Virtually able to do anything before school is even open (From The Northern Echo)

Virtually able to do anything before school is even open

8:53am Monday 12th January 2009 in Search By Lucy Richardson

PUPILS at a Teesside comprehensive are the first in the world to tour their school 18 months before it opens.

Playing fields at Acklam Grange Secondary School, in Middlesbrough, have been turned into a muddy building site, but within the next few weeks students will be able to tour the campus and pick up homework from classrooms that have not been built.

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

The project has been created by the team at Middlesbrough Learning Centre (MLC), in the grounds of the school, which has combined architects’ plans with Second Life, a 3D virtual world.

Teachers and pupils can create their own characters, known as avatars, which can interact with each other in the virtual complex.

Headteacher John Bate said the cutting edge 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 school doesn’t open until September next year, but it is 90 per cent 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 giant screen, which can be created for any school, costs between £20,000 to £25,000.

The redevelopment of Acklam Grange School, the first phase of a £100m overhaul of secondary education across Middlesbrough, will see the existing building demolished and replaced with a 1,410- place campus.

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

Andy Fisher, manager at the MLC, said creating a 3D school before it was even built was a world first.

“Research from the US is showing that by 2011, 80 per cent of internet users will have an avatar in a virtual world,” he said.

Mark Mullis, project manager at the MLC, said he was speaking alongside Mr Fisher at conferences around the world about the endless possibilities for the programme.

“We are very excited about the future of education,” he said. “It will open up a new world for students who have difficulty learning through books because they will now be able to visualise topics.

“We are very proud that a world-first product has been created in Middlesbrough.”