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Counting down to lift-off on Bedminster Down
By Ben Williamson, Learning Researcher, Futurelab |
The view that greeted students, staff and visitors to Bedminster Down Secondary School in Bristol on a bright morning in January was an unexpected one. The local press and radio had vans parked by the gates, and there were groups of children milling around, most of them staring at something in the sky.
Everyone's attention was taken by the 11-metre rocket that was pointing vertically towards space from just outside reception. Mounted on a gantry on the back of a truck and with a ladder leading up to the cockpit in its nose-cone, it looked ready to be launched, and it also looked huge. It was twice the height of the school. In fact, it was twice the height of any building nearby.
The event was a massive publicity stunt organised by Bedminster Down Headteacher Marius Frank, who has just 'launched' a new resource for local and national primary schools. The local press and radio, who normally report only on the apparent failures of Bristol's schools, were even there to celebrate it.
The Bedminster Down Space Centre is an interactive website based on ideas that Mr Frank has been developing himself for the last three years. It is planned to be made freely available online to any primary school in the UK via a network of host 'Space Centres' based at other secondary schools.
Mr Frank sees it as a possible bridge between learning in school, the home, and the community, as well as a possible application to support the transition from primary to secondary school.
"We wanted to make it so that any kid in Britain could use it," he said. "Anyone, anytime, anywhere with a web browser can log on."
The Space Centre website allows teams of children to name and launch a virtual rocket into space, and to select a mission that they would like it to take. A short video clip illustrates their rocket launching (with their chosen name written on its side), and 3D computer graphics demonstrate the route it will take on its mission. Currently, three missions are available, each visiting a number of planets in the solar system. Each mission lasts nearly a fortnight.
"Day or night over the next 12 days, the kids can log in to their mission or space ship," Mr Frank said. "And as their rocket passes the planets, the kids are e-mailed images and information about them automatically."
The website is intended to stimulate a variety of activities in science, literacy, and maths, as well as supporting collaboration, shared working, and engagement.
As their mission proceeds, the children can access and analyse mission data such as their rocket's speed, propulsion, electrical energy, location, and planetary information. They can then use these data in presentations and other class work.
The space rocket publicity stunt was intended to let surrounding schools know about the project, and to encourage them to get involved. Over 300 children attended from primary schools from across Bedminster Down's catchment area. The rocket was supplied by the space tourism group StarChaser, as part of its education outreach programme, who provided the children with vivid descriptions of what it is like to go into space, and how rockets work.
"Isn't it great," enthused Mr Frank. "We got the press and radio here to celebrate that really good things do happen in Bristol schools, instead of just reporting on the bad stuff."
Currently at the prototype stage for local schools to demo, the development of the Space Centre website was especially commissioned out to Australian web designers ETech by Mr Frank. He had to find £50,000, which he put together from part of the school's Technology Specialist College money and a DfES Innovations Unit grant, to pay for the website to be built based on sketches that he had drawn himself.
Staff members from across different subject areas already have a number of ideas for extending it. "We've demo'd that we can do it now, so we can just carry on building on it," Mr Frank said.
One idea involves simulating an emergency on-board the rocket, and having children investigate the use circuit diagrams to re-route the electrical power supply.
As part of another idea, "Kids will design and build scale models of the sun and the planets in the summer, then go on a local tour to get a sense of scale - so by the time they get to Keynsham they'll be about as far away from Bedminster Down as Pluto is from the sun."
The school also sees the Space Centre website as a resource that educators and community workers will be able to modify and alter to suit their needs.
"The philosophy for it is that it's free," explained Mr Frank. "We want other schools and communities to just go for it. Keeping things privately to yourself restricts creativity, but as soon as you make stuff freely available it changes your entire philosophy."
Over the next three months the Bedminster Down Space Centre will be trialled, evaluated and improved so that other schools can begin hosting their own versions of it.
"When it's working, we'll enable any local hub to set up as the Space Centre for their cluster of schools. It can easily be reskinned to become, say, the Trafford Space Centre in Manchester, or whatever!"
Links
Schools interested in hosting their own Space Centre after the initial three-month trial should contact Bedminster Down School (NB please wait until May 2005): bedminster_down_s@bristol-city.gov.uk
Starchaser education outreach program: www.starchaser.co.uk/outreach/index.asp
DfES Innovations Unit: www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/innovation-unit
February 2005
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