Someone asked me the other day what Ultralab (my employer) is.

The Ultralab Mission is…

“To research, apply and disseminate the benefits of new technologies, seeking to develop
an empowering, creative and delightful learning environment that knows no boundaries.”

and here is a really good article published by the Financial Times a year and 10 days after I joined Ultralab on 07 November 2000….

FOOD AND DRINK / EDUCATION:

Man the lifeboats - in a laboratory: ONLINE EDUCATION: Jim Kelly visits an exciting centre of learning

Financial Times; Nov 17, 2001 By JIM KELLY

It’s an unlikely place to find a guru. A drab 1960s block in the middle of the only English university still to call itself a polytechnic. But the Chelmsford campus of the Anglia Polytechnic University (APU) is home to a remarkable institution - Ultralab.

Here for the past 15 years Stephen Heppell has been building one of the most respected research centres in e-learning in the world. He has gathered together 57 “ultranauts” - applied research workers in many areas of “webucation”.

In the past year alone about 70 national education ministers have been in contact with Ultralab for advice and to discuss projects. Heppell’s team works closely with five or six national governments and is intimately involved in the UK’s development of online learning, a project being closely monitored in the US and other European countries.

Heppell’s own eclectic background is one of the clues to Ultralab’s success. He is interested in the process of learning rather than the accumulation of knowledge content. He says the idea that “content is king” in the development of online learning is a fundamental error.

“If content was king, then we would build more libra-ries not primary schools,” he says. Learning is the real key, the internet is a tool.

He was a social scientist at university, a trainee accountant, a teacher, a macro-economic modeller, and - most significantly - he was chosen to help to develop UK national policy on IT in schools. That started off in a house in Chelmsford, the first seed of Ultralab.

Heppell is a devoted polymath. He suggests that the government, which is promoting specialist schools in technology, languages, business and other subjects, should consider “polymathic” schools devoted to learning across all subjects.

Understanding how people learn is a fixation at Ultralab. Elsewhere, internet developments have been hijacked by at least two bad ideas. One is that the key to success is building IT infrastructure, and the second that it is about delivering content. “It should be about asking, ‘What will people be able to do that’s delightful?’ ” All Ultralab’s projects are about creative excitement online.

Two examples give the flavour of Ultralab’s work. One of its biggest successes is notschool.net, an online school for young people who don’t attend schools for a variety of reasons. It now has 5,000 pupils and is expanding quickly. Tutors, mentors and online software support the young people who are given hardware for the home. It is a cheaper option for local authorities than to create special units.

One of Ultralab’s newest projects is a virtual lifeboat station - a project run with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution as a learning tool. Each “room” is dedicated to a real station with an online view from the real window and live camcasts from the station. Stories of trips by local crews are recorded and can be updated as a crew member phones in on returning from a rescue.

For parents, the biggest IT decision to face is choosing a school. How would Heppell help them? “Watch out - and avoid - schools with signs saying DON’T, such as ‘DON’T swallow the ball in the computer mouse’, that kind of thing.” He says schools which over-prescribe the use of IT deaden creativity. Parents should also look at the walls and study the work displayed. Is it up to date?

Most of all, he warns, look to see evidence of the process by which the work was produced. Finished work alone suggests it may have been pulled off the internet as a finished product.

Then look at the way in which the PCs are arranged; ranks of computers in lines is a bad sign. He says they are better used in open positions where the children can interact. And then there are the swathes of computers in under-used “laboratories”.

Heppell admits these once had their uses, especially if teachers were unsure of the technology and needed an environment with technicians where they could concentrate on the lesson. “But they are looking increasingly like an anachronism,” he says.

Moving on to universities parents need to be even more eagle-eyed. Most of the UK institutions now include lavish descriptions of their IT hardware in prospectuses sent to students in an increasingly competitive market. Heppell believes students should ask three simple questions. 1. Can I keep my e-mail identity? 2. Can I keep my computer - if I have one and am used to it? 3. Is the university’s computer network and hardware open for use 24 hours a day seven days a week?

Institutions in the UK from Whitehall down to the smallest primary school have all been tempted to concentrate on building infrastructure and delivering content in an over-controlled environment, he says. “We have made the mistake of delivering certainty - we should be trying to deliver uncertainty.”

He says the outstanding results achieved by the pupils of notschool.net show what can be achieved if the emphasis is on the power of IT to assist learning. The net should be seen as a learning tool, not providing teaching materials. And it should be seen as giving access to a community and allowing participation - not interaction. “I interact with my microwave oven but I haven’t learnt anything yet,” says Heppell.

Of the 67 education minis ters he has spoken to in the past year about a third, he believes, have understood the fundamental benefits of IT which can lead to rising standards. He counts Estelle Morris, the UK secretary of state, as one of them. Not understanding the real power of online learning leads, he says, to a low value-added education system. The UK picture is mixed, but generally favourable.

