Thanks for the feedback! How about some comments?

I have received lots of positive feedback about the blog, after announcing its existence to staff this week. Thanks for that! Hopefully there are enough posts up now for readers to get an idea of what the blog is about and how I’m hoping it can help the BSF process at our College.

One thing I would encourage everyone to make use of is the “Comments” feature of the blog. There is a comments link at the bottom of every post, and it can be used to ask questions, request more information or to give your own views. For instance, if you liked the idea of a learning plaza, as detailed in the last post, click on the comments and tell us what you liked about it and how you might use the space in your lessons.

Also, if there you have your own ideas about BSF you would like to share or to kickstart a discussion about, contact me for “contributor” privileges so you can add your own posts to the blog. The authoring software is very easy to use – it’s no more complicated than sending an email.

The opportunity to rebuild our school will not come along again in our lifetime, so let’s get involved now!

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!)