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The first Fountaineering[2] day was a chilly October morning that found us all in the playground with the charismatic Sean McDougall conducting activities aimed at collaboration and commonality. We then went off with groups of mixed age children to look at locations around the school grounds to elicit our opinions about them. At this point we hadn’t decided whether we were definitely going to build a fountain or something else that could be interactive so we didn’t really know what we were eliciting opinions about! One of Sean McDougall’s most memorable expressions is his frequently referred to state of being ‘in the fog’. On that October morning we weren’t just ‘in the fog’ - we were abandoned, together on top of a murky mountain enveloped in a haze of confusion, unable to answer ‘why’ questions posed by 9 year-olds. As a group of teachers and Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) steeped in the British education system we were way out of our comfort zone and we didn’t like it one bit.

In order to scare us further Futurelab attached microphones or cameras to some staff. Perhaps the most amusing moment of the day was when a member of staff went to another and started stating what felt like the obvious on that day – ‘What’s the point?’ The listener shook her head in horror mouthing “I’m miked up”!

The children, however, were having a great time and this for me was the crucial turning point in my thinking about the project and how it will work for us in the future. Back in the classroom with my own class of opinionated Year 5s I began to see the tremendous value of this maiden experience. The children were bursting with enthusiasm and thoughts on the previous day’s activities. They commented that they thought it was great that we were starting from the same point – that the adults (I say adults as opposed to teachers because we have involved the LSAs as much as possible – the learning journey is for everyone) didn’t appear to be in possession of ‘greater knowledge’ and that as we went round the locations discussion took place which involved everyone and people’s opinions changed because of these discussions. This really opened my eyes and made me question myself; I’d always viewed myself as open to innovation and committed to getting the very best out of all children, but perhaps I’d missed a huge trick here? Rather than all the published material on this new agenda of ‘personalised learning’ maybe this is what it’s really about – child centred education where we dare to do that very difficult thing of letting go of complete classroom autonomy and taking it where the children are fired up and enthusiastic to go. As I drove home that day I still felt in the fog but the fog was punctured with exciting chinks of possibility.

Over the ensuing months the idea of a ‘Fountaineering Curriculum’ started to emerge: personalised learning (the reality not the document); learning being the process not the outcome; teachers learning with the children rather than being the indisputable source of all knowledge at the front of the classroom. For some staff this was an impossible situation – the very essence of our training and our experience is based in didacticism. To suddenly turn this on its head and – as it felt – hand over control to the kids was a very tall order. Having started on this journey we had – as a school – to decide its direction and achieve what I feel has been the hardest thing: that balance between a child-led, exciting, innovatory project and the measurable, robust outcome of a curriculum that has real and lasting impact on a child’s education.

Personally I became very motivated by the project, over time ideas took shape and I started to see how we could extend the, questions-based approach of the Fountaineering project into a new way of looking at teaching and learning. We decided on the ultimate location of the fountain – but not without considerable hot debate amongst adults and children. We reduced our extensive wishlist of what we wanted the fountain to do and painstakingly weeded out our favoured designs. I was fascinated by the children’s enthusiasm and rational theorising about the project, some of the ideas put forward were remarkable and, when challenged, expertly defended. It has revealed truly creative thinking amongst many children who may not necessarily have ‘shone’ in that way before. We are often, at school, making reference to Piaget’s concept of learning for an uncertain future; we talk about Claxton’s Building Learning Power (BLP)[3] and how we are working to create a generation of independent, rational thinkers. The conversations, debates and celebrations I have witnessed since we became Fountaineers have shown these concepts turning into actualities, the theories into practice. A ‘eureka moment’ in my classroom was when revisiting the BLP aspect of distilling – always a difficult concept to explain. As I was in the process of asking who could describe distilling, both myself and several children came to the same point at the same time and shouted “The Fountain!” simultaneously, all collapsing into laughter with our shared knowledge. The children then turned this discussion into a heated debate about how one’s thinking changes according to dialogue, thought processes and differences of opinion. I later reflected to myself about the importance of what we are in the process of doing, and how it must not be lost. I feel passionate about being involved in the nurturing of a generation of such creative, proactive thinkers.

