Chestnet

Absolutely pivotal project that impacted on so much to follow - from the incoming Labour government's ICT policy to our vocabulary in projects like Notschool. Project headed up by Carole Chapman in the lab. This is a link to the original web pages - so not all the links will function as intended.

Online community of mixed age practice, primary - > secondary. Forums, mentoring, blended, stage not age... see this useful video summary of the findings of how good on-line learning could be, from around 20 years ago

I'm very proud to have created and nurtured the Notschool.net project for more than 11 years from 1998 - 2009 (he idea actually dates from 1997) - initially as Project Director and eventually as Chair of Trustees of the Inclusion Trust charity we set up to run it.

Today, after more than a decade I have parted from chairing the Trust - philosophically they headed in a direction I didn't favour, so have stepped down, with some sadness... Maybe this should be here under Paradise Lost too?

But these web pages at http://history.notschool.net narrate the birth of the project and the many unsung heroes who turned it into something with so much potential - there is much still to learn from those pioneering early years, as we do it all over again, but better.

"X" (we called it "times")

Brilliant! inclusion, access, minimal tuition fees, collegiality, mutuality - fab! This radical look at the underwas wonderfully reaffirming - a full time dgree where what you did full time was what you studied full time. So many times at conferences and elsewhere folk come up to me having graduated through this channel and thank me (but it was a huge team effort of course, I just thought the thing up and battled it through initial validation). The degree still runs - although not quite in the original form. Here are some of the early pages from the project..

...and a video of two students meeting for the first time at graduation and chatting about their experience of the degree