At the end of each session each Beacon student has a log book which they have to fill in stating details such as their favorite part of the day, what they learnt, how they feel and so on. The member of staff for that day also fills out a section for each week detailing how they felt the student did. These log books are in paper format and are reproduced each time a new group starts. When speaking to the staff about the feasibility of transferring the log books to digital format they all stated that they prefer paper format due to the short attention spans of the young people that attend the course and the lack of computing facilities.
The team leader Chris, has trialled SMS messaging in the past and found that it worked extremely well, especially to remind parents about the passout parade details at the end of the course and to remind students about any particular equipment or spare clothes they will need for the session. However due the high demand of his time he found it hard to keep up the service and continue using it. It is something however that he would like to reintroduce. If this became a scheduled part of each member of staff’s day I believe that it could be managed successfully.
When asked about an online facility which would allow students, past, present and future, to share experiences, they agreed it would be useful but would be weary of the security issues. It was agreed that Facebook is an excellent way to promote issues and create discussions as well as keep in touch with students due to its popularity, but the filtering and monitoring of content would have to be investigated fully.
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