Get Involved
Student Feedback
We asked students from Nottingham to tell us how they felt about being involved in the 'My Place' project. You can find out more about the project on the Nottingham Schools page in the Reources & Ideas area.
A selection of video clips showing students talking about their experience of the YPG project as a whole is available in the Vox Pops area.
On working together:
Student: Yes, it was interesting because normally in geography, like, you are in the classroom, to get out and with a camera and to just sort of have freedom, and be able to do your own project.
And as a group how did you decide what you liked and didn’t like?
Student: Cos I guess you had to discuss all that and make a decision on the bits you were going to include or not include and so on. There were some things that we didn’t agree on so we chose about what some people didn’t like and what some other people didn’t like.
It’s quite interesting that you said you have tried to be fair, you have tried to balance it, you have tried to be representative. Where did you get those ideas from, what made you decide to do it that way? Why was that important?
Student: Probably the class, the whole class, kind of, took the best pictures, there was actually some good ones in there as well, and some bad ones, and we did try and compare them all, it was like a class decision...
On the purpose of the project:
Student: The headteacher is in the process of having a good look at it and some things have been changed, there are some areas that have been improved. And it’s good we cos get to have a say about what sort of things happen around our school.
Student: The challenging bit was, actually, writing about it at the bottom because it’s easy just to say that ‘oh, we like this bit, we don’t like this bit’, we had to say how we would like to change it, and where it is, so that’s probably the most difficult bit.
About the process of taking photos of their school:
Student: Yeh, we had a sort of limited amount of photos, we had about 78, so she didn’t give us 200 and say take as much as you like. We had limited options.
Student: And then people can actually see what it actually looks like. Cos otherwise some people could exaggerate or not explain enough.
Student: Yeh, they could just write down it’s horrible. If you take a picture it is a fairly big change really. It’s different, totally different.
Student: You couldn’t just go and take pictures like, of pupils jumping off the hill and things like that, and then what’s important, you couldn’t just waste them, so you have got to think about, kind of like, common sense really...
About their own participation:
Student: I don’t really speak out in most of my lessons because you feel, when you are not with your friends, or people that you know, it’s harder to say what you want. Because you feel like, if you say something wrong, they are going to laugh at you but if you do something like this thing, you can talk to people that you know, they are not going to laugh at you, it’s easier to get on with the work.
Student: It gives you an opportunity to say what you want to say about a topic.
On where to go with it:
What would be good, is like, if we took pictures, and we joined up with a school in Kenya or something, took pictures, sent it to them, send out a couple of cameras, and say take a picture of your school, and send us the film back.
Find out what the teachers thought about YPG