And what about the future for Ultralab? Critical mass, he estimates, is 120 ultra-nauts.

The lab is the jewel in the crown for APU, but can it hold on to a world-class institution? Heppell is understandably reticent but admits that hardly a day passes without other universities trying to tempt the unit away. And venture capitalists are equally keen.

But for now, the most exciting place in the world of “webucation” in the UK will continue to be the third floor of an Essex office block.

Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 1995-1998

Reflecting on  the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s launch of Lifeboats.TV.

Together we worked on a project which was developed to engage young people in the Lifeboat service, with a vision that todays young people would show a lifelong interest in the safety of our seas and ensure funding and volunteers were available in their twilight years, for our children’s children, and their children’s children.

Lifeboats.TV is the largest free video website on the internet with 457 movies compressed in 6 various formats. The Virtual Lifeboat Station was designed and built as an explorable place to discover the Lifeboat service without actually visiting a lifeboat station.

What is it like to be on a lifeboat during a shout?

Being in a lifeboat is like being in a tumble washer sometimes, you see your cloths going round, and you are going everywhere. The sea is not a very kind thing, it comes at you from all angles. Even though the crews are strapped well in, and the seats are numatic and help protect your back, because you could imagine falling 10 / 15 feet.. If you were sitting at the back of the lifeboat you can see all your crew members and they are going up and down and up and down in their seats as the motion of the boat takes them. So when a boat comes off a heavy wave, this would happen; the boat would fall and you are pulled in your straps because the gravity of the boat will take you down but you are going to stay there momentarily, so it is like the keys on a piano, if you could imagine, no fingers, everybody is up and down. (Watch the movie) Crew Member, Dun Laoghaire Lifeboat Station, Republic of Ireland, 29 January 2002.

When not for profit learning, technology and research centre Ultralab started this massive research project we discovered from children that the interesting things about the lifeboat service are the people that make it all happen. Why do these women and men leave the safety of their beds in the middle of the night to rescue a complete stranger in a storm?….What makes these hero’s tick?….Why do they do what they do?

In 1 year, Colin Elsey and myself had visited 8 lifeboat stations all over the UK and met 180 people who volunteer and risk their lives, to save yours.

In Tobermory in Scotland on the 19th of March 2002 Colin Elsey, Alex Blanc, Hamish Scott-Brown and myself were filming the crew who were answering our questions while on a lifeboat when a real rescue call was instructed by the Coastguard. Alex, Hamish and myself did not have enough time to leave the boat and found ourselves at sea taking part in a real life rescue.

I can’t explain how it felt, but for the first time in my life I actually felt frightened. Not because it was 8pm and we were on what turned out to be a 5 hour shout in the dark, in rough water, in a 2 level boat which was rocking in all directions, in the most remote part of Scotland….but because there was the possibility someone was in the sea and if we missed them, they could die.

I stood on the back of the ‘Severn’ lifeboat, with an RAF helecopter above us, with its search lights on full beam sweeping across the sea in search for a sign of life….I remember checking the same patch of water over and over and over again, thinking….”If I miss someone, I’ll never forgive myself”….

Nobody was found that night, and no bodies were reported missing within the following weeks.

When we started the project I felt slightly concerned that as a person that had never been on a rescue how could I give an honest representation of the people who risk their lives to save others?

When we docked after the shout in Tobermory I actually felt like I knew what it was like to be a lifeboat crew memeber. I had experienced the excitement, the fear, the antisipation, and above all, I’d put my life in danger too, although I was in perfectly safe hands throughout the rescue.

No matter where we went the lifeboat crews looked after us, they wanted us to hear their stories, they wanted us to know what they did. The most remarkable finding was that no crew member ever consider themself to be a hero.

I’ll never forget the work we did with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution who are currently re-organising prior to the official launch of Lifeboats.TV.

They are hero’s, every single one of them, especially Skegness Wiggy.

When friends ask, why do you risk your life to be a lifeboat crew? What is it that makes you go out in rough weather? It’s very hard to explain to them the feeling that you get when you actually put your hand on somebody, who is about to die, bring them into your boat, with your mates, bring them ashore safely. Thats a feeling, a privelege words cant explain. (Watch the movie) Crew Member, Dun Laoghaire Lifeboat Station, Republic of Ireland, 29 January 2002.

Hmmmm, why is it that every newspaper report always has a mistake….

Anglia University is actually Anglia Polytechnic University

and…
‘What If’ is actually ‘IF:THEN’…

And where do they think up the names for these articles? Nevermind!!!

Press Article Text:
What If we made a film?

