4D Exchange – South East

At the end of September we travelled down to London to facilitate our first ever South East 4D exchange at East Croydon School.

We welcomed teachers from East Croydon, Thomas Day and Thomas Knyvett, thank you for all those who attended and to East Croydon for hosting.

Once everyone was refreshed with tea and biscuits the exchange got underway.

See our Prezi below for a roundup of all the ideas and some tips and tricks from us too!

If you’re interested in attending our next 4D exchange in Spring and/or if you would like to be a host for 4D exchange contact Lauren at lauren@4Dimmersive.com

Don’t forget, you can exchange ideas with the 4D network by using the hashtag #4dexchange – we will always retweet and celebrate your immersive approaches on our social media streams.

Join the 4D community

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Our Training and Research coordinator  Inés shares some more details on the 4D community and why we are working hard to create a network of immersive practitioners. If you’re working in an immersive space, we’d love for you to be involved. Full details are below or you can get in touch with the 4D team here.

Sharing immersive experiences

Immersive environments, by definition, are spaces that take people outside of their everyday experiences to immerse them in the creation of new worlds and perspectives. While this is what makes them so powerful, it also means that sometimes sharing or retelling an immersive experience outside of the space can be hard to do under the glare of the staffroom’s strip lighting.

As a team that all have direct experience of the education and healthcare sectors, we are aware of the many daily priorities, responsibilities and challenges that staff have to juggle. Time pressures, low resources, and limited time to get together as a team mean that sharing best practice can be difficult.

However, since we launched in 2009 we’ve seen and heard so many incredible examples of use – from using the tunnel theme to develop vowel sounds in KS3 French to integrating props with a Hansel & Gretel timeline to take young people on a journey of texture – that we knew we wanted to do something to encourage sharing of practice right across the network. This meant engaging people from our 4D champions to less confident users still exploring how to get the most out of their space.

Creative communities of practice

So, where to begin? During a masters degree, I wrote a postgrad university essay on ‘Interpreting arts participant groups as Communities of Practice’.

I had heard the phrase ‘Communities of Practice’ banded about, but to me it seemed bizarre to create a separate group and strategy for learning when learning was exactly what these arts participation sessions were about. If we are using creative means to enhance learning and collaboration for the participants, doesn’t this suggest that we could be using creativity for our own learning too?

Etienne Wenger, educational theorist and one of the most respected voices at the Communities of Practice (CoP) school, said that “learning can be the reason the community comes together or an incidental outcome of members’ interactions”. That is to say, a group may be performing as a CoP without necessarily being aware of it, whether they are catching up about a pupil’s response to a trip to the moon over lunch, or uploading a short video of their latest immersive session in the spooky forest to YouTube.

So, we were faced with a task – how can we help this informal learning across schools extend to a larger network, so more people can give and take inspiration from it, without it becoming a burden for our busy practitioners?

For us, the answer had to lie somewhere in the field of creativity. 

We already know the teachers we work with are highly creative, and if creativity can be used as a teaching tool that gives more ownership to pupils, then it can also be used as a way to strengthen and develop a sense of community and sharing across practitioners or, as our friend Wenger puts it, “[create] an environment in which the value communities bring is acknowledged”

We knew this sharing needed to be fun, lightweight and inspiring. Crucially, we also knew it had to be led not by us but by the expertise of the practitioners on the ground.

4D exchange

From this need we developed a series of regional inter-school creative network sessions called 4D exchange. 4D exchange is a regular event where teachers working in 4D immersive spaces can exchange ideas, best practice and resources with each other, in an immersive environment.

Presenters each have 5 minutes to share an overview of an idea, lesson or resource they have found particularly effective in their space. How they present this is up to them – some may take us on a mini immersive journey through their created timeline, others may bring along the props they used, whilst others will share samples of the resulting works that pupils created. We ask for very little in advance – just a brief sentence around your topic and any content you’d like us to upload, so that impact on capacity is minimum. The sessions last 90 minutes, with a break included, but you could easily replicate something on a smaller scale during your weekly staff meetings.

After the presentation there is plenty of room for discussion and hands-on experimenting in the space, followed by a chance to see new content in development, and hear some short tips and tricks from the 4D creative team. The sessions also allow us to gather feedback from our spaces to see how we can support them in the future. And, of course, biscuits are provided! We’ve found these sessions to be fun and informative and, crucially, the practitioners who attended have left inspired and full of ideas!

