Kath, i think you should make a really long paper, showing how schome has failed, and how others on the TG have exceeded so other educators don’t make the same mistakes.

I could, but that would be a lie. You and Animus have both managed to completely miss the point.

Topper

I agree re the newsletter – final version was only agreed yesterday (delayed cos of my being on holiday etc) – so sorry for that one Kathy, it was a bit sneaky. :O}
(KitKatKid – I aim to send out the link to the mag to folk later today – but feel free to add info about it to the wiki in the meantime …)

Re funding – everything you said about funding is true – I didn’t mention funding in my previous comment cos I was only picking up on things I didn’t necessarily agree with in your original post – which was perhaps foolish of me.

There is an interesting relationship between funding and our research priorities … even if we had funding at this stage I would still feel we needed to close down Schome Park so that we can reflect on what we have learnt and reset our strategic direction. I think we have probably learnt as much from Phase 3 as we are likely to learn (or at least will have done so by the end of May) – and need to have a chance to evaluate and refocus for the next phase (whatever that might be).

Have to agree that the Schome Park Programme is a subset of the schome initiative (like a park in London is part of London) – and a critical one in terms of challenging our thinking. Your input into that process has (as usual) been perceptive and challenging. :O)

My perspective is that, of course, schome park is not schome. And a park in London isn’t London. Schome Park is, however, contained within schome. If I said it was the end of schome, that was an error (if I said it explicitly it was also a typo).

And you said the reason for closing it was la k of funding. :p

I guess the key difference in perspective relates to the purpose of the Schome Park Programme – for me it was (and always has been) about exploring ideas to do with schome and extending our thinking about what schome might be like and what works/does not work. So Schome Park was never intended TO BE schome (indeed it never could be because schome will have to have physical as well as virtual spaces).

Phase 3 of the programme was specifically aiming to explore the extent to which a schome ethos could co-exist alongside formal schooling – and I guess Kathy is right that in some ways this was a no-brainer – it cannot do so – however, some interesting things have arisen from the tensions that have been evident in Phase 3 so far which have helped to clarify some key dimensions along which schome and school clearly differ. So in that sense it has been a useful process.

The difference in perspective about the purpose of the running Schome Park is clear here – and Kathy is right in saying that some of the decisions that have been taken – including the one about allowing school groups into Schome Park (and shutting down Phase 3 at the end of May) – reflect the fact that this is a research project.

The complexity of the sign-up process also (partially) reflects this – because we need students and parents to be aware that this is a research project and to agree to take part in it (all within BERA’s ethical guidelines and with approval from the OU ethics committee). This only partially explains the complexity of the sign up process and I agree that we need to do something to make it quicker and easier …

In terms of writing stuff up – Kathy is being a little disingenuous in saying that we haven’t published anything – see the publications page in the schome website (http://www.schome.ac.uk). However, I agree that we have a lot more data to analyse and a lot of additional things to say – indeed the key reason for closing Schome Park at the end of Phase 3 is so that we can focus our time and effort on reflecting upon what we have learnt (and publishing some stuff) and thinking about what the next steps should be.

So whilst the end of May represents the end of Phase 3 of the Schome Park Programme it is not the end of the programme as a whole by any means … and we may well follow some of Kathy’s advice about how to move forward.

Check out the first edition of MySchome magazine (the newsletter that Kathy referred to) for hints of what the future might hold … (you can download a copy from http://tinyurl.com/3v2qzw)

So…yes…sayonara, I guess, and thank you, truly.