global digital creativity research & workshops

Anglia Ruskin University are committed to encouraging participation to University and have a dedicated ‘Widening Participation’ team who work across the East Anglia region with schools and colleges to show students first hand what university life is like by engaging prospective students in real University situations.

Hal MacLean and myself have worked with the widening participation department for many years, and continue our work under the Cleveratom flag. Read about some of the past projects we’ve done together click here, here, here, here and here.

This year the two Summer School projects we worked together on took place over weeks and was titled ‘Broadcast Journalism’. The students were to be introduced to how media for journalism is created for broadcast.

Each week students (24 in week one and 21 in week two) were introduced to University life by Ian, his team, and current University students.Hal and myself also recalled our own studies at the University, before introducing them to what we had done around the world in this field, before inducting the students in film, animation, sound creation and broadcasting skills.

Once we had inducted the students to the technology we then mixed up the students into cross-school groups and challenged each group with a different activity:

• Group 1 - Make a 1 minute issue related story, for a news programme
• Group 2 - Interview the general public about Group 1’s news item piece (vox pops!) and make a 1 minute fair reflection of opinion
• Group 3 - Make a 30 second advert for a product
• Group 4 - Make a 30 second advert for a service
• Group 5 - Make the idents for the news programme, present live links between content, interview someone live on air about the issue created by groups 1 and 2, broadcast the show live on the internet

The students were then told that on day two of the programme all content would be broadcasted live as a news programme on the internet, by them, at 3pm and all studio based recordings had to be live (not pre-recorded!).

Using Live Channel running on the Apple platform for the broadcast, and iMovie, GarageBand, iStopMotion, iTunes and iPhoto to put together the material, the teams had to talk to each other. The students had little or no experience in the software used for the project.

It was great to see students from an unrelated previous Summer School Project we were involved in back in 2005 (at our previous employer) taking part in the event.

Week 1: Issue (created by groups) - Are we really British?

With a big challenge, and a strict deadline for broadcast students had to work together to form a broadcast production crew, delegate jobs and ensure the broadcast was no longer than five minutes. Students found natural roles, realised the urgency of deadlines and production needs and produced an excellent product.

Matthew Eaves, Malcolm Burnett, Nick Platts and Hal MacLean from Cleveratom Ltd were on hand as experts for the event. This is the final product.Here is the final completed piece of work for week 1, uploaded to Youtube:

Here are some photographs taken at the event by Matt, here are some taken by Malcolm and here is the link to the week 1 movie on youtube.

Week 2: Issue (created by groups) - Super Skinny

Like with week 1, the new students had a tough challenge, formed into groups, shared information, and worked together to hit the deadline.This weeks group decided to call the programme ‘Live at Three’. Yet again, another excellent piece of work.

Matthew Eaves and Hal MacLean were on site from Cleveratom for the duration of the project.

Here is the final completed piece of work for week 2, uploaded to Youtube:

Here are some photographs taken at the event and here is the link to the week 2 movie on youtube.

The Cleveratom Team (Alex, Matt and Hal) were delighted to be invited back to the Anglia Ruskin University to work with Ian Ericson to run the 2007 Anglia Ruskin Summer School.

For the past five years Hal and Matt from the Cleveratom team have been involved in the project (2002-2006 under the Ultralab flag as staff at the University). Both Hal and Matt are also part of the Anglia Ruskin Alumni, both students of the University many years back.

This year the challenge was to engage with a group of young people considering University and put them through a two day creative challenge.

Within minutes of arriving the young people were out and about using digital and video camera technology to bond in small groups and make a first attempt film.

At the end of day 1 the young people had learned how to use iMovie, GarageBand and iPhoto and we’re challenged to make a 100 second ‘Point of View’ film, they had one day to do it.

The completed work was celebrated in the Micheal Ashcroft Building Lecture Hall and a DVD was produced and distributed to every participant.

Our team also took time to talk to the young people about University life, expectations and opportunities. An enjoyable experience was had by all, and as ever, some really creative work achieved in a very short period of time.

Here are the movies:

Today Neil Boughen and myself headed up the M11 to Cambridge to support the local Anglia Ruskin Summer School 2006 at Cambridge Campus. The one week ‘Introduction to University’ programme demonstrates to participants what University life can be like, and is aimed at those who’s parents have not been to University. Neil and I were there for two hours, introducing the young people to the work of Ultralab globally followed by an hour session called ‘An Introduction to Animation’. Due to the time limitations we decided to set the young people our quickest challenge, which is the start with a clay ball and return it to its original state by the end of their work. Each young person received an email copy of their work, those with Bluetooth telephones left with their work on their phone. DVD’s were also made for all the participants.

Ultralab also ran the entire Essex based Summer School on behalf of the Anglia Ruskin University, a week long event, you’ll find information on that project here on the website. Ultralab has been running Anglia Ruskin’s Summer School’s for the past five years, this was the last time we will be working with John Butcher, Director of Summer Schools. John leaves the University at the end of the month to pursue new avenues, we wish him the very best luck for the future.

Here is the work created within the one hour period from the five participating groups within the one hour period:

The Anglia Ruskin Summer School 2006 completed today. The objective of the project was to show University life to young people who are considering a University education but their parents have not attended University themselves.

Throughout the week the young people have worked with various people across the University, on Wednesday the young people spent the day with the Ultralab team on the BBC Blast Truck in White City London.

Here are the completed projects generated over the five day period:

For the past four years (excluding last year) Ultralab has been running the Anglia Ruskin University Summer School. Young people from around the Essex region will be attending Ultralab for an entire week working on their film, music and animation skills. On Wednesday the young people will head to the BBC Blast Truck in White City to join myself and Hal MacLean for their Animation session. Hamish Scott-Brown, Neil Boughen and Colin Elsey will be working with the young people for the rest of the time they are with us.

Lecturers and other visitors from around the University will arrive at Ultralab to give talks to the young people who’s parents never actually attended university themselves.

Over the next five days the young people will be invited to participate in much ‘tougher’ creative challenges.

In the first hour from arriving Hamish set the young people the challenge to make a ‘12 photograph story’ as a team building and ice breaking exercise, here is the completed work from that one hour session:

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