I’ve been up to my neck and beyond working alongside Hal on the Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning project.

We’ve been working in the Yorkshire and Humber region filming school leaders and their staff talking about the impact of Virtual Learning Environments on school life… We’ve been working with seven schools. Kris Popat (a former colleague from Ultralab) has been conducting the research report for the project, which will be turned into a booklet… Alex (from our team) is currently looking into the design, Hal is building the DVD structure.

The films I’m currently editing will be distributed by DVD to a further 2500ish schools across the region to help schools understand what VLE’s are, and what schools are doing with them…

Every school in this country is required to have a VLE installed by the end of 2008….we’ve found some great uses, experiments and even failed implementation attempts which should help other schools get on the right track from the start of thier own research, investigation and implementation for their VLE….

The final DVD will be launched by Professor Stephen Heppell in May.

Back to the edit….

Last year I was featured in the Anglia Ruskin University Department of Computing Prospectus as a former student (Business Information Systems 1997 - 2000) working for the University in the Ultralab department. In December 2006 the University closed Ultralab and I left with colleagues to form a new company which went on to continue working in the same field.

In January I was contacted by friends in the Department of Computing to request a re-feature in the prospectus for the new feature….which is distributed to anyone showing an interest in taking up the course…. this is what was printed for 2007 on page 2:

“I completed my degree at Anglia Ruskin University in May 2000. By November, I was back at the University working for ‘Ultralab’.

Ultralab was a world-class learning, technology and research centre, it was respected for its innovative thinking and projects which engaged technology with learning. I worked all over the world with governments, broadcasters, companies and charities on action research based projects to learn from and empower people. I had the time of my life.

In January 2007 I joined some colleagues in the formation of a new company we called ‘Cleveratom Ltd’. Cleveratom builds on the research and skills I developed from my academic career. We’re working with organisations such as the BBC, Apple Computers, British Computer Society and schools internationally to develop online social spaces, design schools of the future and empower learners with the power of digital creativity technologies.

Luck, risk taking and determination have helped me along the way but my degree still remains fundimentally important in helping me get on.”

Matthew Eaves
BSc (Hons) Business Information Systems

Last week Alex, Hal and I were invited back to by one of my lecturers (Roger Clark) to talk to the current Multimedia Students in year three about opportunities beyond their degree course…. next month we revisit year two students to deliver the same presentation and scout for potential Cleveratom staff of the future….

Being a new business we not yet had time in our days (and nights) to find or make a software solution that works for us in tracking our projects - so our ‘blue board’ was born.

Basically we keep a track of our workload by ‘moving around’ bits of paper between the various sections of the board…. not ‘cutting edge technology’, I know… but absolutely brilliant for keeping on top of everything we’re up to at any one time.

As a new project or proposal is generated or arrives it joins the board in the form of a ‘post-it note’, getting promoted to ‘printed text on a piece of white paper’ if it is lucky enough (when we get some time)…. right now the ‘post-it notes’ contain the last three weeks of additions.

Sticking in a ‘blue pin’ means we’re ‘on the case’ …. sticking in a ‘red pin’ means ‘action required’….

I’m really proud of our board as a temporary solution and recommend it to any new business as a great way of keeping on top of what you are up to …. till you have the time to turn it electronic….

Alex and myself spent Monday at the Global Leadership & Governance of ICT standards for learning, education & training conference in London. We were invited along to demonstrate to the 200 delegates from around the world the potential of podcasting as a elearning tool by capturing thoughts and ideas about the future of learning online as podcasts.

Cleveratom were invited to the event due to our knowledge and experience in the field of internet broadcasting, collaboration and dissemination.

We were delighted to capture the thoughts of Abdul Waheed Khan, Assistant Director General for Communications and Information from UNESCO, in the picture being interviewed by Patrick Towell, responsible for the conference. Patrick Towell is interviewed by Cleveratom’s Alex Blanc. A close up of Patrick demonstrates how Reflecmedia technology manages live chroma key under any light conditions. This technology by Reflecmedia is very cool, we use it a lot. Canon’s XL2 camera also captured a perfect crystal clear image, working very well with the chroma technology. Alex reviews some of the of the podcasts collected on the day.Delegates from the conference will soon be able to review all of the podcasts at the Digital Teacher Network on the Global 07 project page.