While enthusing about the many positive responses of my class I do acknowledge that the experience has not been the same across all of the school all of the time. Although all of the children were initially excited by the idea of a fountain it remained just that – an idea – for too long. Dialogue with staff and pupils showed that the decision-making process during the identification of the location went on for too long with, it was felt, a lack of clarity and purpose. The younger children and less motivated older children became bored at times, started to lose interest in the project and became difficult to inspire during ‘mix up’[4] sessions; morale fell amongst the staff and there was a general feeling of too much talk and not enough doing. In retrospect we know we could have made that part of our journey more interesting and engaging but we must remember that this is just that – a journey – and while parts of it have been difficult and maybe divisive at times, we have learnt from it and are now armed with strategies to avoid stasis and repetition. Again – it is the process and not just the end result that enriches us.

In response to the ‘not enough doing’ problem we worked with Sean to create the now legendary ‘Drawbots Day’[5] – a ‘mix up’ day of designing, making, testing and presenting - which involved the children working on basic robots made from paper cups, batteries, felt pens and lots of sellotape. The purpose of this ‘hands-on’ day was for the children to engage in designing and ‘programming’ their own robot and to work together to solve problems. It was a phenomenal experience; the end result being over a hundred Drawbots buzzing away on expanses of paper in the school hall. Of course, it didn’t go entirely according to plan – the challenge set by the adults was to make the Drawbot go in different directions – but the children (of all ages) were fired up by making their Drawbot WORK! It proved to me that once the skills were taught – ie, the basic facts of how to make a Drawbot – the children were able to take ownership of what that Drawbot was capable of, they didn’t need adults telling them to make it go in a different direction, what was the point? The children had their own agenda and we as a school made another step towards what will be our Fountaineering Curriculum’ – hands on, taking it where the children’s interests lie, creating opportunities for eagerness and allowing children to make mistakes in order to be able to learn from them.

The older children have been taking their programming skills a step further using LEGO Mindstorms[6] to build, program and operate a robot. A group of my Year 5s (self-named ‘roboteers’) have become so taken with the package that they spend spare time working on our robot ‘Keith’! Futurelab has recently donated a fish tank to the school in order (the children correctly guessed) to give us experience of caring for and maintaining something. It is the Year 5 roboteers’ objective to be able to program Keith to pick up a handful of fish food, rotate its ‘arm’ and drop the food into the fish tank when a sensor is alerted. I am amazed by this and ensure that they get sufficient time during the school day to be working on their design. Again – this is what a Fountaineering Curriculum should look like: children taking their learning to places that we, as teachers, may not have planned but can see the value of.

The thing that really got my class ‘going’, though, was the use of Google SketchUp[7]. Futurelab introduced it to a small group who came back to class enthusing about this program and how you could use it to “design anything”. One child, Ben, went home that night, downloaded SketchUp onto his computer and came in the next day with handfuls of designs he’d made. Later that day the whole class went into the ICT suite where Ben showed us how to use SketchUp. Everyone was addicted! The existing fountain design ideas were suddenly ‘SketchUped’ and from that point onwards as the fountain designs were gradually worked on and honed, new SketchUp designs would be generated by Year 5, who were able to use this program to show a design from all angles. The children followed this up with a whole school assembly and – bypassing adults completely – shared their new knowledge with their peers. I felt somewhat in awe.

Nine months later there’s still fog. But that fog is starting to take shape, starting to form itself into possibilities for the future. We know what our fountain is going to look like, we know where it’s going to be and we know roughly when it’s going to happen. We are now thinking about its long-term impact on the school, who’s going to be responsible for what, how this will be organised and what exactly it is going to do. Classes are thinking about which area they will ‘care take’, how they will manage (and distil) ideas and how they will do this democratically. My Year 5s are desperate to be ‘in charge’ of programming but part of their learning journey will be the understanding that this doesn’t mean that the programming of the fountain will be solely up to them, rather that they will be managing everyone’s ideas about programming. This will be an interesting experience and I intend to use it as a deliberate exercise in me stepping back from autonomous teacher into the role of facilitator and arbitrator. I will keep objectives in my mind but allow the children to lead the journey into new and exciting territories. This is what the Fountaineering Curriculum will be about – new and exciting territories but a place that everyone wants to go, even if it does still sometimes feel daunting!