High tech training for chefs of tomorrow

A big helping of technology, seasoned with some forward thinking about e-learning is helping to cook up the next generation of top chefs.

Remote control cameras, flat screen monitors and videoconferencing - not what you'd expect to find in a teaching kitchen. But in Lewisham College's interactive kitchen theatre - dubbed the 'eKitchen' - classes are filmed on motorised cameras which are controlled by students.

As the lesson unfolds they can zoom in on particular parts of the dish being prepared by the teacher, with the images displayed on flat-screen monitors on each student's desk. Click here to see the eKitchen in action.

This means students at the south London college - including the young people from Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Foundation - no longer have to huddle around the kitchen when the latest delicacy is being cooked up.

The video is also recorded so it can be distributed as a DVD to students or broadcast over the web. The content can also be loaded into the college's virtual learning environment so students can access the material from home or the learning centres.

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Robin Ghurbhurun Lewisham College's director of e-learning told silicon.com: "The staff can record the whole session and that can then be edited down into e-learning chunks."

The eKitchen, part of the colleges Centre for Vocational Excellence for Hospitality and Catering, is now in its second year of operation and the college said the new technology has had a clear impact on student retention, with more completing higher levels of their NVQ.

Back in August the latest set of students from the Fifteen Foundation passed their NVQ1 with the project's highest pass rate so far, and the college said the e-learning kitchen was undoubtedly a strong factor in the students' success.

Ghurbhurun said: "The student feedback is that it's enjoyable. It's just bringing that technology into the classroom. It's getting away from the huddle and becoming more bespoke."

The college is working with networking vendor Cisco on its e-learning plans. Cisco provides the hardware for its network and also works with the college on the Cisco networking academy programme.

But it's not just the cooks that are getting special treatment - a similar set up is offered for beauty and construction students.

Ghurbhurun explained: "There is an expectation from the students coming through - they are living in a digital world with YouTube and MySpace and iPods and Xboxes and the last thing they want to do is walk into a classroom that looks like it's from the 18th century."

The aim is to get teachers to create the interactive content most useful to their students, he added: "The whole idea is that the teachers can create their own content. Now we can give them tools where if you can drag and drop and if you can use a mouse then you are away. What we are doing is getting teachers to be creative again."

As the college's principal Dame Ruth Silver said: "We are finding ourselves in a world that is changing rapidly and more and more work has to be done outside of the college and that's where e-learning really comes into its own. I buy in big that ICT can transform learning.

"We have to be working with employers, we have to personalise what we do for them and ICT is fabulous for that. The eKitchen was us really rehearsing the future and seeing whether it works - and it really does."