Project: The Right Year for Children site

Screengrab, ry4c webiste

Today I launched a new website The Right Year for Children, which is part of a year-long campaign to highlight children’s rights in England.

I was approached by the committee as I have previously worked with one of their members. The campaign involves a coalition of children’s charities (Save the Children, UNICEF, CRAE, Action for Children and many more) but they had no funding….so I agreed to the work for two reasons: firstly, donating my time and skills for a good cause is something I try to do at least once a year and secondly, at my day job we get 1 day per year to volunteer for a charitable cause.

So the challenge was to plan, design and build a site in one day which is the kind of mountain I enjoy climbing. Including talking with the campaign team, building the html/css and fighting with WordPress, I think the whole project came together nicely in the 1 day I was afforded. It is worth noting that the budget and time constraints meant that while a bunch of stuff wasn’t possible in the time we had, these restrictions also greatly helped speed the project up as it decided some aspects for us.

I have given myself the task earlier in the year to get to grips with WordPress  and this project has helped me identity some sticking points with the CMS platform that I can tackle in the new year.

So I hope the site is well received and if I can find the time will try and make it responsive to mobile devices….

The Right Year for Children

Speaking: Mobile learning at Bath Spa

In my talk today at Bath Spa I set out to touch on key aspects of mobile learning, what is mobile learning and why we might be taking the time to care. Below are my supporting notes:

What is mobile learning

  • If you read nothing else, the JISC Mobile Learning infokit is a great body of work to get you started
  • It isn’t just about wheeling out devices, it is about seeking ways to enhance our teaching and learning by taking advantage of the opportunity and constraints
  • Mobility of people with devices opens new doors
  • Context is king
  • There are 100s of devices (demo’ed 3 tablets) and there can be social pressure on students to get the devices everybody else has
  • Mobile learning is leading to transformation in the classroom AND institutions are having to address this. Many institutions are are starting to address this with steering groups, research and initiatives such as “mobile clinics“.

Why Mobile learning?

Further signposts

A New Perspective on Crime Scenes

Over at the NYTimes is a great piece “A New Perspective on Crime Scenes” about crime scenes that make use of a panoramic camera (Panoscan) to capture the scene.

What really caught my attention was the audio descriptions for each scene that really bring the scenes to life. The images are used in court and also to preserve a crime scene for years to come.

Found via Kottke of course.

Rekindling my happy snapping

For the first time in a looong time I have picked up my Canon 350D. I got the camera a few years back after a freelance gig but I was always hung up on the features and we never took to each other.

Maybe this time will be different.

Linear notes: Young Guru lecture

You (almost) can’t read the linear notes of a Jay-Z album and not fail to notice the name of Young Guru crop up.  Engineer and ad-lib reference for Mr Carter spends just over 2hrs talking about his career and work to date. I have listened to every Jay-Z song and yet much of the work is done by folk like Young Guru who we know almost nothing about. I love the internet for gems like these.

One of my favourite moments is when one of the audience asks:

If you love underground hiphop why doesn’t Jay-Z rhyme to underground beats? peep the video to discover the answer!

Follow Young Guru.

Lecture: Young Guru (Madrid 2011) from Red Bull Music Academy on Vimeo.

My portrait by Nigel Goldsmith

A few weeks ago I was complaining about my avatar picture and Nigel Goldsmith, photographer and colleague offered to shoot me.

I wanted some shots that I could use for all my public accounts and conference talks that showed me in a professionally nerdy way and Nigel did a great job. The background is the stairway of the Wills Memorial Building here in lovely Bristol. Several people are shocked I stickered my laptop but it won’t get easily confused at a conference now will  it?

Portrait
Portrait

 

Black Leakage for the walls

Black Leakage is a new product from one of my favourite studios Design Chapel.

I haven’t seen this kind of wall art on sale before and it reminds me of my painting days and when I used to ‘F5’ the Design Chapel site before I discovered RSS!