Cleveratom

Of all the education shows held in the UK, BETT is probably the biggest by far. Each year, thousands of visitors head along to Olympia in London to wander around two halls packed with exhibitors showing off their wares. Traditionally, BETT is the place to go to see new and emerging innovations in software, hardware and general applications for schools. Meeting up with old friends and colleagues is another great reason, as are the many and varied keynote speeches that are made over the four day event. BETT 07 runs from Wednesday 10th January until Saturday 13th January.

Cleveratom will be working alongside the BBC and Apple computers to run the Create At BETT stand – a feature stand at the top of the stairs in the national hall. Create at BETT is the only stand that features children doing some really rather cool things with technology. Nothing is being sold, and only interesting conversation and information is being given away. This stand has been a focus for us for the last five years and now as Cleveratom we are delighted to be involved once more.

When you visit the stand you will be able to see children from King Harold School, Waltham Abbey, working with all kinds of kit and demonstrating digital video, animation, podcasting and explaining how these things might fit in to the curriculum. If you are a teacher then it may be the last thing you want – time with a group of children, but seldom will you get to talk to a group who are so able with technology and so pleased to be able to advise you on how it helps their learning. I urge you to come and strike up a conversation with them!

At the same time, you’ll be invited to use some of the tools, too! We will be running a number of different pieces of technology, including chroma key video to enable you to choose a piece of video and talk in front of it, then have it podcast like a mini lesson. The BBC have kindly found a number of short clips which we have put on to DVD and set up like a video jukebox (thanks to Alex Blanc for the help scripting the original version of this). You click a number of clips and they play back in the order you chose.

David Baugh and Chris Morley from Learning Central will be there too. An ‘Apple Distinguished Educator’ (ADE), David will be running some of the features on the stand as well as promoting the new Digital Cre8or award from the British Computer Society.

Today saw the official start of Cleveratom Limited, with the first meeting of the directors, Alex Blanc, Matt Eaves and myself.

Whilst we had a day long meeting to start to iron out the issues we face as a team, I can’t really start detailing what we talked about – so it seems a bit odd to blog the event… except of course it really needs marking as an event that took place!

What I can say is that we held it in a potential business start up unit which rivals many that we have seen and beats them hands down for cost. It may not be a permanent home, but it could be a good place to start from. We need to tread carefully and not spend lots of money that we just don’t have yet, although we have agreed that to meet and work face to face will be better than working from home and holding meetings in cyberspaces or in various coffee houses across Essex/Herts. That seems an odd kind of revelation from someone who has been a remote worker for five years now (although I travelled in to the office for the last two years every day)… surely we ought to be able to work remotely?

I also suspect there would be insurance implications if we worked from home – but I’d need to check that for accuracy…

So, the (ad)venture starts!

I wrote to all of my contacts from my time at Ultralab, but I think I may have missed one or two. If that’s you, here’s what I sent out:

Dear [Firstname],

I am sending this email to friends, colleagues, work partners and
people I have had contact with over the last five years at Ultralab
(and before) – you are listed under my contacts as someone to keep
in touch with. If you have no idea why you got a copy of this email,
my sincere apologies, there may have been an error, so please disregard it!

You may have heard about the uncertain future of Ultralab in the
national media recently. Anglia Ruskin University has decided not to
continue Ultralab’s research and consultancy work and so I and most of
my colleagues have been made redundant. Ultralab closes as a physical
department within the University structure on 31st December 2006 after
nearly twenty years of ongoing success. The university is keeping some
of the Ultralab team, however, in order to continue to run some of the
larger money making projects which have been started. Thirteen
colleagues will stay on in the faculty of education to run Ultraversity
(http://www.ultraversity.net ), and a further few will work in the new
university centre for learning and teaching.

Far from being distraught about all of this (although it is undeniably
sad when you think of the outstanding work that has been done by the
Ultralab team over the last twenty years), the opportunity arises for
us to continue in a different way.

And on that thought, I would like to introduce you to ‘Cleveratom’.

I have been working with some colleagues to form a new company,
‘Cleveratom Ltd’ which will officially start ‘trading’ on January 3rd.
The company will focus on three core activities, including working with
schools, colleges and other educational establishments to look at how
ICT can be used to support and enhance learning. Building Schools of
the future will be a key part of the work that we do. Secondly, the
fantastic projects focussing on digital creativity will continue, with
several excellent events already lined up for 2007 (have a look at
http://www.digitalcreativity.org ). Thirdly, we will continue to work
to develop and deploy unique online community and social software,
building learning spaces for creativity, virtual learning environments
(VLEs) and more. The web site is at http://www.cleveratom.co.uk
although there is little more than a holding page there right now.

We are keen to further develop the work that we have been doing for the
last few years and would be delighted to talk with people who are
working in the same areas as we intend to, or have a brilliant idea
that they want to make a reality.

My contact details change with immediate effect (see below) and I would
be grateful if you could reply to my new address with your latest
details too… although you are probably enjoying a well-earned rest
and won’t get this until after next week. I am working on updating my
blog (http://www.halmaclean.co.uk ) and you can always keep in touch
with me there if you prefer.

I hope that you are enjoying the season’s festivities, and my very best
wishes to you for the New Year.