Thank you for the many messages of support and condolences that my family have received.
Mum leaves a huge legacy for us to build on – an example which I will always be grateful for.
There is a link to the funeral service and eulogy here.
She would very much expect me to carry on now, which I will – in the added hope that helping others [through technology] can be a fitting way to honour what Mum sought to accomplish.
A little note to say that, sadly, I am on compassionate leave at present due to my Mum being gravely ill. My regular schools know this, and I am grateful for their understanding. My Digital Writes colleague Keith continues to deliver our current courses. Meanwhile, with time ahead in Northern Ireland, I am preparing for the upcoming Woodland Coding events, through Space To Learn, about which: more to follow.
There are two new Project Based Learning initiatives brewing which I will be excited to share here in due course. They seek to offer a (pupil-built) helpful communication system for two distinct groups of people: those who are autistic and those who are refugees. This is my priority for TTH (Tech To Help).
An important upcoming development will be the Society of Tinkerers. Building on Flickernet Tinker, this seeks to create a forum in which TTH can be advanced as well as providing space for further projects to be skilfully investigated by those from a range of technology and educational backgrounds.
Flickernet Archive has an initial event pending, during which outdoor presentation of materials will be trialled, in support of my friends and neighbours, The Woodland Trust.
Swindon Borough Council have kindly agreed to support my extra-urban particulates sensor, which will go live (on the data page) once I have selected a location from those on offer, and installed the Raspberry Pi powered equipment.
Whilst I may be more difficult to contact over the next week or two, I am keen to resume all things Flickernet soon, and look forward to delivering all that I can going forwards.
Loving creating resources for team Digit<all> – with thanks to Amazon Sustainable Futures.
This is the Recycling Machine: metal detector drives a servo to sweep ferrous materials from a conveyor belt!
Enjoying exploring the DFRobot kit from BETT – this time the Boson Science equipment which is ideal for KS1 physical computing. Great Micro:Bit integration!
Thank you Keith, Jeremy and the team for a fun evening at the MoC. We are fortunate to be partners with you in delivering coding sessions and are eager to resume in the Autumn with some extraordinary new physical computing interfaces.! 😉 The many guests in attendance clearly enjoyed their tours of the museum and chatting about the superb range of technology that was featured, from dusty beige to cutting edge!
Thank you Clare for meeting with us today. We are really looking forward to helping your service users to develop an illuminated logo and animated text board. The club that we will run for you in the Autumn will enable those who choose to come along to work collaboratively to design, build and code a bright solar-powered phoenix that will hang in the factory window sharing information and, most importantly, demonstrating to all what great capabilities exist in the Phoenix team.
From climbing trees in the woods of Northern Ireland whilst clutching Raspberry Pi units, to helping children who were on the cusp of quitting school to build adventure game-books, this year has been a real eye-opener to me.
It is a rare privilege to become free to teach what one chooses. I hadn’t dared believe that it could happen, but now Flickernet is full steam ahead – 24 years on from those early Dot Com years – with a new focus called TTH: Tech To Help. This is what I will be up to, going forward – please see the synopsis page for more information or if you would like to be involved.
Keith and I met with Ben, a Director of Digital Writes, and an inspiration. Ben is helping us to explore a new project: using physical computing to enable those with reduced mobility to create their own unique artworks. We aim to feature these artworks in both an online space and through an installation.
We will work with Primary school pupils to analyse the need, design and build a solution, then collaborate with the end user to refine a product that is genuinely helpful for them.
Here is a summary page with Micro:Bit; Crumble; Raspberry Pi and more general links relating to the wonderful world of Physical Computing:
This 30 second video clip shows the three step process that we undertook with both St Mary’s and SoS pupils this week.
Having drawn their game-book characters and shaded with crayon: 1. Stop motion animation; 2. Photoshop cutout; then 3. Adobe Character Animator – at which point they are sprites that can be included into any Unity game creation – in this case fitting the gothic theme!
Hardly a day passes without a new Micro:Bit accessory becoming available. With Version 2 Micro:Bits having a bit more about them (!) and Primary Schools now having the offer of 30 free – it is a great time to explore the extra functionality that these offer.
