FIVE years on from launching its unique space centre, Callington Community College is now going global with a new high tech facility for innovative learning.

The CHiil (Community Hub for International and Innovation Learning) Centre will be officially opened on June 12 and will co-incide with a grand signing by students of the college, who are being given a rare opportunity to send their signatures into space onboard an October shuttle launch.

Three years ago, the college was successful in a bid for some Government funding for a building to develop new ideas about how to learn, which could be accessible to the wider community.

Science teacher Mike Grocott, who is in charge of the launch, said it was a very exciting facility, which students were queuing up to use now it was finished.

Through the video conferencing suite, children had been talking to pupils at a school in Little Rock, Arkansas in the USA.

'The kids think it is great but not everyone has had a chance to use it yet,' he said.

'Our kids are as good as anyone's in the world but we have got to give them the opportunities. The world is a smaller place now and we need to be international.'

The two-storey building houses the latest in digital technology. Along with the video conferencing suite is a computer suite, Playstation-style learning machines, state-of-the art projectors and bluescreen animation, used frequently by today's movie makers.

It will be a research centre for all students and offer training courses to members of the community outside school hours.

Mr Grocott said the centre would be showing films for debate and discussion and be a venue for guests and speakers, like Amber Gell, a NASA engineer from Houston, who is coming to open the centre and talk to the students about her work helping to build the Orion space craft.

'We feel that Cornwall is seen as being out on a limb from the rest of the country and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to create this centre for people to come to us and help deliver training,' he said.

An international language school, Callington has also been authorised to deliver the International Baccalaureate diploma programme from September this year. This curriculum package requires students to study six subjects, in addition to three core elements that encourage independent learning and involvement in their creative and volunteering activities.

Students opting for the IB will be encouraged to forge international links with other IB schools, participate in a range of international trips and develop a strong understanding of their place in the world and what they can contribute as a world citizen.

With video conferencing equipment, pupils will be able to make links with schools across the world.

Opportunities for international travel have been enhanced by the space centre which takes students, who go through a rigorous selection process, to the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centres in America each year.

Callington is the only college in the country which has a centre dedicated to space and space related technology and teaches GCSE astronomy to people from the ages of 12 to 70.

Local residents are being invited along to the launch of the CHiil Centre at 10.30pm on June 12, which will be followed by a talk from Amber Gell.