Breaking the Ceiling of Learning: How Cedar Lodge Special School Uses ThingLink to Support Pupils and Families

Kyla Ball June 3, 2026

At Cedar Lodge School, Principal Chris Murphy and his team are using ThingLink and other digital tools to create learning experiences that “break the ceiling of learning.”

Background 

Cedar Lodge School is a Special School in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They provide education for pupils from Nursery to Year 12 on their Main Site, and from Year 13 to Year 15 on their Senior Site. Pupils have a range of special educational needs, including: Severe Learning Difficulties; Social, Behavioural, Emotional and Wellbeing Difficulties; Speech, Language and Communication Needs; Sensory Needs.

The school is divided into five departments: Early Years, Junior, Middle and Senior School, and post-16, where pupils have the opportunity to enrol in accredited courses, gaining qualifications that will enable them to continue their education or transition into the workforce upon leaving.

Cedar Lodge is an Apple Distinguished School and Apple Regional Training Center.

The school first explored ThingLink during an Erasmus Plus collaboration in 2015–2016 involving seven schools across Europe. The project left a lasting impression about the potential of immersive digital environments in special education. Earlier this year, the school decided to rebuild the school’s immersive learning approach using the platform’s latest capabilities.

Challenges

The challenge was clear: to create accessible, flexible and sensory-aware digital experiences that could support a highly diverse student population while also strengthening engagement with families and staff.

Traditional virtual tours and static images were not enough. Cedar Lodge needed digital resources that could:

• Support varying levels of sensory engagement
• Work across laptops, tablets, phones and VR headsets
• Help parents and carers feel connected to the school community
• Allow new students to see, hear, and become familiar with staff and locations
• Enable differentiated social stories for students with additional needs
• Allow staff collaboration across evolving projects
• Integrate into existing digital workflows and platforms

Key Specific Challenge: A “Digital School Gate” Experience

With 90% of students transported to school rather than arriving through a traditional “school gate” community, families often had limited opportunities to experience the school environment firsthand. The school wanted to bridge that gap in a meaningful, and highly accessible way.

Solution: Immersive Learning with ThingLink

1.Virtual Tour

Using ThingLink, Cedar Lodge transformed an existing flat, two-dimensional digital tour into a layered, 360° immersive environment designed specifically for accessibility and flexibility.

The virtual tour is available on their external website, and allows parents and carers to explore classrooms, facilities and staff interactions in a far more engaging way than static photography. Included in some of the interactive tags are “Living Lessons” – sample lessons recorded in situ in the classroom. In the PE hall, for example, viewers can see and interact with 360° imagery featuring the school’s PE teacher, helping families become familiar with both the spaces, and the staff, before arriving in person.

Rather than forcing a single level of immersion, the school adopted a graduated approach. Students and families can explore the content through standard devices such as laptops, tablets and phones, with the option to progress toward fully immersive VR experiences when appropriate. This flexibility is particularly important for learners with sensory sensitivities, where even wearing a headset can become a barrier to participation.

2. Social Stories

ThingLink also became central to Cedar Lodge’s growing library of differentiated Social Stories, created with Gemini Storybook. These resources support students across a range of scenarios, including:

• Travelling on education authority buses
• Visiting the cinema
• Brushing teeth
• Transitioning between school campuses
• Navigating unfamiliar environments

The school is now combining AI-generated storytelling tools with ThingLink’s immersive environments to expand these social stories into interactive 360° experiences. GoPro footage captured between the school’s two campuses will create a virtual walking tour between the two sites.

Benefits and Results

1. Greater Accessibility for Students and Staff

The school found that immersive environments support not only student learning, but also staff accessibility and professional development. For example, visual operational tools – for staff as well as learners – include the use of AI-generated visual concepts to support workplace tasks for employees with autism spectrum disorder.

The layered accessibility of ThingLink also created unexpected benefits for teacher development. Staff unfamiliar with certain environments or learning contexts could use virtual spaces to scaffold their own understanding before delivering lessons.

2. Stronger Family and Community Engagement

The immersive tours have helped families feel more connected to the school environment, especially important in a community where most students are transported directly to school. Parents and carers can now explore facilities, meet staff virtually and better understand the learning environments their children experience each day.

The school also introduced feedback mechanisms allowing families to request additional social stories tailored to needs at home, extending the impact of the project beyond the classroom.

3. Recognition for Excellence

Cedar Lodge’s work has received recognition through the Capita ICT Excellence Awards, where the project was acknowledged for its innovative approach to “breaking the ceiling of learning.” Meanwhile, the initiative continues to evolve through collaboration with digital leaders, the school council and wider staff teams.

4. Flexible, Cross-Platform Integration and Instant Updates

For Cedar Lodge, it’s important that any tools integrate naturally into existing workflows rather than operating as isolated systems. ThingLink’s ability to embed within platforms such as Trello — and potentially connect with learning journals like Seesaw — has helped teachers and classroom assistants see immediate practical relevance in their daily work.

Importantly, the cloud-based nature of the platform means that any projects that the school creates in ThingLink exist as an evolving “living baseline” rather than a finished product. Staff can continuously update, refine and expand the content over time. The virtual tour is already live on the Cedar Lodge website, but can instantly be updated at any time.

The collaborative nature of ThingLink has also been essential. Multiple staff members can work on the same virtual environment simultaneously, allowing the platform to function like a shared design workspace across departments and initiatives.

A Model for Future Innovation

Open, creative platforms like ThingLink empower educators to innovate in ways that genuinely support their pupils and families, especially when combined with complementary tools such as digital storytelling applications. For Cedar Lodge, immersive technology is not simply about virtual reality — it is about creating inclusive, adaptable learning experiences that remove barriers and expand opportunities for every learner.