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Support

by Richard Millwood — last modified Sunday Jun 22, 2008 16:47

The development of educational computing in the UK began in the early 1970s. This has resulted in a wealth of knowledge, experience and artefacts. It is timely now to look at these materials and to represent them as an accessible and substantially complete collection of one nation’s pioneering and world-renowned innovation.

The archive needs support in the form of sponsorship, partnership and volunteers - please complete the volunteer form or contact Richard Millwood directly if you can help fund this vital project.

Aims

The proposal is to:

  1. disseminate the archive so that past successes (and failures) can better inform the potential for learning with ICT in the future;
  2. enhance the archive by using the internet, emulation, video digitisation and virtual reality techniques to provide access to artefacts which have become difficult to view, operate and maintain;
  3. expand the archive so that it represents the range of innovations and practice in educational computing with personal stories, interpretations and analyses.
Valiant Turtle

Audience

Most of an inquiring population will have an interest in this archive. Specifically:

  • Public - parents interested in home & school learning with ICT, those interested in its history;
  • Learners - children researching projects about technology and learning;
  • Teachers, lecturers and trainers - in initial and in-service professional development;
  • Researchers - engaged in policy, educational technology and pedagogical research worldwide;
  • Educational managers - decision-makers considering purchase and implementation of ICT learning resources;
  • Policy makers - regional and national decision makers when considering effective ICT strategies.

Online visitors and face-to-face viewers of the archive will be encouraged to add their comments and stories.

Methods

The project will enhance and broaden access to the archive in four ways:

  1. using multimedia, emulation and virtual reality techniques to provide interesting and stimulating representations of historical artefacts;
  2. recording in digital formats the experience of many of the participants in educational computing innovation in the form of oral and video histories;
  3. digitising existing video materials and software from the collection and indexing them for viewers to see how educational computing was pioneered;
  4. categorising and recording its collection in a publicly-available database on the internet.

The project will also create specific interpretations and representations for each of the audiences.

Objectives in 2008

  1. preserve the existing collection;
  2. create an organisation with charitable status to permit a long-term self-sustaining mechanism for funding development and dissemination;
  3. plan a representative, substantial national archive of UK educational computing which is open to the public;
  4. establish a world-wide-web site which publishes the searchable database of the archive collection and a selection of representations of software and hardware artifacts, personal records and official documents;
  5. run a one-day event to bring together enthusiasts to develop the archive further.
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