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So, Dott is here in Cornwall and as the first project up and running in the programme, the Eco design challenge, is certainly one of the most inspirational projects available.
The project revolves around Year-8 pupils, their measuring of their school's eco and carbon footprints and then designing a solution to reduce those figures. The project was run previously in the North East of England as part of Dott07 and won much acclaim for the step changes that it brought to the five prize-winning schools.
Matt, Chris and Dr. Jo hosted the Teacher Inspiration Day in collaboration with Tales from Porth Author, education consultant and Leap favourite Will Coleman, the Real Ideas Organisation and the Learning Partnership for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. From the recruitment effort put in by all the contacts the team could put their hands on, to the persuasive phone conversations with teachers, the day was a great success with 34 of the 45 secondary schools in Cornwall and on the Scillies represented.
The day was great fun for everyone involved, with teachers getting their hands gluey whilst building their own wind energy capture device and having their minds stretched in debates about where we get our water, how to make chic products by 'upcycling' old ones and what we do with our rubbish when we're done with it. The day was capped off by a inspirational presentations from the overall winners of Eco 2007; John Jones and Dave Dunning of Acklam Grange School in Middlesbrough.
John and Dave talked about their amazing journey through the project and the incredible changes seen amongst their pupils, both on the personal level and as a school community. Acklam won for their simple, but effective design for a suite of recycling bins and a highly detailed view of 'The School of the Future'. The pupils built their bins and with their prize money built a mini Eden biome as part of their new school buildings built as part of the Building Schools of the Future (BSF) project.
The day was filmed by students from University College Falmouth's Media Hive and photographed by Ollie Udy of Fotonow.
The next step on the Eco journey is the beginning of the project in the schools in the New Year. In the meantime, the Eco team are working hard getting the learning resources and the video from the day up onto the Leap designed Edc website at http://www.ecodesignchallenge.com/.