It is nearly half past seven on Friday evening, I’m sitting at my desk in Cleveratom’s offices in Ongar, Essex. What a seven week rollercoaster it has been for Alex, Hal and myself as we’ve worked hard to establish and build up Cleveratom from scratch.

People often ask us ‘what exactly is it you do’? We do three things, as listed on our evolving website!:

Digital Creativity: We know how to empower and enhance learning and teaching through new and emerging technologies and we continue to conduct our research. Our team have been working in the field of Digital Creativity for the past seven years. We work with and advise learning institutions, governments, broadcasters, charities, community groups, corporate organisations and individuals on the impact it can have on learning and teaching. We also run workshops and present at conferences and seminars. Our track record, details of projects and research findings are all available at our digitalcreativity.org website.

0870 numbers are expensive.

Why would anyone want to call a company on their 0870 number…. which is sometimes automatically answered by a machine for us all to listen to some horrible loud and crackly music…. and every now and again an automated voice pipes in to tell us that our call is so very important to them and that’s why they are making us wait for absolutely ages before we press some more buttons and then finally talk to a human…..who happens to then the wrong person in the wrong department…..so we then get passed through to somebody else via another long wait in a phone queue with lots more button pressing along the way?

To avoid the big 0870 con I’ve been using the following service now for a couple of years , and have to say that it is brilliant.

saynoto0870.com is a website full of alternative telephone numbers. Rather than having to call the expensive 0870 numbers that so many companies now expect us to call (and some raise themselves a bit more revenue). Saynoto0870 is populated by you and I, the callers. If we know a local or free telephone number to call we simply suggest the number to the site and help out other callers. So for most 0870’s there are local numbers which reach the same people, saynoto0870 tells us those numbers and we save money calling those numbers.

I quote from the site the following:

“Many people don’t realise that there are many phone providers offering cheaper calls to standard telephone numbers (those beginning with 01 or 02), which don’t apply to 0844, 0845, 0870 or 0871 telephone numbers. - Please see the links page and click on Cheapest Call Provider for price details. This shows that by using multiple providers, you can reduce your call cost on standard telephone numbers to as little as 3p fixed cost (regardless of duration), whereas the cheapest provider to 0870 numbers during the day that I am aware of charges 4p/min (+ 3p connection fee) to call.”

Annoyingly ‘TV Licencing’ have been sending a regular letter to my flat every three months, it is an empty flat which is being repaired and renovated. On the letter they request I phone them, to confirm that the property is empty, and they quote an 0870 number for me to call. OK, so they want me to phone an 0870 number, join a queue, listen to some music, pay for the privilege and then tell them that I don’t have a TV in the property? What is in it for me? No way. I check out saynoto0870.com and look up a replacement local number, which happens to be “0117 3021758″ and call that instead, which happens to be free for TalkTalk customers to call anyway. Job done.

Check out the site, well worth bookmarking.

I wrote earlier about my experience with the snow this morning here on the blog. Now I’m at the Cleveratom offices in Ongar I can’t express just how pretty the surrounding fields look under a blanket of white.

Here is our building caked in the white stuff:

Here is the view from one of the upstairs windows when I arrived this morning:

Here is the same view at 1:30pm:

Yesterday I wrote about the thick frost in Witham…and today? Snow!

Very rarely do we get snow in Witham, and today a thick blanket of the stuff had fallen overnight.

The road journey to the office in Ongar was a bit slippy this morning, I wish the council had gritted the main roads out of Witham, I lost control of the car a couple of times. Braintree District Council, get a grit.

Click this link to look at my snow pictures taken on the phone camera this morning.

Below are some movies to watch too…

Witham in Essex has an area well known as ‘the Riverwalk’.

The Riverwalk is a bit of countryside that stretches right through the town, it will never be developed on with new buildings.

Bridges cross over the river at various points, linking off to various parts of the town.

In 1995 the cracking old path was replaced with a foot and cycle path. Red for bikes, grey for walkers.

When I was younger I would walk along it on the way to school.

People use the route to walk dogs, cycle, jog and chat as they pass down this traffic free route each day.

These days I walk along it in the other direction from my school days from the flat to pick up my car from the parents house before driving to work, this gives me some exercise.

View the pictures of the Riverwalk this morning in the cold frost.