global digital creativity research & workshops

Hal MacLean and myself spent this evening with the young people and their families from the Bromley Learning Alliance 2006 Summer School, in Bromley. We headed down to celebrate the animation work created by the young people over the summer months.

The challenge which was set back in July this year was to create a modern day comic book, in animation, photography, sound and film.  The ‘tough task’ was called ‘Twist of Fate’ and had ‘no right answer’, as ever.  The young people are giving an induction session to the technology and project, they then return to their collective schools over the summer to undertake the challenge.
We have been working with Merril Haeusler (Director) of the BLA since her days with SEEVEAZ (South East of England Virtual Education Action Zone). It was refreshing to see Merril at the event, and hearing her relate back to the early days back in 2000 when she first launched the project with us. If it had not been for the investment by Merril both financially, and more importantly her belief in what young people can do with creative technoloies I really do question where we would be today. As my last official presentation event for Ultralab it was nice to be in the company with Merrill, who was at my first ever Ultralab engagement back in 2000, at the Millennium Dome in London (Read about it here).

We’ve come a long way since that early project, travelled the world, impacted on broadcasters, governments, education establishments and policy makers. We still have a lot of work to do, together.

So here they are, the creative comics created under the banner of ‘Twist of Fate’ by the tallented young people of the Bromley area, enjoy:

Anglia Ruskin Unviersity’s Ultralab, the world class learning, technology and research centre was invited to present our work. Ultralab team members speak at conferences and seminars, we disseminate our research findings and radical action research projects to governments, corporations, charities and academics globally. Malcolm Moss and myself were kindly invited and headed to Jesus College in Cambridge to present the research of Ultralab to a collection of individuals interested in new and emerging technologies and how Ultralab are using them within teaching and learning.

I introduced Ultralab, its rich history of projects and the achievements over the past twenty years. I spoke about UltraSMS, developed by Ultralab’s Tim Ellis, we introduced Tim’s new ‘SMS Voting’ feature, which went down well with the audience, who enjoyed the ‘visual’ voting.

Malcolm spoke about our work on ‘Gearbox’, ‘eViva’, ‘Plone’, ‘Ultraversity’ and various other Ultralab innovations and our uses of current open source software.

It was good to present with Malcolm, we were also provided with a Christmas dinner celebration in the evening in a room next to the famous chapel, we stayed the night in the College accommodation.

The college is beautiful, the slab floors are wearing with hundreds of years of footsteps, the rooms are warm, drenched in history and amazing to see first hand.

It was also an experience staying in the accommodation the students use, knowing that a few hundred years worth of undergraduates have worked from the rooms. Jesus College is meant to be one of the most haunted of the colleges in Cambridge, sadly the arranged Ghost Walk was cancelled.

It is amazing how small the world is coming, the event co-ordinator, Catherine Bone, taught me HTML when I was at University, eight years ago.

Interesting reading:
Jesus College Cambridge, a history