Forget chalk and blackboards. Today’s pupils can look forward to 3D lessons, video conferencing and hand-held Nintendo consoles. Lucy Richardson reports.

NOW construction has started on the region’s biggest school buildings investment programme, staff and pupils are getting excited about the cutting-edge technology that will fill their new classrooms.

The days of overhead projectors and wipe clean boards are consigned to the history books by a new generation of teenagers who will learn through wikis, robots, podcasts and interactive tables.

Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is a strategic approach to capital investment in school buildings that will create the environment for the Government’s agenda of educational transformation.

One hundred and eighty schools across England are to benefit from more than £2bn of investment in school buildings.

By 2011, every local authority in England will have received funding and by 2016 major rebuilding and remodelling projects for at least three schools will have started.

The redevelopment of Acklam Grange School, in Middlesbrough, is the first phase of a £100m overhaul of secondary education across Middlesbrough, The existing building will be demolished and replaced with a 1,420-place campus, which opens in September next year.

The town is in the second out of 15 project “waves”

rolled out nationally and has broken new ground with its software.

Middlesbrough Learning Centre (MLC), in the grounds of Acklam Grange, has combined architects’ plans with Second Life, a 3D world, to create the world’s first virtual school.

Headteacher John Bate said the internet programme would enable staff to decide the best positions for the 65 CCTV cameras, where smokers’ corners might form, and pinpoint exactly where bottlenecks in corridors could be created.

“The new building doesn’t open until September next year, but it is nearly finished. We have picked colour schemes and positioned furniture, but there is nothing that we can’t change. It is very exciting,” he said.

The tailor-made computer programme and huge screen, which can be created for any school, costs between £20,000 to £25,000.

In English classes, students will be able to take a virtual walk through the House of Capulet in a 3D version of Romeo and Juliet, and observe a computer-generated beating heart in biology lessons.

The specialist maths and computing college is already at the cutting edge of technological advances, with pupils practising English and numeracy skills on Nintendo DS Lites, the first in the North-East to use the handheld computer consoles at school.

Mr Bate will encourage his pupils to take mobile phones into school to Bluetooth them their homework and important messages.

With £100 to spend on each child, Mr Bate has a £1.42m budget specifically for IT which he is relishing to spend.

Education software provider RM has been awarded the £7.5m contract by Middlesbrough Council to supply IT equipment to its schools.

Mr Bate intends for every classroom to have an interactive white board and has his eye on an interactive table.

His pupils are interested in a dancing humanoid robot, E-DE, intended for programming and modelling.

“We are now drawing up our priorities and the sort of kit and types of systems we want,” he said.

“One thing we have learnt about very quickly is ‘legacy’. The dilemma is what existing software we will be able to take across.

Depending on warranties and cable compatibility, it could mean that we might have to ditch 80 per cent of our equipment and give it to local primary schools.

“Legacy is something schools should put a lot of thought into two or three years in advance as there has to be a balance between what the children need now and not investing in equipment that can only last a year.”

At a recent RM/BSF seminar in Middlesbrough, a range of new teaching tools were illustrated including wikis, or editable web pages, blogs, learning platforms, digital cameras and video conferencing.

Sir Mike Tomlinson, CBE, a former chief inspector of schools said the vision for education had to be forward looking.

“BSF represents a once-ina- lifetime opportunity to look at what we do, what we might do and to look at buildings, support the curriculum, support the teaching and the learning that we want to see happen.

“We should think more about timetables, are they more about organising teaching or facilitating learning? Trust our teachers, give them the scope to be innovative, give them the right to take managed risks.”

Colette Rose, Middlesbrough Council’s senior ICT advisor, said it was important to teach children how to use technology in a safe and secure environment.

“For some children who are disabled their social life is lived through chatrooms and Facebook, but at the moment they are banned at school, we need to look at that,” she said.

Nigel Carden is headteacher of the 114-pupil Beverley School, in Middlesbrough, a specialist technology school for pupils aged three to 19 with autism.

He is very close to signing the contract for the design of a campus, which will be shared with Tollesby, a school for children with behavioural difficulties.

He said: “You have to have a vision and stick to it. Staff have been to other BSF schools in the country and that was fed into our design.”

Mr Carden said he was looking to buy Minibooks for his pupils because the lightweight laptop computers were ideal for personalised learning.

“For a leading edge college like ours we are very excited about the future,” he added.