| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

The beginning of the end

Today the fact that my secondment is ending soon hit me.
So far I have been able to concentrate on forthcoming events and launches to keep myself busy. However, following the Nesta presentation I went to a bar on the Thames, along wth Tim Wright and Sue Thomas - director of trAce and the writers for the future project - and we started to talk about what we are planning after the end of this project.

Suddenly it became real, that in 1 month I will be released into the community, and start my new life as an ICT consultant, focusing on educational New media work.

Digital Generations

I travelled to a hot, sticky and (around St Pancras / Kings Cross) dusty London today to present a workshop on creative writing using the internet at the Digital Generations conference at the Institute Of Education.

Popped into the British Library first (air conditioning in there... aaaaaaaaaaaarhhhh) to visit the bookshop and get a few gifts before heading off to the conference.

There was an amusing moment while in the open area when I heard a fellow delegate say to their collegues that they were going to the "Kids on the Net talk because we've been using that".

Aha, I thought. Must listen more!
So I did and was pleased to hear that they found it useful. At which point I introduced myself and began chatting to them. If they had not been so positive, I may well have have quietly snuck out of the room before they could read my name badge ;-)

Have to add that (1) it's nice to hear people say that about a project you have been working on and (2) the workshop delegates seemed to like the stuff as well. Always nice to get feedback.

Tomorrow I travel to Nesta to present the work to them, along with Tim Wright - the Digital Writer in Residence - who has been busy recently with his excellent and original Oldton project.

Another project completed

I had time today to try and finish off a conversion from an old literacy project during my time at Southwold.
I've taken my 'Village' project that was created along with several other schools around the UK, and added forms and a database to it. With help from staff in the office, I've been trying out cold fusion and I've managed to get a submission system up and running.
The project is here
So, now that is templates, style sheets, Flash and Cold Fusion that I have been able to experiment with during the year.

Food to go

We tried out Internet shopping last week to see what it was like.
We ordered on Tuesday, and set a delivery time of between 6 - 8pm on Friday evening.
Friday evening arrived and at 6.15pm a van pulled up, and a very nice man delivered two boxes full of bags of shopping.
He even explained that anything in a blue bag was a subsitute from our order (and that we could reject the items if we wanted).
Best thing was, we saved almost 50% on the usual cost simply because we weren't wandering down the aisles saying "That looks nice" or "Shall we try this".
I can see we will be doing this again if we can save that much money.

Networking

So, after saying that in September I will go freelance, now comes the hard work. I have finances to sort out and get into place so that I do not come a cropper with this new venture, and then of course there is all the talking to people to get known and (hopefully) get some work pushed my way.
I've already contacted the business centres to ask for advice, and they have given me more names and numbers, and next week I am going to a local organisation that might like the ideas that I have, and the projects that I have developed.

It's so different from working in the classroom!

Design changes

This week we are mostly making changes to the Adventure Island tool before we release it live to the world!
It was quite interesting while out at the school on Tuesday. I loaded the site, mentioned that the text would be quite small, and explained how it would be made to look larger soon by the developer. Once I clicked on an island to demonstrate what the tool can do the writing was larger. Talk about instant alteration! When I got back to Nottingham I had a chat to the developer who had started working on the changes, then realised that I was demonstrating the site and so stopped quick before something went wrong.

I've also found a way to include images made by children in the school within the island descriptions. It is such a simple way, and so obvious I don't know why I didn't think of that before.

Digital memories

I spent last evening moving all the photos I have stored on my computers into an 'image bank' folder with sub folders. There were loads of photos that I had forgotten I had taken - photos from trips, Christmas, when it snowed in Nottingham (yes, it did one year!).
If these had been taken using a film camera I would have printed them all out and they would have all been in an album.
Not so with digital. Because I can conveniently move them onto the PC and look at them there, they never make it to print. So I have decided that I need to transfer some back to the camera and visit a local store to have them printed out properly.
As for the rest of them - there are folders and folders full of images - I think they will be added to one of the online photo album places, like ofoto, for the time being until I find a nice program that will allow me to save them onto CDRom in a nice format. There is Jalbum that is free to download that I have already seen, but I am looking for others. If anyone has found good software, share it with me!

