Mr. MacKeith - A local trade unionist involved with the campaign to close Campsfield detention centre, Mr. MacKeith was interviewed by interested students about his personal views on the treatment of refugees. He came into school for a day, talked to the students about Campsfield and helped them develop their WEB page about Campsfield. Although Mr. MacKeith is involved with the Campaign to Close Campsfield he was speaking in a personal capacity.
Ms. Norris - A worker at Oxford Development Education Centre, Ms. Norris helped us plan, research, design and HTML our entry.
Mr. Sharif - when some students got interested in the issue of racism in sport, Mr. Sharif agreed to be interviewed about his experiences as a British Asian young man born and brought up in Oxford.
Ms. Tickell - A long-time supporter of people seeking asylum in Oxford, Ms. Tickell helped us make good contacts in the refugee communities.
Ms. Zyar - recently arrived form Afghanistan, Ms. Zyar took time to complete a questionnaire on her experience of claiming asylum.
Staff and residents at Oxford's Night Shelter - the Night Shelter is an hostel for homeless people over 25. Staff duplicated and handed out a questionnaire designed by students, and residents completed it.
Community groups and special populationsDescription of "Our Community"
We took "our community" to be the city of Oxford. Although it is a small city it is home to many different communities, each sharing common experiences through culture, language and relationships to other communities.Summary of Our ProjectWe wanted to give people in other countries a new perspective on our city, so though we wanted to reflect the diversity of Oxford, we also chose to focus on two communities who do not usually get a chance to have their say, people claiming asylum here and people with no satisfactory home.
Of course, because our site was written by young people, it also says something about what it is like to be part of the community of young people in Oxford.
Because we wanted to explore different communities in Oxford we started with a drama game about fitting in to an unfamiliar culture. This generated energy and questions, which we channeled into meeting Mr. Ahmed and finding out about his experiences. Only when we had some ideas about what we wanted to say and to research did we start using the Internet.After a session on how to search the WEB for useful sites, people started to get fresh ideas about what they wanted to cover. Whatever students chose, their aim was to try and get points of view about that issue or theme from more than one local community.
We wanted our site to be diverse, current and thought provoking. We see the WEB as a way to start conversations, not just publish our ideas. We will be delighted if people e-mail us with their reactions.
Cherwell got a networked Internet connection for the first time in January this year, so one of the main curriculum requirements we covered through this work was developing students' use of new information technology.As General Studies is not covered by the National Curriculum there are no specific attainment targets. However the work did develop students' research skills, their ability to work independently and as part of a team and their ability to structure their own writing.
We were also hoping to expand student's horizons and help them develop an open and positive attitude to people different from themselves. It is hard to measure changes in attitudes, but the work did generate interesting and useful conversations about our assumptions and the way different communities in Oxford are treated.
Due to the way the timetable works, we had to hand over the work from one set of classes to another very near the end of the project. One of the first tasks we set the new groups was to evaluate what had already been written, and we were very encouraged to find that students were stimulated to add their own comments.
The highlights of the work included meeting Mr. Ahmed and all of us learning basic HTML. We had quite a short time to complete the project - we started in February and each group involved only had two one hour sessions per fortnight. The combination of the technology and contacts from outside school seemed to motivate most of the students involved really well. Without this motivation we would not have finished in time. In one lesson we completely forgot to pack up because we were so absorbed in what we were doing!
All the students were completely new to the Internet when we started this work, so just being able to e-mail or WEB browse was exciting! We used video and conventional books and magazines to research information, but we complemented this with interviews and questionnaires.To collect images we either used a scanner to convert pictures from conventional sources or used an Ion camera to take pictures on to disc. The scanner seemed to give better quality. We manipulated the images in Photovision Pro.
Students wrote their pieces in Word and saved them as text files. To convert to HTML files we used Notepad (the basic text editor that comes with Windows) and HTML Notepad, produced by a company called Cranial Software. We ran Netscape off-line at the same time as the Notepads. Students just kept toggling between the two as they marked up their text, re-loading their files in Netscape to see the effect.
As you can see from the list of people who helped us, we had a lot of support to finish this project. Ms. Tickell is an excellent networker, and several phone conversations with her put us in touch with Mr. Ahmed and Ms. Zyar.Mr. Ahmed met Ms. Norris to find out about the project and plan his input before coming in to school. The students were captivated by his story; some of them even stayed behind at the end of a class to thank him. He was impressed with the power of the communications technology and got a chance to try it out as a tool for research into the situation in Sudan.
As students came up with new issues to investigate, like racism in sport, Ms. Norris used her contacts in the local community to find people who were interested in helping students develop their ideas. Mr. Sharif is a colleague from youth work projects with Asian communities in East Oxford. He was interested to come over to North Oxford and find out about the views of some young people here. He was pleased that students were trying to investigate an issue that is often hidden.
Ms. Norris had volunteered at the Night Shelter hostel for homeless people. They were keen to help students find out more about homelessness in Oxford as this is another issue that is either hidden or surrounded by misconceptions.
Mr. MacKeith is keen to publicise what is happening at Campsfield detention centre, so he welcomed the chance to increase the information available to people on the Net. He was impressed by the quality of students' questions and the research they had done.
On-line, we contacted some of the other schools involved in the project. We are starting to exchange messages between students and we hope this will develop.
Our WEB pages are yet to go on-line, but we are hoping to monitor what people learn from them by including questions asking them to e-mail us with their views.The project has only been running for a short time, but it has already had an impact. Mr. Ahmed is developing his Internet skills to share and collect information about Sudan. He is also talking about developing a workshop programme for other schools in the area.
The fact that we were investigating controversial issues has allowed students and people in the wider community to start to air concerns and find others who share them.
Students have responded well to having more contact with people outside the school, and we are hoping to build on this in future work.
Our answers to questions 3 and 4 cover most of this. Our greatest support has been through people putting aside time to share their experience and concerns with students. Ms. Norris has been able to give time to training and coordination as well, thanks to funding from the European Commission to help explore the potential of the Internet for Development Education.Research Machines plc, a computer company based at Abingdon, have given us a lot of technical support. It was their cooperation that allowed us to put a whole network of machines on-line. Without this the logistical challenge of participating in the project would have been much greater.
Cherwell has many links with the local community, built up over years of cooperation. Students go out on placement to businesses and voluntary groups to gain work experience. Neighbourhood Engineers come into school and help students with technology projects. Sixth form students do community service, one recent example being work in a playgroup.