Tag: project management

Categories
Citizenship involver blog News

School council elections: compilation of free resources

It’s the beginning of the school term.

Loads of school council elections are taking place across the country, but many of them aren’t organised as well as they could be. 

Often this is perfectly understandable; running the election is sometimes thrust upon an unsuspecting teacher, so here’s a complication of the resources we’ve got to help you out!

1. A set of 15 minute short tutor time activities to help plan a school council election:

http://involver.org.uk/2011/03/school-council-election-tutor-form-time-activities

2. Practical steps on running a school council election, setting it up and questions about if you REALLY need to have one:

http://involver.org.uk/2010/08/school-council-elections-planning-for-success/

3. Our school council reps toolkit might help students understand what’s involved as a school councillor (sometimes if they’re not sure what’s involved, they won’t put themselves forward).

http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-reps-tookit/

4. It’s important to have a think about what type of school council model (and therefore election) you need to have:

http://involver.org.uk/2011/07/school-councils-and-democracy-pick-your-model-carefully/

5. Once you’ve got your reps, then use this ‘getting to know your reps’ game:

http://involver.org.uk/2009/09/getting-to-know-your-reps-game-template/

6. Try and avoid this!

http://involver.org.uk/2009/09/school-council-election-fraud-as-it-happens/

And remember, you can always email us if you want some help or advice. Or feel free to suggest a new election resource for us to write.

Greg

Categories
involver blog

Project planning and evaluation videos for school councils

We helped make this series of six videos for Parliament’s Education Service. As well as encouraging schools to enter the Speaker’s School Council Award they contain loads of great tips from MPs and school councillors of all ages on how to make any project a success.

If your school council or project team is getting a bit stuck have a watch of some of these, they might just give you a few ideas.

Why enter the Speaker’s School Council Award

Getting ideas and choosing a project

Planning your project

Keeping your team on track

Keeping people informed and involved

Evaluating your project

These videos were all shot, directed and edited by the fantastic Kwame Lestrade of Franklyn Lane Films.

Categories
involver blog

We’re looking for a web design/development intern..

Hey all,

Over on the join our team page, we’ve got details of an internship we’ve got available. Please give us a tweet, email or call if you’re interested!

Or you could read the details below:

Web Developer/Designer intern

We’re looking for a web developer/designer intern to help us create a new community website for the young people and teachers that we work with. You might be a student web designer, or a recent graduate, that’s keen to build their portfolio and work as part of an exciting start-up.

Info:

involver are an award-winning social enterprise that help schools, colleges and universities to give students more of a say in their education. We help young people to see that democracy, participation and ‘taking part’ isn’t just for the clever or most confident kids, or those who give the right answers. It’s for everyone.

We’re two guys that set up involver just over a year ago now. We’ve won several awards along the way, but most importantly have trained and supported loads of really great young people in schools across the UK and Europe. We’re currently working on high profile projects with Parliament and the Children’s Commissioner, and we’re working hard to take involver to the next level.

Why are involver looking for an intern?

We’re looking for a web developer/designer to help us create a new community website for the young people and teachers that we work with.

What kind of person are we looking for?

We’re looking for a student web designer, or recent graduate, that’s keen to build their portfolio and work as part of an exciting start-up. We’ve got a site spec and think that something like ELGG, Drupal, Ning, or Buddypress can do what we want. We’re just really keen for it not too look and feel really generic!

To do this you’d need great CSS and HTML skills, and a little bit of PHP probably wouldn’t go amiss. Our assumption is that we’d build something on an existing platform (as mentioned above) rather than building the site totally from scratch. So if you’re an energetic and passionate web design student, or a recent graduate, get in touch!

Where are the details?

We’re based in Shoreditch, East London. But don’t worry, we don’t have funny haircuts (except Greg). We’d pay your expenses and sort your lunch out.

In terms of timing, we’re keen to be flexible. You might want to do a day a week for a few months, or do something shorter and more intensive. Or you might like to work remotely. We also adhere to CIPD’s Internship Charter, which you can read here.

Are we nice people?

Yes. And we make nice coffee.

What would you get out of it?

Hopefully, you’d get a great website as part of your portfolio. You’ll meet some good contacts. We’d be really keen to introduce you to the people we work with; a mix of schools, charities, politicians, government people, private sector companies. And take you to events if you want to come.

If you do a good job, we’ll also promote you widely. And give you a great reference. Finally, we’re developing more and more online work, so there’s also a good chance we’d give you paid work in the future.

What do you do next?