As a quick guide for ARC, I have put a page together that lists some of the best – along with links to info pages / data sheets and associated resources.
Enjoying exploring Crumble equipment at Bridlewood Primary and with the ARC.
Have built Marge to demonstrate the ultra-sonics in action. Credit to @philwickins for inspiring the concept. Have put together a page with Crumble links that might be helpful.
Huge thanks to Brea, Paddy and Laura for a great gathering at the Cyber Business Centre in Chippenham yesterday. It was great to see this amazing facility filled with students and industry representatives along with a wide range of career guidance specialists. There was a buzz throughout – that even the built-in Faraday cage and sound muffling technology couldn’t dampen!
My thanks also to Sarah. It was a privilege to represent Odyssey Hub. Sarah even managed to set up a moisture-sampling experiment to check on the health of the CBC plants while we were there! Our combined eagerness to see physical computing widely adopted in primary schools fits neatly with the SWLEP vision for uptake in physical computing across our region too.
I look forward to helping with these endeavours in every way that I can going forward, in the hopes that by May ’24 we will have won the Raspberry Pi competition!
Not an attempt to avoid sweating tomorrow, but rather attempting to meet a challenge set by Paddy Bradley of SWLEP ahead of my presentation at the ICE event tomorrow..
Could Zjeremy show in his live data feed a distinct difference between the current pristine tree particulate reading and the polluted air around him. No better way to pollute that air than Lynx Inca, methought – and so the data proved: careful breathing in when spraying – those particles really do fill the air!
Thanks to David, Judy, Barbara, Kaye and Kimberly for joining me and Keith this morning for a Starbucks-fuelled brainstorming session!
The graphical look and feel of the book is now taking shape: think sepia -tinted, line-drawn paper edged animations that we hope will capture the imaginations of Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 pupils.
With such a wide range of contributions so far, and many months left of the project remaining (ahead of publication in December), we are going to assemble the core writing team next so that the fundamental story arc is in place ready for coding, drawing and team development.
The Particulate Sensor was put to work sniffing the air above our campfire. More than just marshmallows to chew over.! Report here.
The vast, sprawling assembly of tech-enthusiasts that is BETT was every bit as overwhelming this year as in previous years. Rather than attempt to see everything, I was more than content catching a few great seminars and panel discussions, then finding my way to the Physical Computing corner.
Ricky and the team: your equipment has taken remote sensing opportunities to a new level! I am delighted to have connected with you and I look forward to sharing the immense range and functionality of what DFRobot produce in China. It will take me a few months to explore the equipment – but there is no doubt in my mind that what you have created could benefit learners up and down the UK.
Thank you Tony and Marie-Ann for a fascinating tour of the wonderfully resourced Institute of Technology, recently opened on the New College Swindon campus.
Good to know that some Honda robots survive – now housed (actually caged!) within the £20m facility. We were tempted to try out the e-sports gaming rooms, but conversation was focused on cyber security and careers opportunities this time. Thank you Paul, Steve and Rupert for the tours of your departments – it is hard to imagine a finer suite of equipment to enable students to excel as the workforce of tomorrow.
Devizes Arts Festival featured this great homage to classic computer games. A simple idea but a brilliant one: becoming the characters in a physical recreation. I got so into being pac-man!
STEM have kindly published my blog containing some thoughts towards how old, and seemingly defunct, technology can yet be of value to teachers as a means of providing Physical Computing experiences.
Perhaps the question for teachers (& school IT support teams) could be: “what can this still do?” – rather than “what can this not do?”
Enjoying resource creation for my friends at Digit<all>
An activity for teachers will merge DT with Computing skills and Science – to build a particle measuring machine, linked to the PM2.5 Tree Sensor so that pupils can engage with the need for careful monitoring of these dangerous airborne particles.
Zjeremy has a booking for the 10th May at the Chippenham Business Cyber Centre as part of the ICE (Innovate, Collaborate, Educate) gathering. Looking forward to hearing what Zjeremy has to say.!
