Welcome
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This archive can help us formulate future policy, remember past achievements and share best practice.
If you can help fund this vital project, contact Richard Millwood directly.
NEWS
THE LEGACY OF THE BBC MICRO: effecting change in the UK’s cultures of computing
May 24th 2012
This timely report, sponsored by Nesta, has been published, written by Dr Tilly Blyth, Keeper of Technologies and Engineering at the Science Museum. It very effectively tells the story of one of the most important developments in public service at the beginning of the modern microcomputer revolution. The BBC Computer Literacy Project was the development, linked with the project's commissioned computer developed by Acorn - the BBC Micro. Its effect on society is spelled out, based on desk research, survey analysis and interviews. The report makes the link between past and future, asking the question of impact and effect and thus how we can learn from this to develop our culture and our economy. it also makes recommendations on how to revive the spirit of the original project in the modern context.
Cataloguing
June 15th 2011
Nick Rushby (editor of BJET), Doreen Wright (both formerly from the CEDAR project) and Chris Monk, (from the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park) converged on the archive today to catalogue the videodisc collection and equipment. The archive owns a considerable collection of videodiscs rescued from the National Interactive Video Centre when it closed in the nineties. We also discussed future collaboration for events on educational videodisc materials. Staff and students from Sawyers Hall College in Brentwood also visited and planned future collaboration around the BBC's Domesday Reloaded project.
Domesday Reloaded
May 16th 2011
Since October 2010, The National Archive of Educational Computing has loaned a BBC Domesday set to the BBC!
In the run up to the launch of the Domesday Reloaded project, the BBC used it as a reference machine, for photography and for convincing decision makers in the BBC to revisit the Domesday national data collection exercise with a comparative, participative web site - Domesday Reloaded - bbc.co.uk/domesday.
Richard MIllwood and George Auckland reveal the original Domesday equipment together with the BBC Micro used by schools to capture data for the Domesday Project in 1984/5.
BBC Essex interviewed Richard Millwood at the National Archive of Educational Computing in Brentwood on May 16th in the morning on the Dave Monk Show and in the evening on Drivetime. BBC Look East also filmed and broadcast a piece on May 17th. On June 9th the Brentwood Gazette published an article summarised on their website.
CAL 2011
April 12th-15th 2011
The National Archive of Educational Computing presented a stand at this international conference and organised a workshop. At the conference Charles Crook discovered an article on the BBC Domesday Project National Disc which he had not seen since he submitted it to the BBC in 1985!
This remarkable article predicts Facebook, the 'C' in ICT and many other wise and prescient concepts around children and microcomputers. You can read our transcribed text of the article, or a reconstruction as a PDF of its original form as it appeared on the Domesday equipment.
A Short History Offline
September 24th 2009
Becta have published a commissioned article, written by Richard Millwood, to offer an analysis of the history of educational computing.
BBC's Tomorrow's World presents Nellie - a computer set to revolutionise the classroom
September 20th 2009
The BBC have added selected Tomorrow's World features to their internet archive - in this one from 1969 we meet Nellie...
The BBC Domesday Book Project and its Legacy - a special CCS seminar
May 14th 2009
The Computer Conservation Society are celebrating the Domesday Project from 1984 at the Science Museum - report to follow.
ITTE's Voices Project book published
March 10, 2009
Read about the project and download a pdf copy of the book 'What does our past involvement with computers in education tell us?'
