We recently got Woodhey High School up and running on Kloodle. They signed up their year 10 students to record work experience and apply for roles such as prefect and head girl. Senior tutors quickly realised that, at its core, Kloodle is a brilliant record of achievement applicable to all ages. They have now signed up their year 7s.
I posted this news as a blog on Facebook, pleased that the school was forward thinking enough to start developing and celebrating skills so young. Articles such as Joanne McCartneys call in the London Evening Standard for exposing young girls to STEM careers at primary school suggest that early careers advice is crucial. Woodheys example that hopefully the rest of the country will follow.
As a result of my post, A governor of Wesley Methodist Primary School in Radcliffe was soon in touch to invite me for a coffee to discuss how Kloodle could work for them.
This resulted in a meeting with the headteacher, Mr Lonsdale. He told me how their school looks to champion all of their pupils achievements through awards and posting items of work on the schools website. Students do not have anything of their own online, though, where they can keep all of the achievements and work they are proud of in one place.
We showed them how Kloodle would enable their students and parents to upload photos of great work, how their students could create pieces of writing to describe what theyve been doing, and even create videos of classroom activities or fun things they are doing at home. We spoke about how children at nursery are assessed through pictures and landmark pieces of work and how this finds its way home into the hands of parents in the form of a lovely portfolio of their son or daughters work and achievements. We noted that this becomes lost when SATs stroll into town. I showed him how Kloodle could achieve this very same culture throughout school: a culture of celebrating achievement day in, day out; a culture of identifying what students CAN do and ARE good at as opposed to what they cant do.
We agreed to get year 5s up and going over the course of the summer term. We will then commence with year 36 in September.
Our aim is to champion skills students develop throughout their education. We want to celebrate achievement at every level. It makes perfect sense to start Kloodle as young as possible.