In-Folio Case Studies
JFK Post 16 Provision & In-Folio
This East London SEN school has a well developed multimedia practice in place with staff and students. This includes a full time member of staff dedicated to multimedia work as well as a history of joint project work with the Rix Centre. A recent project focused on recycling with creation of a school recycling programme. Video was used to capture the learner’s participation and this material became part of an e Learning resource developed by staff for the National Learning Network. This peer learning material can be viewed HERE.
Post-graduate Social Work students from
the local University of East London also use multimedia as part of a module on communication on their course. They pair up with individual students to make ‘multimedia advocacy portfolios’ that capture how the young people communicate and explore and document their favourite activities.
Video clips are created with learners at the school and reviewed with them. These are then viewed and discussed by the Social Work students with the school’s staff and their lecturers to help develop their understanding of how people with learning disabilities communicate and self-advocate.
The Rix Centre team also use these clips in seminars and conferences to demonstrate good practice use of multimedia and how learners take part and benefit.
The multimedia material that results from project work and routine video recording of learner work in class is also featured in Transition Reviews and meetings with parents, helping to ensure that learners are genuinely involved to their best ability in discussions and planning for their own future beyond school. This also helps considerably with parent-teacher dialogue, which is very strong at JFK Post 16 School. All learners leave school with an extensive DVD that records their achievements, showing their progression at the school and presenting what is important to them and some of their hopes and dreams for the future.
The school’s multimedia and IT coordinators trialled use of In-Folio and immediately saw its potential to complement and enhance the multimedia work in the school. They were particularly positive about the way that the e Folio’s accessible design enabled young people to review, sort and arrange their own media, putting them in the driving seat. Mark, the multimedia specialist in the school could see this reducing his workload and also enabling a stronger ownership of the multimedia by learners. Jawied recognised that the use of In-Folio enabled more effective student engagement in multimedia work and so stronger self-advocacy for learners, which would really benefit their engagement with the transition process. He stressed the stronger sense of personal identity and independence that resulted from work on the e Folio by Samantha and Brennan, the two student user-testers. It was felt that an online repository of multimedia could be better than the existing DVD record that learners take with them as they leave school if parents and future carers, teachers, trainers ad support staff could be given training to continue to update the In-Folio.
Teachers at JFK also explored the use of In-Folio alongside ASDAN
View a 9 minute video about JFK Post Sixteen School, how they use multimedia in class and their experience of trialling the In-Folio.
JFK Post 16 Provision and In-Folio from Rix Centre on Vimeo.
The Click Start Editorial Team & In-Folio
The Rix Centre, in partnership with Ellingham Employment Services, started work on the Click Start project in 2008. The Click Start project was funded by the Learning Skills Council and involved the development of an ‘easy build’ website software package
The aim of the project was to create a repository of highly accessible websites providing useful information and
advice related to Transition for young people with learning disabilities, and to link them together through local web portals in ten participating London boroughs.
The Click Start software was specially developed to provide information in an ‘easy-read’ multimedia format, using simple words, pictures, videos and sound. A key feature of the Easy-Build websites is that people with learning disabilities can make them with minimal support and can be involved as producers of multimedia content.
Three young people with learning disabilities from Newham were employed to work on the project as ‘Wiki’ website builders and editors for a six month period. The Click Start Editorial Team was made up of Lee Cornwell, Jason Wilkinson and Vivek Pillai. These three young people represented a variety of learning difficulties and disabilities, from autistic spectrum to physical disability and minimal literacy. To see an example of a Click Start website that the Editorial Team produced and edited visit the Stratford Picture House website or the Eastway Care website.
As their work on Click Start came to a close, Jason, Lee and Vivek were introduced to the In-Folio software and asked to trial it’s use as an e-CV and use it to capture the skills and experiences they had gained from working on Click Start.
This video tells the story of the Click Start Editorial Team’s experiences of multimedia and their use of the In-Folio software. You can also see a video walkthrough of Lee’s In-Folio by clicking HERE and a walkthrough of Jason’s In-Folio by clicking HERE. If you would like to know more about Click Start please visit the Click Start website at www.clickstart.org.uk.
In-Folio and the Click Start Editorial Team from Rix Centre on Vimeo.