“Just wanted to say a big thank you for the meet up, really great to meet and hear from others who are using the spaces in unique ways, hugely beneficial.” – 4D exchange Salford participant

So what’s next?

As our community develops, we’re learning more and more about what you need to help you develop as a 4D practitioner. From cloud-based content sharing to teacher exchanges, we’re always keen to develop new resources and approaches to help the creative exchange of ideas. 

Get in touch!

How do you share best practice about immersive learning across your school? Do you have any feedback or good news stories you’d like to share with us? Or would you be interested in setting up your own 4D exchange hub?   

If so, we’d love to hear from you! Get in touch at ines@4dcreative.co.uk or 0844 414 2595. Welcome to the 4D community!

Our next 4D exchange is taking place on the 25th March at Kensington Community Primary School in Liverpool. 

If you’d like to attend then register here http://www.4dcreative.co.uk/4D-exchange/ 

References

Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print

—. “Communities of Practice. Learning as a Social System.” The Systems Thinker. June/July 1998. Web.

Soria-Donlan, Inés. Interpreting participant groups as Communities of Practice: Changing the way we look at arts participation. 2012. Web.

Dementia Festival Of Ideas 2015

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4D creative are pleased to announce we have been selected to share our innovative, immersive approach to dementia care at Ideas Lab in Belfast. The event run in partnership between the Dementia Festival of Ideas and the The Dementia Services Development Centre (University of Stirling) aims to generate a new generation of ideas which will help shape the future of dementia.

Our immersive approach for people living with dementia combines therapeutic approaches, software and high impact audio visuals, but always keeps the individual at the heart of everything.

The focus of care within our immersive spaces is to relax people with dementia whilst stimulating memories and creating conversation points. Our person-centred approach has improved wellbeing, and has enabled families of people with dementia to be involved in the process by creating personalised content for the immersive space, from a favourite piece of music to photos from a memorable holiday.

After sharing details of our work, we have been invited to present to an international panel including artists, cultural leaders and dementia experts. As we develop our approach, it’s fantastic to be able to share this with others working in this field whilst also generating new ideas for future work.

The event is being held at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast on Wednesday 25th February 2015 and you can register for tickets here. To find out more please visit the Dementia Festival of Ideas page here.

If you’d like to find out more about our work or visit an immersive space then please get in touch with the 4D team via email or call 0161 686 5760

Immersive workshops at Middlethorpe Primary

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As 4D Group’s Training & Research Coordinator, getting to visit our immersive spaces and be part of their development is one of the best bits of the job. In January, Middlethorpe Primary School (who bought a 4D Pop Up immersive space in December 2013) approached us with a particularly exciting challenge.

Feeling confident in using the space for provocation days and ‘scene setting’, they wanted some additional support around how they could go beyond their current use of the space by experimenting with new activities within the pop up and developing immersive approaches to classroom-based learning. Finally, the session was to be part of their Erasmus exchange week, where they had teachers from across Europe visiting their school to look at ICT in education.

What did we do?

The day’s workshop followed our Explore, Create, Consult model, which we’ve used with spaces across the country to increase staff confidence and deepen learning through creative investigation. The model allows participants to explore and experience new creative approaches, apply this learning by experimenting in the creation of new ideas, and consolidate learning through consultation between participants and/or pupils.

To welcome the Erasmus cohort to the UK, and with English language levels varied, we started with a hands on activity that sits at the heart of what we do – den making! After creating a 5-minute den using an old army parachute, participants entered the pop up and told us something about themselves through transforming a paper bag with anything but writing – a fantastic ice breaker for staff, and a great creative way to assess pupil’s mood at the start of a session.

Seeing their bags hung around the pop up, the teachers embraced the idea of how low-tech approaches can add meaning and detail within the immersive space.

With confidence growing, participants split into 5 groups and explored five very different immersive tools for the classroom, developed by Cathy Cross and her wonderful store cupboard of den making kit! From old picture frames, to glowing boxes, gauze tents to illuminous trees, we looked at how these micro-environments could create a sense of focus within a classroom, and open up new ways of deepening understanding of a topic.

After a very generous lunch of seaside fresh Fish & Chips, we then experimented with applying some of these ideas to real life scenarios, and tested some of these out within the safety of the group.