Full details, including a video discussion featuring a brief overview of Zjeremy’s role in support of physical computing are here: www.flickernet.net/swlep
The Space To Learn site in Northern Ireland captures video of wildlife passing by cameras that are spread throughout the woods. This camera, BadgerCam – is a good one for recording the soundscape too!
Our Digital Writes trip to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein House in central Bath was scary fun! The SoS pupils managed the escape room with 30 seconds to spare.
A steam-punk twist to the exhibits added just the right technological twist too!
This week in ARC we enjoyed the potential of Makey Makey units with a view to incorporating them into future robotics. Doom and Asteroids ensued!
After a scramble to complete our two entries as far as possible – it is congratulations to Team Heat Hunters (Year 10/11) and Team Purple (Year 13) for readying their submissions in time. There was much more intended, but the experience of applying thermal imaging sensing and AI number recognition, gave both teams some valuable insights into these intriguing areas of robotics.
Delighted that Bridlewood Primary have joined our TPAT Trust. We will soon be exploring crumble kits together – to add physical computing fun to their upcoming school Design Technology project.
Literature Alive – from Digital Writes – is now well underway. Keith and I enjoyed our first visit to St Mary’s on Thursday – coinciding with World Book day. From next week we will begin working with a selection of pupils from St. Mary’s to develop the interactive game book. When asked, during our assembly, what would be different about our book to other books, the answer came back: “everything”!
STEM PDL Stage 2 training has provided a rare opportunity to combine with colleagues from the far North of England to the South coast – in sharing our experience of school consultancy processes, and best support techniques. Thank you Chris and Tracey for modelling the highest standard of professional development.
As part of our training I was asked to present on a piece of educational research that I considered to have been impactful and that would be helpful to others. I share it here as Schools Of The Future (WEF 2020) touches on many helpful perspectives towards future learning.
All three of the ARC entries are gathering momentum. There is just one month left before the closing date of this year’s competition – which equates to four hours for us! Although only one entry (The Thermal Imaging project) could actually be described as a “robot”, it has been wonderful to see each team applying their coding, construction, and debugging skills in earnest.
The Digital Writes pupil-powered creation is well underway: bringing new meaning to the phrase “immersive”, our Literature Alive project is demonstrating what Unity software can enable children to accomplish, even when they may have decided previously that reading or writing was not for them.
Key Stage Three pupils at the School Of Solutions – a vitally important alternative provision unit which is part of The Park Academies Trust – are experiencing cutting edge ‘world-building’ software whilst contributing their creative ideas towards a digital book like no other.
It is a virtual game book – a successor to the ‘play-your-own-adventure’ stories that allow multiple routes through the text. Turn to certain pages and the book becomes an active 3D world, based on the content of the story that is unfolding and which they can then explore.
A total of four Swindon schools, two Primary and two Secondary – as well as the Museum of Computing – are taking part in this Arts Council funded project. Full details are here, with a great demonstration video (2 mins) to be found on YouTube here.
With the launch of Flickernet Tinker, there is now a new opportunity to become involved in the world of physical computing, even if you prefer making to teaching! Everyone is welcome to join in – for further details please see:
Thank you to Laura and the team for a great welcome to the BCC building in Chippenham. This is the UK’s first Business Cyber Centre. We were there to talk about physical computing, but it was also fascinating to be shown around this super high-tech space with ‘living walls’ and soundproof booths!
I am very much looking forward to supporting our wonderful LEP (Local Enterprise Partnership) over the months and years ahead. Please see this link for more information about how physical computing can be supported in your school.
Thank you to Chris and the team for some fascinating CPD in Birmingham this week. It has brought home to me how much more effective it is to plan a project – especially one that involves many disciplines and subject areas – with the input of brilliant people!
www.flickernet.net/stem
The Space To Learn page is gradually taking shape. Over the next few months I will share the ways in which I aim to develop outdoor educational technology from our foothold in the Mourne Mountains. Expect live data streams; real world applications of physical technology; and an exploration into new ways in which STEM subjects, creative writing and historical investigations can benefit from a natural environment that is fully plugged in.
