideal location to launch the project, and Ian Coulson put his powers of persuasion into action to talk to the Museum about the feasibility of 200+ 11 year olds invading the site. • We were determined this would remain a cross-curricular project where all schools would be able to contribute something be that poetry, dance, art work, geographical river studies, habitats study etc. by publishing their work on Making the News. • Project Aims • Pupils will use ICT in a meaningful context • Pupils will produce and publish work in response to river work • Pupils will engage in a launch day with a 2 week period for initial follow up work to be completed, including an Ask an Expert day

8. Going cross phase • Having previously cooperated with four secondary schools during our 'Transition project' using 'Flashmeeting' and 'Making the News', this was taken a step further through their involvement in the River Medway project. • It was hoped that they would be involved in video recording the events of the day and produce live podcasts from the venue. • As well as including secondary schools, we also wanted to include our special school. • The focus age group was Years 5 and 6.

9. 16th Jan – Microsite is launched Thanks to Phil and Chris we were provided with a microsite via the SEGfL to share information and resources with our cluster schools about ICT. We began to collate information here ready for the River Medway Project.

10. 25th Jan 08 – I love it when a plan comes together A meeting was held at the Museum of Kent Life with all parties involved to enable all the final details to be decided upon. Including a separate microsite to share information specifically for the project and to publish work.

11. Resourcing the project It was decided that each school in the cluster was to be provided with the necessary hardware to support this project. This included a video camera, digital camera, webcam, voice recorder, tripods and various accessories such as rechargeable batteries and charger.

12. Who paid what? The Cluster Hands on Support budget paid for the following: • All equipment – now in each of the schools. • Supply cover and venue for the Training Day on Feb 5th. • Supply cover, workshop costs, boat trip for the Launch Day. • The Newspaper production costs. SEGfl: have provided access to MTN; Flash Meeting; and the three Microsites, as well as providing staff at the planning meetings and on the day to support the project. The Museum and MVCP: provided venues for planning meetings and various staff for activities.

13. 5th Feb 08 Cluster training • Training was provided for ICT coordinators in the MC1 cluster on a range of software and hardware including 'Making the News', 'Flashmeeting', and all the hardware provided for the project. • 18 schools attended out of 21. All the hardware was distributed during this training day. • In one session the 'Our River Medway' project was showcased by Phil Bracegirdle and Ian Coulson. • Andy Place lead a session about E-safety which gave us opportunity to highlight E-safety protocols and concerns for the 'Ask the Expert' day. Following this we presented at the Cluster Heads meeting to encourage participation and offered a twilight at the Museum for pre-visits from school staff.

14. Walks along the river; watching a blacksmith at work; video conferencing – it’s a safety nightmare! Risk Assessments: The microsite provided an excellent tool to share risk assessments from: The Museum; MCVP – for the river walk. The Allington Belle. We also produced a gallery of photos to show all schools the buildings, ground surfaces etc. as well as a twilight preparatory site meeting. E-safety: Once again the microsite was a great tool to share: Model e-safety letters for schools to use with parents. Guidance for photos and video-conferences. The Newspaper was read by the HOS team and Keith Hargreaves in order to ensure it was as safe we could make it.

15. 27th March 08 – The Launch Day On 27th March, 20 schools attended the 'Our River Medway' launch day.

16. Secondary Schools GCSE Media pupils from Oakwood Park Grammar School produced video footage of the day assisted by ASK’s HOS Secondary Advisor Carine Jacquel. Liz Hudson from OPGS led the Y10 Group. • St Simon Stock Year 7 pupils produced podcasts reporting on the day. These were published live onto the River Medway Microsite with help from SEGfL’s Heather Petitt. Colin Edwards was lead teacher for St. Simon Stock. Click to hear their interview with the blacksmith

17. 2nd April 08 – Ask an Expert Day 26 Video conferences using 'Flashmeeting' were organised with 6 experts : • Ange Young, the East End hopper, • Bev Henderson from the Allington Belle, • Staff from the MVCP • Livestock manager from the Museum of Kent life. • Ian Coulson to talk on history of life along the river. 6 schools took part. This provided children the opportunity to extend their learning from the activity day and ask questions that had cropped up during follow up work.

18. 2nd April 08 – Ask an Expert Day What would you like to know about.......? Rare farm breeds at the museum. The history of the river. Water Voles ‘The Allington Belle’ American crayfish, Chinese crabs and poisonous plants! Hopping down in Kent.

19. May-June 08 – Preparing for the Finished Product: Using the microsite. The microsite was used to plan the newspaper – rather than have another meeting – e-mails were sent out letting schools know that the options for articles were on the site, and then schools selected a choice and the site was updated.

20. May-June 08 – Preparing for the Finished Product 1: Going National! Chris Davison set us up with a gallery on the National Education Network – this allowed us to post pictures of high quality (pixels) which could be used for the paper. It also helped to create a resource of photos that could be used by anyone accessing the site.

21. May-June 08 - The Finished ProductThe Medway Examiner • Schools were encouraged to produce a range of cross-curricular work that would be featured in the newspaper. A list of suggestions were posted on the microsite to provide teachers with starting points. • Schools emailed their work: photographs, pictures, artwork, newspaper articles and poetry. • We spent several sessions with Keith Harcourt from Harcourt consultancy in order to plan the structure of the newspaper.

22. ‘Our River Medway’ Legacy! • The project brought together 18 of 21 primary schools in the Cluster to work on one focus. • It also included Year 7 children from Bower Grove Special School, and Year 7 and 10 children from two secondary schools. • It provided all Cluster primary schools with a significant amount of audio-visual equipment together with training in web-conferencing and web-based publishing. • It demonstrated how a microsite could be used for planning and implementing a project. • The newspaper provided a route to inform every parent in the Cluster primary schools about the way ICT can enhance learning.

23. Our River Legacy! There is now a platform of knowledge and skill within the Cluster which can be tapped into for future projects. The microsites are there to be used and further developed: other projects that we work on can be managed from the microsite while active, and then there is a record of what we have done with useful documents and links for others to use. All Cluster schools are aware of the NEN Gallery as a place to use and find resources. The memory – as the song (c 1980) almost says: ‘Didn’t we have a lovely day, the day we went to Cobtree!!’

24. New Microsite2 So what next??? Another World Maidstone Transition Project 2009

25. New Microsite2 So what next??? Qwizdom voting systems: We have six voting sets and the microsite will be a useful vehicle to maintain information about their use and to produce a resource bank of assessments for schools to use. The microsites are now a route to ensure we can maintain up to date information on progress with all of our projects. The River Microsite will allow us to publish work which did not get past the editors into the ‘Examiner’ 2Simple Collection: 13 schools took advantage of a 60:40 split funding process to purchase this and there was a training day in October. KLZ: The three LICT teachers have all completed the Admin Level 1 and 2 courses for KLZ and are implementing KLZ in their own schools. We will then run a workshop on this at a Cluster Training Day in February.