What did we find?

As is most often the case with these sessions, we found that it was the teachers who came up with the most incredible concepts through applying their own expertise to the tools we had provided, and it was great to hear new ideas around how immersive environments in and out of the pop up could enhance learning across all subject areas – from the Sciences to PSHE.

For those Erasmus visitors who were new to the concept of immersive learning, the workshop was an eye-opening experience that left them teeming with ideas:

“Thank you very much for the workshop. It has been very helpful and I’ve learned many things. I surely do want to implement immersive space in my class. I will let you know and share my experiences with you.” – Abdullah Kur, Teacher from Nenehatun Ilkokulu School, Turkey

For Middlethorpe staff too, the workshop left them inspired:

“What a fantastic time we all had. Well done. Great workshop.” – Anna Rytting, Teacher at Middlethorpe Primary School

We are now working with Middlethorpe Primary to help implement these approaches into their longer-term use of their 4D pop up, looking at the principles of immersive learning and how these can be embedded into their wider schemes of work.

If you would like some additional support around how to make the most of your 4D immersive space, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch ines@4dcreative.co.uk or 0161 686 5760 and we’ll be happy to help!

Immersive open days – January/February 2015

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Make immersive experiences part of your plans for 2015 by registering for an immersive open afternoon.

Our open days are an opportunity to ask questions, gain an understanding and look at how immersive learning could work across your whole school to inspire creativity and improve engagement.

Our open days are lined up on the following dates:

January
20th – 24th Bett Show, London

February
4th – Gisburn Road Primary, Barnoldswick
11th – Woodcroft Primary School, London
12th – Someries Primary, Luton
23rd – 4D creative offices, Salford
25th – Broomfield South, Leeds

To register, please visit our Eventbrite page at http://4dcreative.eventbrite.co.uk or if you need further information, just call on 0844 414 2595

This is a chance to talk, learn and share ideas.

Here’s the agenda for the open afternoons: 

Introduction to 4D Creative

* Who are we and what do we do
* Immersive installations – both permanent and mobile
* 4D Create – our immersive software and content library

How will immersive learning make a difference

* Whole school approach
* Case study evidence
* Lesson ideas and the use of immersive with the wider school community

Q & A and an opportunity to use the system in our demonstration space

Hot drinks, biscuits and discussions will be plentiful!

Who’s this event for? Anyone interested in immersive learning or creating an immersive space in their school. Those with a role in developing the curriculum and senior leaders will gain most from the sessions

For more information please email: pete@4dcreative.co.uk or call on 0161 686 5760

 

National Storytelling Week – January 31 to February 7 2015

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Celebrate national storytelling week with an immersive, interactive, storytelling workshop.

National Storytelling Week was created in the year 2000 to increase public awareness of the art, practice and value of oral storytelling. Since then, it has been held during the first week of February every year.

Book a digital storytelling session in the 4D Pop Up

Our creative practitioners will lead an interactive storytelling session that will feature large scale projection, LED lighting and surround sound to immerse your pupils. This will be an exciting, engaging experience that will impact on your pupils communication and language skills.

The 4D Pop Up immersive space sets up in 15 minutes and can seat a class of primary pupils. It becomes a space within a space and will transport your young people to new places, times and atmospheres. Learn more about the 4D Pop Up here.

The possibilities:

  • Fire of London
  • Titanic
  • Stories around the African waterhole
  • Noah
  • Gawain and The Green Knight
  • Or let us know what you story you want to hear…

Each workshop can be structured to meet your requirements and objectives.

If you’d like to arrange an immersive storytelling in your school, get in touch with the 4D team on 0844 414 2595 or email hello@4dcreative.co.uk.

Prices start from £550 + VAT for a half day and includes a practitioner and everything needed to create an immersive environment.

Networking and best practice at 4D creative

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Last week we welcomed practitioners from our network of schools for the second 4D exchange of the 2014-15 school year.

4D exchange is a regular event where teachers working in 4D immersive spaces can exchange ideas, best practice and resources with each other. It’s also an opportunity to hear from the 4D team about new tips and tricks that will help you make the most out of your immersive space.

The afternoon featured a huge range of topics including examples of use from practitioners, a demo of our new software, a presentation on a PHD project researching immersive learning and discussions on the next batch of immersive content 4D will be developing.

