Videos – sharing the experience

I’m aiming to take short video clips from visits to other BSF schools and and upload them here  so you can share the experience.  If I come across any other interesting videos about BSF from youtube, teachers tv, or wherever, I’ll also share them here.
This one is from Wolverhampton – its their BSF “vision thing”.  Lots of whooshing and shiny equipment and engaged children.  Worth a watch!

Beaumont Leys – Artist impression

I am aiming to show how other schools in and around Leicester are progressing through BSF.  A digital camera is a quick and simple way of sharing the experience, alongside achitectural plans and impressions:

Artist impression of Beaumont Leys - main entrance

Beaumont Leys - work in progress

Images can often convey much more than the written word. This blog will be regularly updated with images, plans and photos of developments locally and nationally to help readers understand the  project, to imagine what is possible, and to visualise what our new school could look like!

Blogging Schools for the Future!

Welcome to  “The City of Leicester College – Blogging Schools for the Future” site!

The City of Leicester College is a phase 2 school in Leicester City Council’s BSF programme.  As such, we are about to enter the design phase of what is set to be a 20 million pound rebuild of our school.

I am personally both very excited and apprehensive about the BSF process.  It is a fantastic opportunity for re imagining our school and tailoring the building to match the College’s vision for educating our students.

However, if we are to build a school that is fit for purpose, it is important that we consult widely and thoroughly, so as to avoid making costly and long-lasting mistakes.

As a champion for BSF, I see my role as threefold:-

• Informing myself as widely as possible about the BSF programme nationally and locally, our own plans and priorities as a College , as well as how other schools have developed and implemented their ideas.
• Sharing information gathered with staff and students, and providing opportunities to discuss and exchange ideas and concerns.
• Collecting views of staff and feed these back to the relevant committees and working parties involved in BSF.

This blog is meant as a means of  sharing information I gather from visits, meetings and discussions with staff, students and anyone else interested in following how our school progresses through BSF!  Blogs are great for sharing thoughts, ideas, images and other multimedia to a wide audience in the form of “posts”.  These posts can be searched and indexed in a variety of ways, ensuring information is readily available and presented in a useful way.  As the information on the site grows, this will become more and more useful in referencing the material contained within.

You can see on the right hand panel how the posts included so far have been categorised and tagged.  You can use these to rapidly search for whatever information they are looking for.  Also included are links to other sites to do with TCOLC or BSF or both.

You are free to reply to any individual post and can also participate in online polls, offering a new opportunities for staff and students to get involved in the process.  Please click on comments at the bottom of each post to read these or add your own views.

As time progresses, the blog will hopefully develop into a rich repository for information on how the project has developed in our school.  Please explore the site, trying some of the links to various parts of the blog.  Try to imaging how it will look after a few months of information and posts have been added!

Note that in common with most blogs, this one reads from bottom to top, with older posts appearing further down the page. (This was the first post, so it appears last!)