  • Get in touch with us at info@involver.org.uk.
  • Or give us a buzz on 020 3411 3294.
  • Or you might want to tweet us @doingdemocracy.

From there, we’ll organise an informal chat to decide if you’re what we’re looking for.

If you want a bit more information about what we do, take a look at www.involver.org.uk.

Or click on the link below for this information in PDF:

[download id=”227″]

Categories
involver blog

Putting ideas in to action

It’s great when someone gets in touch to tell you that they’ve tried an idea you’ve thrown out into the internet (and that it’s working!).

I got this email and photo today:

Hi Asher,

I hope this email finds you well.

As you know, we didn’t have a student council notice board but having found the idea for a progress board on the Involver website, the students wanted one. So I just wanted to say thank you and I’ve attached a photo of our own 2.5 metre by 1.5 metre version. It’s certainly sparking some interesting conversation.

Many thanks,

Zoe

Lodge Park Technology College

School council progress board at Lodge Park Technology College
The school council progress board in use at Lodge Park Technology College

Also very impressed that the project second from bottom is their entry into the Speaker’s School Council Award – something we help Parliament to run. It should be on all of your boards too ;)

Categories
involver blog News Twitter

Making a great student voice conference even better – part 2

This is part two of a blog on Little Heath’s Student Voice conference. You can read the first part here. This concentrated on the older students who were organising the conference, and the adults that supported them.

This second part will look at the experience of some of the younger pupils who are more recently involved with student voice. Let’s focus on student voice in learning since it’s one of the areas that the school does amazingly well. This centres around the STARs project – Students as Researchers.

The STARs (students as researchers) project is a key part of student voice in Little Heath. It’s designed to give the students an influence in their learning and school-life. Importantly, this isn’t based on whim, but research. Even more importantly, this research is student-led.

This first group looked at the types of homework that students liked most. Lots of students were complaining about their homework so they worked on a questionnaire to send out to pupils. The results were presented to Governors and SLT.

Here’s two year 9 students telling us about their STARs project. As opposed to the first group, this project focuses on classroom teaching. It looks at specific subjects: English, History and ICT in years 7 and 8. A crucial area to look at, and some very useful findings:

This group looked at the help that is available for students within the school. Here’s a member of the group talking us through the teacher questionnaire that they organised, and what will happen to their ideas:

Members of the STARs team can get involved year after year. These two members led a successful project last year, and are doing a first plan for their anti-bullying project this year:

Lots of the learning from the STARs project goes into a booklet which is given out to the school to publicise their work. Here’s the team in charge of making it:

Ongoing reflections on Homework:

Year 7 pupils (I think) talking us through their planner/homework diary/timetable.

They’re encouraged to reflect on what they’ve learnt and their homework, if there was too much or if they really enjoyed it. Teachers would then look at this. It’s a simple but good way to encourage reflection on learning and start a conversation with teachers.

Student voice in school planning:

Year 7 pupils on the Buildings and Environment group looking at how to improve this aspect of their school. They’re starting point is how they would make their school into the ‘dream school’ and they’re drawing a big map. They’re clearly getting a lot from approaching this in a visual way.

Key quote ‘it makes it come to life’

So that’s a taster of some of the great work being worked on by the younger pupils at Little Heath. The range of student voice work is really amazing, and if you’re interested, take a look at my original post from last year’s conference for a bit of analysis into why it works so well.

Well done to everyone involved :)

Greg

Categories
involver blog Resources

From school council noticeboards to progress boards

Can your school council noticeboard actually help drive change?

Pretty much every school I go to has one and they almost all consist of the same things:

  • Photos of the school council (often last year’s)
  • Minutes of the the last meeting (who stops at a noticeboard to read closely-typed minutes?)
  • A poster saying ‘have your say/make a difference/we’re your voice!’

Other than underlining for Ofsted that you have a school council, what does this actually achieve?

How about if you used that space instead for a Progress Board. This would allow everyone in the school to see:

  • What the school council is working on
  • Who they talk to to get involved
  • What the hold ups are (this can put gentle pressure on a slow-moving Headteacher or Caretaker to respond)
  • What’s off-limits and what’s been achieved

Anyway after years of describing this idea to people and sketching it up on flipcharts at training sessions I finally created a graphic last night which shows just what I mean.

School council progress board
If you set up a board like this you need to make sure it is updated at least once a week: make a member of the school council Progress Board Officer. Click the image to see the full-sized version.

Do you have any other ideas for what might go on here (or on a board next to it).

I’d also love to see how something like this could be part of a school council’s page on their VLE or website.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve got any ideas.