Explore a gallery of the event below:

As ever, it was fantastic to meet with creative and enthusiastic practitioners who use their immersive spaces for a wide variety of activities. These conversations also help shape how we develop our software and immersive content.

Our next 4D exchange will take place in February 2015 and all the details will be online soon. If you have an immersive space in your school, then we’d love for you to join us.

4D workshops – empowering staff and inspiring pupils

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This week we’ve been running creative workshops and staff training with a number of schools to enable inspiration and creativity.

At 4D we work hard to ensure that each of our schools get the very best from their immersive space and can create memorable, inspirational learning experiences. This may start as basic technical training on our 4D create software but also includes best practices for planning immersive lessons and how den making can enhance a space even further.

This week the 4D team have:

  • Visited our first ever immersive space to upgrade their computer system to the new 4D create software and trained new staff on using the immersive space.
  • Spent two days with Bowlee Park Primary looking at their recently installed immersive space and how combining low tech with high tech through den making can inspire young minds. The feedback has been fantastic and staff were amazed at the impact on their pupils engagement and vocabulary.
  • Run a 4D Pop Up workshop at Brentwood School to showcase how our portable immersive space can be used for pupils of all ages and abilities.

Explore our training experiences further with our photo gallery:

If you’d like a den making workshop at your school or want to find out how immersive learning could raise engagement and achievement at your school, contact the 4D team.

SEND reforms – useful resources to share and download.

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With the Children’s and Families act implemented from September 1st, there’s a huge number of resources available for those working with young people with additional needs.

Our Operations Director Colette Gollcher works closely with the Council for Disabled Children who have compiled a wide range of guides and resources to help you implement these changes. You can explore these resources here.

What can 4D creative offer you to support the implementation of this legislation?

Within the 4D team, there are a range of skills and knowledge from across the disability agenda. Our operations manager, Colette Gollcher also works to support local authorities in their preparation for these reforms through training sessions.

We have a variety of workshops for you to consider:

  • A full briefing session to understand the upcoming reforms to enable you to support your children, young people, their families, your staff and governors.
  • A workshop explaining how to utilise an immersive space for person centred annual reviews
  • A day of live planning for a group of young people and their families who may be starting the journey in education health and case plans
  • Learn how to develop immersive content relevant to preparing children and young people for adulthood

If you’d like to find out more about an immersive space being installed at your school contact Louise on louise@4dcreative.co.uk

Alternatively, to discuss a workshop on the SEND reforms, please call on 0844 414 2595 or email: hello@4dcreative.co.uk

SEND reforms – latest news and support documents

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As we have been covering on the 4D Blog, the upcoming SEND reforms could have an impact on practice in your school. From September 1st, schools will be expected to have clear systems for identification, assessment, monitoring and securing appropriate support for children with special educational needs.

The latest news is that as of yesterday, these reforms have now been approved by the House of Lords. Following this, the House of Commons has today voted to ratify the Committee’s decision. The SEND Code of Practice is therefore now approved by Parliament.

Information to download and understand
With lots to consider, we have compiled some key documents below which you can download. Just follow the relevant links. These resources are hosted elsewhere so if the links have been moved please let us know by sending Pete in our team a quick email. 

  • The new SEND Code of Practice can be downloaded from the government website here.
  • Whilst a school leaders slide pack is available here and contains key information to help headteachers introduce new practices to staff and governors.
  • There is also guidance notes which you can download here.

What can 4D creative offer you to support the implementation of this legislation?

Within the 4D team, there are a range of skills and knowledge from across the disability agenda. Our operations manager, Colette Gollcher also works on behalf of the Council for Disabled Children supporting local authorities in their preparation for these reforms. We have a variety of workshops for you to consider:

  • A full briefing session to understand the upcoming reforms to enable you to support your children, young people, their families, your staff and governors.
  • A workshop explaining how to utilise an immersive space for person centred annual reviews
  • A day of live planning for a group of young people and their families who may be starting the journey in education health and case plans
  • Learn how to develop immersive content relevant to preparing children and young people for adulthood
  • A bespoke workshop designed around your ideas and intended outcomes. Just get in touch to find out more.

If you’d like to find out more about an immersive space being installed at your school contact Louise on
louise@4dcreative.co.uk

Alternatively, to discuss a workshop on the SEND reforms, please call on 0844 414 2595 or email: hello@4dcreative.co.uk

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