Helping the BBC Blast share their vision with BBC Staff

Hal MacLean, myself and Director of Ultralab (1990 - 2006), Richard from the Ultralab (1990 - 2006) team at Anglia Ruskin University spent the afternoon and evening with the BBC Blast team in White City’s Media Centre, London to share and celebrate with the wider BBC the progress made by Blast, the BBC’s creative platform giving kids a place to be creative. Malcolm Burnett and two students from King Harold School supported the event by demonstrating creative Animation work to the BBC audience.

Ultralab (1990 - 2006)’s SMS wall of stickies was available, developed by Alex, the underpinning SMS system ‘UltraSMS’ developed by Tim.

Some images from the event:

Create at BETT Stand at Olympia 11th – 14th January 2006

The Ultralab (1990 - 2006) team works each year on the ‘Create at BETT’ stand at the BETT show. The show is attended by 26,000 visitors each year and has over 2000 stands. The Create at BETT stand is funded by Apple Computer and staffed by Ultralab (1990 - 2006). Our friends from BBC Blast joined the stand for the first year to promote young peoples creativity.

Ultralab (1990 - 2006)’s partner schools King Harold School and Saffron Walden County High School assisted on the stand providing young people to demonstrate to the visitors podcasting, animation, sound and vision technologies.

Jane Down from the Ultralab (1990 - 2006) team spent BETT working in the NAACE Lounge demonstrating Podcasting to NAACE members.

View the pictures from the show.

BBC Blast, 21CC, Ultralab, Apple, BETT Show and EastEnders

Today, (Saturday) Maureen Gurr and myself headed to London to the BBC Broadcasting House bringing together the young people from Saffron Walden County High School and King Harold School for the planning day for ‘Create at BETT 2006.

For the past five years Ultralab (1990 - 2006) have been working in conjunction with Apple Computer and other partners to deliver the ‘Create at BETT’ feature at BETT, the educational technology show at Olympia in London (11 – 14 January 2006).

The BETT Show attracted 24,000 visitors last year, the ‘Create at BETT’ stand is one of the few stands which does not actually sell anything, it is purely there to demonstrate how creative young people can be with technology.

Considering that people under the age of 18 are not allowed into the show, it is great that ‘Create at BETT’ continues to be the only stand fully staffed by young people ‘being creative’, the idea is that visitors will leave the show with creative ideas to take back to their institutions to move creative use of technology forward.

BBC Blast! are involved in the project this year, our training day for the young people involved took place at the BBC’s 21CC (21st Century Classroom) facility at broadcasting house.

On the stand the young people will be demonstrating film, sound, podcasting and animation technologies, all surrounded by an EastEnders theme. BBC EastEnders will be the focus of new script ideas, model animations of classic scenes and the challenge to create a new theme tune sequence for the show.

Both involved schools, friends of Ultralab (1990 - 2006)’s Digital Creativity projects will be sending sixteen children to the show between them. The young people will stay in London with Ultralab (1990 - 2006).

Maureen Gurr, Richard, Kris Popat and Matthew Eaves will be representing Ultralab (1990 - 2006) for the duration of the event on the ‘Create at BETT stand’.

Some images from the event:

BBC Blast, 4 November 2004 – BBC 2

Did you see us on BBC Blast this morning on BBC 2?

Hal MacLean and myself were interviewed for the programme, you’ll also see how we undertake our Summer School programme of activities.

Here is our section of the programme:

BBC Blast – 4 November 2004: Play Now | Play in Popup