(Photo: MOVIE MAKERS: Fourteen-year-olds Ilsa Haeusler, Gerome Oldfield, Amy Gulvin and Jamie Archer)

BUDDING film makers took part in a summer workshop to be screened on TV.

Pupils from Langley Park School for Girls and Kelsey Park Boys’ School, were trained in editing and filming and worked together for a week to produce three animated films, on the theme of “What If”.

The summer school project, run at Langley Park School for Girls, Hawksbrook Lane, Beckenham, by Anglia University’s Ultralab, was filmed by the BBC and will form part of the Blast broadcast on BBC 2 in November.

The films, which covered topics ranging from love, to aliens, to the hypothetical assassination of President Bush, will also be shown at Ultralab’s showcase event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in December.

Teacher Jan Tutill, who helped organise the event, said: “All the groups got on with each other and enjoyed themselves and the results were fantastic.”

10:58am Tuesday 10th August 2004

Source: News Shopper |

Some of the Ultranaut team at Ultralab, including myself (Matthew) have been researching together with The Oracle Corporation on the future of Executive Learning with the Executive Learning Workgroup. One of the partners in the project is Professor Lee Schlenker of EM Lyon, The European Institution for LifeLong Learning.

Lee Schlenker is Professor of Information Systems at this world respected institution.

Through working with Lee it has become a pleasure sharing thoughts and ideas, and I’m pleased to link through to Lee’s Online Weblog which has a specific focus of Business Value.

Already Lee has published some interesting articles, all available for comment and debate.

It was at the Executive Learning Workshop held on August 25th 2004 at the London Business School that we first discussed ‘blogging’ and Lee’s now experimenting in blog land.

Welcome to the world of blogging Lee!

Hello there,

After months of spam attacks from porn sites and the inability to fix my Movable Type blog I’ve decided to jump ship and try something else.

Welcome to my world in Drupal. Thanks to Sandwich Enthusiast Jonathan Furness for the time taken to assist with the getting to know and install Drupal.

Loads has been going on and I’ll post more stuff later. It has taken me an hour to move manually all my content from Ultralab’s Movable Type server, after failing to import the data…way way to difficult….

Error Error Error…

Have a good day!

Ultralab’s Hal MacLean and myself stayed at the Ostrich Inn, South Creake in North Norfolk while working on Ultralab’s joint collaboration project with The Rural Norfolk Federation.

This hotel was great, you get to cook your own breakfast from the fresh farm products found in your room fridge. The location is very peaceful and the staff are very friendly. The rooms are great too, very clean and very modern. I was woken up in the morning to the sound of tractors. A great rural place to stay.

Only gripe is that we were very hungry after working solid all day, (had not eaten since breakfast) and the bar food was not taking orders till 6pm. We drove to the Hungry Horse (Henry IV) in Fakenham and the food just kept coming!, fantastic.

If you found this review while searching on the Internet, be sure to tell the hotel when you book that ‘Ultralab’ sent you.

My ranking out of 10: 9

–UPDATE 25th OCTOBER 2007 from the new landlord:

Since July 07 the pub is now under new ownership , A nice Irish Couple Mandy & Richard & 2 year old daughter Hannah are now running the Pub. They still have Real Ales and a New and Extensive Menu. Why not give it a try…. and tell them ‘Cleveratom’ sent you (as I’m not at Ultralab anymore!)….

Our West Highland Terrier Cassie (Born 1994) has to have an operation on her paw.

Cassie suffered from a growth which had to be removed and was causing her to have difficulty walking. She’s being really good about it all.

The vets bill is running in to hundreds of £’s but luckily Cassie is a customer of Tesco Pet Insurance and pays in every month.

Also, Cassie is very unique in her ability to spell.

She gets very excited at the prospect of ‘walkies’ and barks constantly if she knows it is time to go out.

So the ‘w’ word cannot be said and over the years various alternatives have been used, including a slow spelling of the ‘w’ word….which she has learnt means the same thing as the ‘w’ word and gets very excited.

Will post progress on her recovery to un-hindered ‘w’s’.

Today while surfing around the Internet I came across Ultralab’s BETT Show Pictures from The BETT Education Show, Olympia, from January 2004. Go take a look .

Surf on over to Tom Stacey’s Blog to find out what is going on in the world of Ultralab’s Tom Stacey.

Tom and I went to University together at Anglia Polytechnic University in Chelmsford, we were both undergraduates of the ‘Business Information Systems’ course between 1997 and 2000.

As you can see by the photo, Tom looks very different these days.

I had a very interesting telephone conference initiated by Microsoft today.

It was about a potential collaboration project to be held throughout Scandinavian countries next year.

At the moment we are in planning stage but it is obvious that the is some terrific potential for another learning, technology and research project.