Web n Play

I received a lovely email from Sydney on Wednesday following our meeting the previous afternoon. She was clearly very impressed by the group's ideas and creativity. I thought I could use Sydney's notes from the meeting as our minutes. I am meeting Lisa Sproat today to see how we can find ways of inviting some primary schools to get involved. I will post after the meeting to keep everyone updated. Thanks again for all those who attended, and also for Billy for chairing the meeting.

Sydney's Notes:

They would like to work with between 2-4 primary schools
They want to do the project before the end of this academic year
They want to involve Year 11 students in the project, which means we have to run the project over the last three weeks of term, due to exams
This will mean that we have to condense the normal project schedule (8 weeks), which is fine so long as the primary schools are willing to dedicate a lot of time to it over the last 3 weeks.
I stressed that WebPlay Local was a very flexible model and that we could adapt it to fit our needs, although we needed to decide what those needs were and also to find out what the priorities were for the primary schools
We discussed, but did not decide, the platform that the project would be delivered through. We can of course use Thinkquest, which is what we currently use, but as we are increasingly running our projects on learning platforms, and as there is a mandate to get primary schools using learning platforms, I suggested that maybe it would be good to use the authorities. It as also mentioned that you use a series of collaborative tools that we could use, there is only an issue of internet safety for primary school students. A decision still needs to be made on this.
I suggested ways of involving the Tallis students could include: performing in the secret meeting, acting as Jet Set and Go agents online and possible in-class (helping with local walks etc). Helping with the secret meeting (ushers etc, helping to create the final travel guides (these don’t have to be ppt or websites, they can be videos – plays, newscasts etc).
I said that we would work together as a group to adapt the curriculum
here was talk of involving primary schools that you are already doing professional development work with on media (video, photos etc) and that the project could reinforce the skills they have been learning
I had also mentioned how impressed I was with the deaf students whom I met while I was with you. I suggested that maybe it would be worth working with a primary that has a deaf unit and feeds to Tallis and then involving some of the students we met in the project, including signing all our resources and a performing/signing at the Secret Meeting. I would be really interested in pursuing this idea.
I explained that the normal fee for primary schools to do the normal WebPlay Local is £500 and that we would stick with that and provide all the coordinating and extra design/management time for free. (because it’s really exciting and will be really fun!)
I stressed the importance of moving quickly because of the time constraints. I said we would have to have a deadline for a decision (and for having primary schools involved) in two weeks, so let’s say 19th Feb?
I said that if we decided to move ahead the first thing I would do would be to meet with them again and bring our normal project management plan, which we would fill in together. I think this way of working would give them valuable experience at project planning and management, in addition to the benefits they will get out of the project themselves.