On Thursday 12th February, the Guthlaxton Student Consultants met with some representatives from year 9 at the three feeder High Schools to discuss, and start to develop future changes to the College. The day was run by Mr Coles, Mr Wilce and Mrs Whyte. The day started with an introduction from the staff and a film called ‘Shift Happens’. This film outlined some of the future needs for education and gave us an insight into what lies ahead and how Guthlaxton could be kept ‘up to date’.

After watching this, the KS3 pupils split up and joined groups with the current Guthlaxton students. In these groups, we designed a school of the future, and then presented our groups’ ideas to everyone else.

With this in mind, we then went on a tour around the college trying to identify any areas that are particularly in need of development. Following the tour we assembled back in the foyer to discuss our findings.

After break, we started the main task of the day; ‘Designing Guthlaxton’s Learning Resource Center’. In order to do this, we were given a design brief which read as follows;

‘In the future, teaching and learning will change. As will the types of qualifications that we study. From 2009, students at Guthlaxton will study the broadest range of qualifications ever. This includes 8 BTECs and 9 diplomas (3levels in Construction, Engineering and ICT).More and more, qualifications are moving away from the traditional exams and coursework of recent years. Traditional GCSEs will more than ever be based upon exams and controlled assessments done in the classroom. However, alternative qualifications require independence and increased access to research materials and high quality ICT. Students of all ages will be producing portfolios in order to acquire their qualifications.

We need students, either through guided sessions with their teacher or independently in the Sixth Form, to be able to access ICT space and other learning resources from 8amn until into the evening. Students who may not have the luxury of high quality resources at home need to be able to access them beyond the college day. Equally, as a community based college, we must actively encourage our neighbours and our community to access our facilities.

This facility should be much more than this. As a place of education we value the place of books in our college. We value the role of great literature as well as the non-fiction required to study at GCSE, A Level and beyond. We want to encourage young people to read fiction, non fiction, magazines and newspapers as well as access to the news through the medium of television and the internet.

This should also be a place of peace, safety and relaxation for all of the young people in the college. It should be the learning hub of the college that welcomes all who visit it.’

After reading the design specification, our job was then to create a proposal for the centre including what it would look like as well as the facilities it would have. We considered that the centre would need to include computers and appropriate software aswell as practical furniture.

Taking our ideas a stage further, we started to draw a 2D design for the centre. However, while doing this we considered all the things we discussed earlier, including how we thought lessons should be taught and the overall atmosphere that should be in a classroom environment. We accounted for this by designing a room in such a way that these factors could be easily incorporated. For example, having different round shaped desks to encourage more discussion work as opposed to the old traditional ‘row layout’. We also thought about the range of purposes that this area could be used for and tried to make it a ‘multi purpose’ centre. We wanted this area to be able to accommodate a whole class, such as a GCSE class that would be doing group work, as well as A level students that might be doing more independent learning. Not only did we want this area to be a place for study but also be adaptable to enable meetings and presentations to take place.

After producing the basic floor plan, we were given the opportunity to design a 3D plan of that we thought the room should look like.

Finally, we presented our group’s design and plans back to the other groups and staff.

Below are the names of everyone that took part in the day:

Guthlaxton Students			Abington Students	Bushloe Students	South Wigston Students
Tom Court	10PDG		JessicaCooke	AristosCooper	MeganHeggs
Iwanna Hackett	10MRF		Lena Walker	RebeccaRosen	SophieHalaczkiewicz
Aimee Harris	10PLS		JoeCastle	WilliamRoyce	Nick Ward
Jasprett Johal	10PPL		JamieAdams	EmmaSaunt	JackBradley
Georgina Jones	11MZB
Michelle Small	11HHV
Jack Vardy	11PSS
Catherine Crossley	12POQ
Laurence Perry	12PAS
Ben Sharman	12HAJ
Jason Williamson	12POQ

Published on Thursday 12th February 2009 at 09:00