School's out for summer

So, that's it. I have made my last visit to an Adventure Island pilot school. I travelled to west London yesterday for the last of my workshops.
I still cannot understand how children are able to concentrate on their work when there is the rumble of an aircraft every 90 seconds overhead as it leaves Heathrow. I was distracted constantly, but the children just got on with their work. Top marks to them. Maybe you become conditioned to it over time?

Had the longest tube journey I have ever been on to reach the school. Almost 50 minutes underground and overground from St Pancras out to the school.

And just to leave me a great impression of the rail services, both my journey down to London and back up to Nottingham were delayed; missing train manager (down) and technical fault (up).

Just two more trips to London this month - to talk at the digital generations conference next Thursday, and then to give a presentation at Nesta on Friday.

First step taken

Well, I've taken the first step along the road to being a freelance consultant. I have designed and build a small website to promote my wares. It feels very strange trying to advertise what I can do for schools. It almost feels like showing off, but I have to do it to ensure that work starts to arrive after the end of August.
The site itself can be viewed here. I was hoping to use a different address, without the hypen, but it seems that a singer has already bought up all the com / co.uk / info / org / biz addresses before I got in there!

They're having a laugh

I posted a comment on my trip to Bristol by train recently. I was not happy with the extremely overcrowded train and so wrote to the company.
This weekend I received a reply from the company (who I have so far not named as I thought it not fair to do so).
Well, they wrote to me saying they were concerned that I was not happy with my journey, they did not give a satisfactory explanation for the extreme overcrowding of the train, and they have sent me a travel voucher for........
£7
Yes, £7.
Now it is not the money that I am after - it was an apology for the health and safety violations (surely it cannot be legal to cram passengers up and down the aisles of the train preventing people from moving).
I didn't get that. I am not happy. I have decided to play the name and shame game - it was Virgin trains. I will not be travelling by them again.

I will now be taking this further - once I find out who to complain to next. If neccesary I will write directly to their managing director and the rail regulators.

Do I mind?

A small sample from emails that have been arriving in steady streams all Friday evening;

And this evening my partner has gone out for the staff end of term meal with the rest of her school.

Do I feel slightly miffed that my long break from the classroom has gone?
No! I'ver had a whole year out of the classroom.

Well, actually I am slightly miffed. Just a little. Not much. Honest. Really ;-)

The term has ended at last ! the children have gone home.
The school is a mess but we will tidy that on Monday.
Now for the holidays

Incubation - thoughts

Where to begin?

Tim Wright (the other 'in residence' member of the trAce team) discussed his Oldton project and how the town that never existed is almost complete. He commented on his 'reversed geographic information system' and how rather than using a map to plot and record data, he is taking data (submissions) and using it to form a map of a place that never existed!

There was Ted Nelson, inventor of the term Hypertext, telling us what was wrong with the web and his ideas for the future of it - and in particular how quoting other peoples work in your own work might change through his deeplit project. His comments regarding Microsoft and Adobe (it's paper under glass) were interesting.

I gave my talk on the projects that have been carried out in schools this year, just after Alan Sondheim had shown some of his work in the adjacent lecture theatre.

Creating linear and non hypertexts from books was an interesting presentation from ghostcity.com creator Jodi Zellen.

Steve Gibson talked about his projects that use spacial awareness to produce visual music - his Virtual dj work featuring heavily. This allowed the user to control and create a piece of music by simply moving around a room. It was demonstrated on Wednesday evening at a local club.

Randy Adams demonstrated some of his work - his collaboration with Jim Andrews and a Alan Sondheim on a piece based on a phone message was interesting to see (and in particular listen to).

Simon Mills discussed 'Who stole the soul'. A provoking piece above New media and where it is going. He demonstrated his latest Flash work. Random Video Clips being played for random amounts of time. As he said; that's a lot of randomness.

Kate Pullinger launched her work entitled 'The Breathing Wall' Using your breathe, you control the story and influence how it is told.

In addition there were plenty of other presentations and performances from many of the delegates attending that I was unable to attend.

What was nice was seeing many of the textlabbers from November and hearing that their experiments were either completed now or well on the way.

Finally, it was also a good chance to network with other people who could provide advice on where to go next in September.